Multiculturalism and the Canon of American Culture

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.