ABSTRACT
In the framework of American Studies, the study of “difference” has loomed large in a variety of ways. The study of “race,” class, and gender differences, along with an attention paid to age and disability, has been foundational for American Studies research, and the social and political struggles of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s found their institutional reflections in the so-called “canon wars” of the 1970s, resulting in a new canon of American literature that included, to an unprecedented degree, women writers and authors from ethnic minority groups. As a key text for teaching this new canon of American literature, The Heath Anthology of American Literature with an editorial board spearheaded by Paul Lauter came to complement, and contest, the canon contained in The Norton Anthology of American Literature (see Baym), which had hitherto been central to American Studies education. If the canon had thus been changed and broadened to include different experiences of American history, society, and culture, a similar broadening occurred with regard to the methodologies that might best be employed to analyze, decode, and discuss such difference.
