{"id":34928,"date":"2011-04-08T10:00:26","date_gmt":"2011-04-08T15:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=34928"},"modified":"2015-09-20T23:19:03","modified_gmt":"2015-09-21T04:19:03","slug":"a-multicultural-canon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2011\/04\/08\/a-multicultural-canon\/","title":{"rendered":"A Multicultural Canon?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mark Twain, Plato, Charles Dickens, John Stuart Mill, Voltaire, Ralph Waldo Emerson.\u00a0 For years, these names were thought necessary components of higher education.\u00a0 Without understanding these authors and their \u201cgreat books,\u201d so the story went, our students would lack in critical thinking skills and intelligence. \u00a0Yet, in the wake of the 1960s and challenges to white male dominance, students and educators begin to demand a more well-rounded and inclusive canon.\u00a0 University curriculums constituted almost entirely by dead, white, male, European writers, were slowly accompanied by a few token \u201cothers.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the 1980s and \u201890s, the debate over what constituted a proper and effective \u201ccanon\u201d reached a fevered pitch.\u00a0 The supposed decline of American knowledge and intelligence was blamed on the multiculturalism\u2019s rise in the Ivory Tower.\u00a0 For example, University of Chicago philosophy professor Allan Bloom\u2019s book The Closing of the American Mind<\/em> (1987) vigorously argued for a return to the traditional canon.\u00a0 In addressing this tension, sociologist Bethany Bryson wrote:<\/p>\n

Two decades of heated battle would ensue between members of what would become known as the Cultural Left and the Cultural Right\u2014academics and public intellectuals who engaged the debate in the national media.\u00a0 Despite the appearance of an epic battle between opposing forces, however, the two \u201csides\u201d shared an extraordinary premise: that every time an English teacher put together a reading list, the future of a nation hung in the balance.*<\/p>\n

Years later, most agree that the \u201cCultural Left\u201d won the canon wars.\u00a0 It is generally assumed that today\u2019s university curriculums and bookstores are repositories of diverse writers and viewpoints.<\/p>\n

So, what does this cornucopia of diversity look like?\u00a0\u00a0 We don\u2019t have to look far to answer the question.\u00a0\u00a0 A trip down the aisles of today\u2019s college bookstores serve as off-hand metrics for what is \u201clegitimate knowledge.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Moreover, these bookstores decorate their store walls with uniform and corporate\u2013approved book covers and authors\u2019 likenesses.\u00a0 By way of example, I headed over to the bookstore at Mississippi State University.<\/p>\n

Throughout this bookstore, 3\u2019 x 5\u2019 posters of notable books are displayed above the shelves and sitting areas.\u00a0 In total, thirty-three different book covers grace the walls, however, John Steinbeck\u2019s Cup of Gold<\/em> is displayed twice to bring the total to thirty-four.\u00a0 Nine of these thirty-four (26%) titles were produced by nonwhite, female, and\/or gay\/lesbian writers: Rosario Castellanos\u2019 The Book of Lamentations<\/em>, Pablo Neruda\u2019s Fully Empowered<\/em>, James Baldwin\u2019s Go Tell It On The Mountain<\/em>, Maria Edgeworth\u2019s The Absentee<\/em>, Harper Lee\u2019s To Kill a Mockingbird<\/em>, Ayn Rand\u2019s Atlas Shrugged<\/em>, Sylvia Plath\u2019s The Bell Jar<\/em>, Louisa May Alcott\u2019s Little Women<\/em>, and Ralph Ellison\u2019s Invisible Man<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In addition to the posters, on a wrap-around,mural above the caf\u00e9, 23 authors sit in a restaurant, smoking, drinking, eating, and enjoying one another\u2019s conversation and company.\u00a0 As shown below, the authors displayed are: Shelley, Whitman, Melville, Trollope [spelled as \u201cTroilope\u201d here], Kipling, [George] Eliot, James, Wilde, Twain, Shaw, Hardy, Dickenson, Orwell, Nabakov, Joyce, Parker, Faulkner, Steinbeck, [T. S.] Eliot, Singer, Kafka, Neruda, and Hughes.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"\"\"<\/p>\n

Out of the twenty-three authors displayed, four (17%) are women, two (9%) are people of color ( literally marginalized to the far right of the mural as it curls behind a support beam), and two (9%) are considered to have been gay.\u00a0 Withstanding the overlap of Hughes in two categories (gay and nonwhite), we are left with only six out of twenty-three (26%) authors that do not conform to the white, male, straight demographic thought characteristic of traditional canon authors.<\/p>\n

The twenty-six percent of book covers and paintings are the height of LGBT, female, and nonwhite author representation in this store.\u00a0 While the shelves certainly carry more than nine books and six authors of this ilk, I\u2019d wager that the total percentage does not come close to a quarter of their total inventory.\u00a0 If these numbers and framing together epitomize the great victory of the Canon Wars by the Cultural Left, then it is certainly an unfinished battle.<\/p>\n

* Bryson, Bethany. 2005.\u00a0 Making Multiculturalism: Boundaries and Meaning in U.S. English Departments<\/em>.\u00a0 Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, p 2.<\/p>\n

Matthew W. Hughey is a recent graduate of the University of Virginia (2009) and is currently an assistant professor of Sociology at Mississippi State University.\u00a0\u00a0He is co-editor (with Dr. Gregory Parks)\u00a0of\u00a0The Obamas as a (Post) Racial America?<\/a>,\u00a012 Angry Men: True Stories of Being a Black Man in America Today<\/a>, and\u00a0Black Greek-Letter Organizations, 2.0: New Directions in the Study of African American Fraternities and Sororities<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0He is also author of the forthcoming\u00a0White Bound: White Nationalists, White Antiracists, and the Shared Meanings of Race.\u00a0 Please feel free to visit\u00a0his website<\/a> or contact him at\u00a0MHughey@soc.msstate.edu<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mark Twain, Plato, Charles Dickens, John Stuart Mill, Voltaire, Ralph Waldo Emerson.\u00a0 For years, these names were thought necessary components of higher education.\u00a0 Without understanding these authors and their \u201cgreat books,\u201d so the story went, our students would lack in critical thinking skills and intelligence. \u00a0Yet, in the wake of the 1960s and challenges to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[8070,55,285,54],"class_list":["post-34928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-artliterature","tag-gender","tag-raceethnicity","tag-sexual-orientation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34928"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34928\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68015,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34928\/revisions\/68015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}