Canon

Issues of identity and national tradition are crucial when thinking about the canon. Most people accept that the canon changes over time, because its primary function is to connect people with the past (usually, the past conceived of in terms of a nation.) Traditions are dynamic things, mediating between the present and the past. They have to change a little or they die. So again most people accepted that it was important to bring in previously excluded writers (eg women, people of colour). The more difficult question arises when such inclusiveness (as Donadio hints) results in the affirmation of specific identities - in particular she characterises African American Studies as being simply about celebrating AA culture. This leads then to all sorts of worries that education just becomes about affirming who people are, that national identity is fragmented into lots of little groups, etc. For my part, there is something in these fears, though I think they are somewhat exaggerated and one-sided, for the following reasons:
1. Good examples of such courses are not simply affirmative. They draw attention to debates and conflicts within identity groups and their relation to nations.
2. Although more traditional canoncal writers (the 'dead white males') rarely deliberately wrote with the intention of affirming white masculinity, it is undeniable that even their notions of 'universal' values were shaped by their own identities. So there's no disinterested, transcendent, set of cultural values embedded in the canon.
3. Above all, it seems to me, the whole point of engaging in depth with culture of any sort is a kind of encounter with difference. It's not about affirming, it's about encountering - and encountering is always a mixed, two-way process.