A reading list is also a list of voices an institution has decided deserve time.

A reading list allocates a scarce resource, which is attention. Every name on it displaced others, and the students will finish with an implicit sense of who counts as worth reading in this field, formed entirely by what happened to be assigned. The choices are consequential and mostly invisible.

Ask who is missing from any list you are given, and read one of them. If you make such lists, say aloud that these were selections rather than the canon. Naming a list as a choice is a small act that changes how students hold it.