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In recent years the unity of American culture has been a major topic of literary and intellectual discussion in the United States. The established reading of the American national identity has come under mounting pressure from ethnic minorities of non-European origin. Leading universities have adjusted the Eurocentric canon of the Western literary and cultural tradition, or are considering the need to do so. As a result, a fierce and polarizing debate is being conducted among American writers, intellectuals and educators. In the nineteen essays gathered in this volume scholars from Europe and North America explore the complex range of tensions between the various subcultures and the cultural mainstream in the United States and Canada, as exemplified in intellectual debate, in politics, in religion, in higher education, and in literature, especially in recent American writing by members of cultural minorities: Native Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans and African Americans.
Publicly greeted as the definitive answer to recent attacks on the university, Lawrence W. Levine's book is a brilliantly argued positive vision of American education and culture.
This groundbreaking collection reinvigorates the debate over the inclusion of multiethnic literature in the American literary canon. While multiethnic literature has earned a place in the curriculum on many large campuses, it is still a controversial topic at many others, as recent campus and corporate revivals of The Great Books attest. Many still perceive multiethnic literature as being governed by ideological and political issues, perpetuating a false distinction between highbrow "literary" texts and multiethnic works. Through historical overviews and textual analyses, the contributors not only argue for the aesthetic validity of multiethnic literature, but also examine the innovative ways in which multiethnic literature is taught and critiqued. The following questions are also addressed: Who and what determines literary value? What role do scholars, students, the reading public, book awards, and/or publishers play in affirming literary value? Taken together, these essays underscore the necessity for maintaining vibrant conversations about the place of multiethnic literature both inside and outside the academy.
"Since its initial publication in 1993, John Guillory's Cultural Capital has been a signal text for understanding the compilation and codification of what was once known, unassailably, as the literary canon. Cultural Capital challenges the putative objectivity of aesthetic judgment and exposes the unequal distribution of symbolic and literary knowledge on which "culture" had long been based. Now, as the "crisis of the canon" has evolved into the "crisis of humanities," Guillory's groundbreaking, incisive work has never been more relevant and urgent. As scholar and critic Merve Emre writes in her introduction to this new edition: "Exclusion, selection, reflection, representation-these are the terms on which the canon wars of the last century were fought, and the terms that continue to inform debates about, for instance, decolonizing the curriculum and the rhetoric of antiracist pedagogy.""--
Using romantic theories, Caton analyzes America's contemporary novel. Organized through the two sections of "Theory" and "Practice," Reading American Novels and Multicultural Aesthetics begins with a study of aesthetic form only to have it reveal the content of politics and history. This presentation immediately offers a unified platform for an interchange between multiple cultural and aesthetic positions. Romantic theory provides for an integrated examination of diversity, one that metaphorically fosters a solid, inclusive, and democratic legitimacy for intercultural communication. This politically astute cosmopolitan appreciation will generate an intriguing "cross-over" audience: from ethnic studies to American studies and from literary studies to romantic studies, this book will interest a range of readers.
Gregory S. Jay boldly challenges the future of American literary studies. Why pursue the study and teaching of a distinctly American literature? What is the appropriate purpose and scope of such pursuits? Is the notion of a traditional canon of great books out of date? Where does American literature leave off and Mexican or Caribbean or Canadian or postcolonial literature begin? Are today's campus conflicts fueled more by economics or ideology? Jay addresses these questions and others relating to American literary studies to explain why this once arcane academic discipline found itself so often in the news during the culture wars of the 1990s. While asking some skeptical questions about new directions and practices, Jay argues forcefully in favor of opening the borders of American literary and cultural analysis. He relates the struggle for representation in literary theory to a larger cultural clash over the meaning and justice of representation, then shows how this struggle might expand both the contents and the teaching of American literature. In an account of the vexed legacy of the Declaration of Independence, he provides a historical context for the current quarrels over literature and politics. Prominent among these debates are those over multiculturalism, which Jay takes up in an essay on the impasses of identity politics. In closing, he considers how the field of comparative American cultural studies might be constructed.
Multiculturalism is one of the most controversial topics in both the United States and Germany.This interdisciplinary collection of essays by German scholars in American Studies and American scholars in German Studies analyze the "other" from this dual perspective and from their respective disciplines such as literary and cultural studies, political science, anthropology,and history. More particularly they examine multiculturalism in terms of national and ethnic identities, as well as gender and race, and look at the disciplines and institutions that produce and legitimize discourses on subjects such as minority literatures, feminism, and the notion of foreignness itself. What becomes clear is the fact that careful attention must be paid to the particular conditions and different ideological concepts that shape this term, i.e., the "national" historical, political, social, and institutional contexts in which it appears, circulates, and accrues meanings. Contributors: G. Welz, T. Brennan, B. Ostendorf, R. Hof, S. Lennox, A. Koenen, F. Hajek, C.Gersdorf, G. H. Lenz, F. Trommler, H. C. Seeba, A. Seyhan, A. Hornung, B. Thomas, G. O. Kvistad, H.-J. Puhle
Debate about teaching the great books of the Western canon has galvanized American higher education in recent years. The Great Canon Controversy provides an overview of the debate, summarizing the position for the canon and the position against it. Casement supports continued teaching of the canon and respect for it, while calling for revising reading lists to include nontraditional works. Part I describes how the canon was taught from ancient Greece to the present, noting key arguments for this form of pedagogy that are still with us today, specific books that were taught at different times over the centuries, and controversies the canon has been subject to in the past. Part II deals with anticanonism, epistemological and political dimensions of the theory underlying it. Casement then shows concrete examples of anticanonism in operation, at Stanford University and St. Lawrence University. Casement argues that, while much of what anticanonists say is hyperbolic or mistaken, we should listen to their demand to give fair treatment to works by marginalized authors and to great non-Western works. This means re-reviewing works worthy of canonization that may have been obscured by prejudice, but still requiring that they make it on their own merits and not out of sympathy for their authors. The Great Canon Controversy will be of great interest to educators and students alike, as well as those interested in the future of higher education in the United States.
In the ongoing culture wars, multiculturalism represents a threat to traditional values for some, and a promise for a more inclusive society for others. This rich collection demonstrates multiculturalism's potential to transform human society and teach it to respect--rather than reject or merely tolerate--difference. It offers diverse approaches to multiculturalism as it applies to contemporary themes of autonomy, identity and education. Drawing on philosophy, literature, sociology, history and political science, the contributors weave together personal narratives, pedagogical interpretations and global perspectives to offer a vision of the twenty-first century.