I don't think we need to define anybody as great; I think the folks complaining about the ways in which a canon get defined have something real there, and I think the folks noting that the way the traditional canon was constructed is inescapably tied to the construction of whiteness and colonialism are dead right. It's very difficult to teach classics in the ancient-greeks-and-romans way without hauling that in, and I don't think the effort is well-repaid compared to the same degree of effort applied to "let's get a truly global set of stories".
no subject