Liberal Education and the Canon: Five Great Texts Speak to Contemporary Social Issues

In recent years ideological wars have been waged in higher education over the curriculum in general and the traditional literary canon in particular. The "great books" philosophy of a liberal education has come to be identified with such political conservatives as William Bennett, Lynne Cheney, and the late Allan Bloom. In this book, Laura Ford offers an argument for maintaining the great books of the Western tradition as the centerpiece of a liberal education, but does so from the unusual perspective of a liberal, a feminist, and a mainstream academic administrator. She argues that to equate the great texts of the Western tradition with conservatism is to confuse the ideology of the texts themselves with the ideology of one group of recent advocates for the texts. This book undertakes to rebut the allegation of obsolescence implicit within the widely-used acronym DWEMs ("Dead White European Males") by demonstrating the continuing centrality of these texts to Western culture as it is experienced today. This is accomplished by applying five of the uncontested greatest works of the Western tradition to several of our society's most complex and divisive social issues: Homer, Plato, King James Bible, Shakespeare, The American founding documents, Sexual Harassment, Rape, Homophobia, Abortion, The Right to Die, The Death Penalty. Liberal Education and the Canon is not written for the specialist; it is intended to be both informative to scholars and accessible to persons with no prior familiarity with the five texts discussed. Written in lucid, jargon-free prose, it is a unique blending of the timeless with the timely. Drawing from sources as long ago as Homer and as recent as current headlines, this book makes the continuity of the human experience evident.… (more)