At the beginning of the twentieth century, the country’s literature was widely considered provincial. Then Malcolm Cowley set ...

Today I want to talk about the literary canon, the texts that have been judged to be worthwhile and enduring and therefore deserving of special status in our culture. I’m also going to talk about the ...

High school teachers can use texts from the canon to promote the skills their schools or states have identified as essential for graduates.

Do you remember the books you read in high school English? If you grew up in the United States, chances are your reading list bears striking resemblance to the syllabi of students across the country.

NMAI copy 39088019860378 from the library of H. Paul and Jane R. Friesema. "In its consideration of American Indian literature as a rich and exciting body of work, The Voice in the Margin invites us ...

Too often, we forget that fights about what we shouldn’t read are also battles over what we should read. And that every time someone attempts to ban Toni Morrison or Ta-Nehisi Coates, they’re also ...

From Shakespeare to Milton to Nabokov, the world's most enduring books are being tackled by famed graphic novelists in a three-volume set. The Western literary canon has long been debated and ...

Homosexuality used to be, to quote Victorian literary light Lord Alfred Douglas, “the love that dare not speak its name.” Doulgas would have known: in 1895 his gay affaire de coeur sent fellow writer ...

At a party in the early morning of Nov. 20, 1960, a man stabbed his wife with a penknife: once in the stomach and once in the back, nearly killing her. When another partygoer attempted to revive her ...