Showing posts with label literary canon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label literary canon. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 8, 2017

Getting Rid of Western Canonical Values

The literary canon -- essentially a list of books considered the most worthy of consideration -- has long been a pillar of Western culture even if there has been disagreement over exactly which works should be included.  But most have been written by white males and as diversity increases in the U.S. as a result of large-scale non-white immigration in the post-WWII period, that seems to be a growing problem: part of the "culture wars" I have increasingly been writing about.