Month: June 2016

Our next conference is scheduled for June 6-9, 2018 and will be hosted by Center for the Study of Inequality and Social Justice at Stony Brook University. Click here for the   Call for Papers.

 

Letter from the President

I just returned from the How Class Works conference at Stony Brook. First I’d like to thank Mike Zweig and his team for the great job he did. This was Mike’s last event before he retires and we want to wish him all the best in the future. Be sure to view the images from the conference posted on our website.

I wanted to write my last message as president to update you on developments and to try to keep the momentum from the conference going.

• As you will know Liz Giuffre and Sarah Attfield are developing the Journal of Working Class Studies with the aim of the late summer for the first issue. This is a major step forward for the WCSA and we hope that you will become actively involved in the journal as a contributor, reviewer or reader.
• Our website is a fantastically important resource for the field and Michele Fazio has done a great job on building and developing new content. Check out the site for conference updates and photos from the Stony Brook Conference.
• We have set ourselves the ambitious target of doubling the membership of the WCSA over the next year. This is vital if we want to sustain and build the field of Working Class Studies. Please, if you haven’t already done so, renew your membership, or consider taking out a three year membership. Please encourage friends and colleagues to join and consider getting your institution or organisation to take out an institutional subscription. Membership forms are on the website.
• Our next conference will be in Bloomington, Indiana in late May/early June 2017. Joe Varga and his team will circulate a call for papers very soon.
• Later this month, the WCSA Elections Committee will be organising the vote for the new posts and steering committee.  Please take an active role in your Association.
• Finally, I’d like to give my thanks to the steering committee and especially Michele Fazio, Christie Launius, and Ken Estey for their huge support and help during my presidency of the WCSA.  Michele Fazio will become the new WCSA president from the election.

This next year will be a really exciting one of the WCSA and I hope you will become as involved as you can in building the field.

In comradeship,
Tim Strangleman
President of the WCSA

The last day of the conference began with a plenary on class and the African American experience and continued with panels on film, literature and photography, gentrification and urban environmental justice, and a roundtable on cross-class marriage as well as many other topics.  Of particular interest was the session introducing the transition of the Center for Study of Working-Class Life to the Center for Study of Class, Inequality, and Social Justice.  Special thanks to SUNY Stony Brook and Michael Zweig for hosting another successful  conference!

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Another full day of panels from exploring the intersections with race, class, health, and environmental justice and the relationship between deindustrialization and memory to a roundtable on media and the working class in the 2016 election and the role of class on college campuses.  The WCSA Membership Meeting was well attended, drawing several new members, and officers reported the past year’s progress as well as future goals.  Nominations were also taken for the upcoming elections.

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Panels featuring workers’ experiences, popular culture, labor solidarity, class dynamics in Turkey, and a roundtable discussion among on work in the academy filled the day.  The night concluded with a lecture by Sam Pizzigati, “Plutocrats: Understanding the 0.1%.”

The final program for the 2016 How Class Works Conference is now available.  All are invited to attend this year’s WCSA Graduate Student and New Participant Meet and Greet, hosted by Michele Fazio, Jackie Gabriel, and Colby King, on Wednesday, June 8 from 6:30 -7:30 pm at the Hilton Garden Inn, Shirley Kenny Room located on the SUNY-Stony Brook campus.  An open mic and spoken word welcoming event follows from 7:30  – 9:30 pm.

We hope to see you there!