Canon Disorders

This collection addresses a range of key issues around the relationship between gender and canon in the North American literary and filmic production in English of the last twenty five years. Invariably based on close readings of the texts/films in question, the essays hereby included implicitly define gender in the most encompassing sense, which would include traditional (white and middleclass) feminist analyses, queer theory as well as studies of masculinities. They thus reflect and embrace the opinion that, by the end of the 1980s, the emergence of gender studies as a promising new area of research and critical inquiry, one in which both men and women had a space, expanded the feminist agenda from the study of the female subject to the analyses of the various social constructions of gender, including masculinities, studies of sexuality and sexual orientation. Additionally, the essays that follow evaluate and articulate from a variety of angles the influence of gender studies on the current process of canon renewal, drawing connections across disciplines as well as between gender theories and other contemporary discourses such as post-structuralism, post-colonialism, and globalization studies.