S04E06 | Irreverence toward the Canon

C19: America in the 19th Century

Have we really witnessed, in the words of a 2016 J19 forum, “the end of the end of the canon?” This episode builds on the #VirtualC19 roundtable “Irreverence toward the Canon” held in October 2020. Envisioning the episode as the kind of conversation that ensues in the hallways after a conference panel, Carie Schneider (Cameron University) and Sean Gordon (University of Massachusetts Amherst) ask four basic questions: What is the canon? What is irreverence toward the canon? How do we do irreverence toward the canon? And why? After discussing canonicity in terms of their respective fields and methodologies, Schneider and Gordon go on to discuss what it means to assume an irreverent disposition in our teaching and research. Connecting irreverence to abolition, institutional power, and contemporary conversations about monuments, they gather ideas about how to inspire a politics of irreverence in our students and what cultivating such a disposition may mean for the future of the field — and beyond. The episode was produced by Carie Schneider and Sean Gordon and features the contributions of Julia W. Bernier (Washington & Jefferson College), Crystal S. Donkor (SUNY New Paltz), and Emily Gowen (Boston University). Music by Asura, Audiobinger, Broke for Free, and Loyalty Freak Music, and is used under Creative Commons licenses. Additional production support was provided by Ashley Rattner (Tusculum University). Full episode transcript available here: http://bit.ly/C19PodcastS04E06