Center for Study of Working Class Life
We recently posted a new study, The Experience of Working Class Students at a Research I University, by Veronica Gonzalez, an intern at the Center. The study compares the attitudes and academic experience of Stony Brook University students from working-class backgrounds with those who come to Stony Brook from middle-class backgrounds. Class is determined by parents’ occupation. The results run counter to common expectations and raise new questions that require further work on a wider scale.
Our bebsite also has a link to the September 18, 2009 interview on the PBS Bill Moyers Journal with Michael Zweig and Bill Fletcher. The topic of the 22 minute conversation is the state of the U.S. labor movement, reasons for its apparent inability to address the problems working people face today, and what might be done to develop a broader working class movement in the U.S.
In June, 2010, SUNY-Stony Brook will host its fifth bi-annual How Class Works conference. Proposals are due December 14, 2009 (click here for the full call for proposals). Registration information will be available after March 1, 2010.
Center for Working-Class Studies at Youngstown State
The CWCS at Youngstown State University kicked off its 2009-2010 Lecture Series with a talk by Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown on “The Health Care Crisis and Working-Class Communities.” Brown’s comments were followed by almost 90 minutes of questions from an audience of about 500 area residents. Brown’s talk is available on YouTube.
The Center’s blog continues to draw a large audience, with more than 3500 people reading recent discussions of how working-class students are barred from pursuing a career in journalism, discussions of the health care debate, and commentaries on the future of the working class.
The CWCS released a report from its second survey, focusing on health care. The survey shows continuing faith in President Obama and support for a public option.
The Steel Valley Voices project has expanded to include life stories and document from half a dozen local Mexican families, some of whom arrived in the 1910s and 20s, as well as stories from local Lebanese, Slovak, and Puerto Rican families, most of whom came to the Youngstown area to work in the steel industry.
Chicago Center for Working-Class Studies
The Chicago Center for Working-Class Studies, in conjunction with the School of Labor and Employment Relations at the University of Illinois, will host the 2011 conference of the Working-Class Studies Association. It will be a bit later than usual, June 22 through June 25, so mark your 2011 calendars now. We will be at the U. of Illinois Chicago Campus just off the Loop, and we’ll have plenty of dorm rooms at reasonable rates, as well as some semi-reasonable rates at local hotels. The conference theme will be “Working-Class Organization and Power.”
Our Daily Lives/Our Daily Bread 2009/1010 Brown Bag Series
NOVEMBER
Friday, November 13 – “‘Joe Hill Ain’t Dead!’: Wobbly Visual Culture and Its Impact on Contemporary Radical Graphics” – Dylan Miner, MSU Residential College in the Arts and Humanities
Friday, November 20 – “Becoming Someone Else: Jewish Name-changing, Employment and Class Mobility in Mid-Twentieth Century New York City” – Kirsten Fermaglich, MSU Department of History (co-sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program)
DECEMBER
Thursday, December 3 – “American Lenses, Mexican Aliens: Photography of the Mexican Experience in the United States, 1930 – 1965”- Juan Javier Pescador, MSU Department of History (co-sponsored by the Chicano Latino Studies Program and the Julian Samora Research Institute)
JANUARY
Thursday, January 14 – “Working on the Imperial Farm: Convict Labor and Discipline on the Fernando de Noronha Island Penal Colony, Brazil 1830-1897”
- Peter Beattie, MSU Department of History (co-sponsored by the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies)
Friday, January 22 – “Coming into Focus: Picturing Chinese American Workers in World War Two” - Anna Pegler Gordon, MSU’s James Madison College
(co-sponsored by the Asian Studies Center and the Asian Pacific American Studies Program)
FEBRUARY
Thursday, February 4 – “Images and Voices: 160 Years of Steel and Work” – Howard Bossen and Eric Freedman, MSU School of Journalism
Thursday, February 11 – “Pulling the Strings of Race: The Buffalo Historical Marionettes Project of the WPA” – Peter Rachleff, Department of History, Macalester College (co-sponsored by the African and African American Studies Program)
MARCH
Thursday, March 18 – “Precarious Liberation: Workers, the State, and Contested Social Citizenship in Post-Apartheid South Africa” – Franco Barchiesi, African American and African Studies, Ohio State University (co-sponsored by the African Studies Center)
Thursday, March 25 -“‘A Constant Menace to All Employed Therein’: The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire and Fighting Workplace Smoking in Progressive Era New York City ” – Gregory Wood, Department of History, Frostburg State University
APRIL
Friday, April 9 – “The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti – a Musical Portrait” Charlie King and Karen Brandow, Folksingers – MSU Library, Room 449W
Friday, April 16 – “The Unhallowed Many: God and Working Class Lives” – Robert Bruno, School of Labor and Employment Relations, University of Illinois
(co-sponsored by the MSU Department of Religious Studies)
All presentations take place 12:15 – 1:30 in the MSU Museum Auditorium unless noted otherwise
Working Class Student Union
Members of the Working Class Student Union at UW-Madison have been working hard during our first year of university recognition. Our funding comes from General Student Service Funds, which distributes segregated fees for various student groups that meet 19 specific eligibility criteria, including that 51 percent of our efforts must be aimed at direct services to the entire campus. The Working Class Student Union advocates and provides support for working-class, non-traditional, transfer and first-generation college students on the UW-Madison campus while educating the entire university population on the benefits of recognizing and celebrating class diversity.
Our direct services include educational workshops for interested housing units and organizations who want to be class conscious. We are particularly proud to offer advocacy services to working-class students. Our trained advocates serve as peer counselors who can help overwhelmed students help themselves. Advocates are also available to attend meetings with professors, financial aid representatives, or anyone else in a position of power that a working-class student may feel uncomfortable approaching.
Our biggest project so far this year has been Working-Class Celebration Month in October. Working-Class Celebration Month was kicked off with a presentation from a National FFA Collegiate Ambassador who spoke about socio-economic issues working-class people face at the grocery store, and discussed confusing food labeling practices. We also hosted Sherry Linkon for two days. Linkon gave a keynote speech called “Why Class Matters in Higher Education” and attended meetings, lectures and workshops with professors and WCSU members and allies while she was here. Other events this month will include watching and discussing the documentaries Class Dismissed and Finally Got the News, a budget workshop facilitated by UW Credit Union, and a health care discussion called “Class and Access to Health.”
We are also hosting Steel Strings and Break Beats, a tour of artists who play “hiphop and folk-funk for liberation,” and a family event will offer student-parents a chance to bring their family to campus to celebrate Wisconsin’s fall culture.