Teaching the Canon in 21st Century Classrooms

Book excerpt: The canon, as much an ideology as it is a body of texts perceived to be intrinsic to the high school English classroom, has come under scrutiny for maintaining status quo narratives about whiteness, masculinity, heterosexuality, ability, and even those associated with American ideals of self-reliance, the good life, and the self-made man. Teaching practices around these texts may also reinforce harmful practices and ways of thinking, including those connected to notions of culture, literary merit, and methods of reading, teaching, and learning. Teaching the Canon in 21st Century Classrooms offers innovative, critical ways of reading, thinking about, and teaching canonical texts in 21st century classrooms. Responding to the increasingly pluralized, digitized, global 21st century English classroom, chapter authors make explicit the ideologies of a canonical text of focus, while also elaborating a pedagogical approach that de-centers the canon, bridges past and present, applies critical theory, and celebrates the rich identities of 21st century readers. In using this book, teachers will be especially poised to take on the canon in their classroom and, thus, to open up their curricula to ideas, values, concerns, and narratives beyond those embedded in the canonical texts.