0 abbreviation for Dead White European Male: a male writer or other famous person who may be highly respected because he was a white man who is no longer alive, rather than because his work deserves more respect than that of others:
It is possible now to go through the whole college liberal arts course without ever reading Shakespeare (a DWEM).
He seems to believe that the only people who matter in the history of human culture are the DWEMs.
They demanded that, instead of only studying the work of dead white European males (or Dwems), English students should be offered more relevant texts by writers outside the usual canon.
