 Under New's editorship, the journal "often placed the Canadian within the broader Commonwealth field" of postcolonial criticism.New chose to give priority to First Nations, Asian Canadian, Caribbean Canadian and other minority literatures, which previously had been under-represented in Canadian literary criticism.For example, in 1985 New had Joseph Pivato co-edit an issue devoted to Italian-Canadian writers (number 106), and in 1990 he edited the first special issue on Indigenous literatures in Canada, titled "Native Writers & Canadian Writing" (no.