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Podcast: Trinity Long Room Hub Podcasts
Episode: Behind the Headlines | REWRITES: Necessity or travesty?
Description: Recorded April 5, 2023
Panelists: Dr Jane Suzanne Carroll (TCD), Dr David Kenny (TCD), Dr Martina Devlin, and Dr Nicholas Johnson (TCD).
With the recent news that publishers Puffin and the Roald Dahl Story Company have decided to rewrite potentially sensitive or offensive elements of the popular children’s books, our Behind the Headlines panel considers whether languages, images, and texts should be altered to suit the times, and what else is ‘subject to change’? 
While some may argue that rewriting books amounts to a threat to literary expression—a throwback to ‘book banning’ or even censorship—others will point to the fact that works...