The local conference planning committee hosting the 2022 version of the Working-Class Studies Association’s annual conference is happy to announce that the conference call for papers has been finalized.
Call for Papers
Working-Class Studies Association Conference
Oregon State University
Corvallis, Oregon, June 20-23, 2022
Class Dynamics at Work
The COVID-19 pandemic is transforming the nature of work and what it means to be working class. Recognizing their power, the unemployed and furloughed are resisting the command to return to poverty-wage jobs. As Amazon workers fight to unionize, their billionaire boss shoots himself into space. Burnt out on Zoom and the inequities of remote learning, teachers wonder: When, if ever, will it be safe to return to in-person classes? And will the COVID crisis only further the erosion of public education? For those of us working in higher ed, the value of both a college education and our own labor feels ever more precarious. We question whether higher education remains a viable route for social mobility for students, faculty, and staff from working-class and first-generation backgrounds.
What, if anything, does the academy owe the working class? Can the working class ever truly find a home in the neoliberal university? Can Working-Class Studies?
The Working-Class Studies Association invites submissions for papers, panels, and creative works that consider the dynamics of class at work—and how class dynamics, for better and worse, influence what work means and becomes. For the first time ever, our conference has also “gone left”—as in, to the “left coast” or Pacific Northwest United States—and will be housed at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon. We especially encourage scholars, activists, and artists from the region to submit proposals, to highlight how working-classness expresses itself out west: among other ways, through centering the relationship between labor, race, gender, immigration, indigeneity, environment, and land stewardship in our commitments.
Themes and topics for proposals might include, but are not limited to:
• Laboring in the “Knowledge Factory,” or Class in Higher Education
• Work and COVID-19
• Intersections of Class, Race, Ethnicity, Indigeneity, Gender, Sexuality, and/or Ability
• Class and the Environment/Climate Change
• Class in Literature, Art, and Media
• Capitalism and Empire
• Global, Regional, and Migrant Working Classes
• Populism, Nationalism, and/or Class “Culture Wars”
• Poverty and Class Experiences
• Urban/Rural Working-Class Life
• Post and De-Industrialization
• Class and Colonialism
• Place, Belonging, and Class
• The End of Wage Labor?
• Working-Class Academic (panel dedicated to WCA issues)
Submitting Your Proposal
• Please download, fill out, save, and return this PROPOSAL TEMPLATE to wcsa2022conference@gmail.com.
• Proposal abstracts for papers, panels, creative works/exhibitions, and round tables should be no longer than 350 words.
• We highly encourage the submission of proposals for individual papers and presentations. If submitting a full panel proposal, however, please include contact information for each presenter and indicate technology needs, if any.
• Please include brief biographical information (2-3 sentences) for each presenter.
• In anticipation of the ongoing need to offer remote access due to COVID-19, we are also hoping to add one virtual or remote-track panel per session. If you’d prefer to present your work remotely, please indicate this.
• We are limiting presenters to participation on no more than two panels.
A pdf version of the full call and submission instructions can be viewed and downloaded here as well.