Working Class Studies Association
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The Working-Class Studies Association (WCSA) is a non-profit association that helps develop and support scholarship, teaching, and activism related to working-class life and cultures. The WCSA was first established by the Youngstown State University's former Center for Working-Class Studies in 2003, supported by a grant from the Ford Foundation. Members are located in countries across the globe, and they include poets, scholars, activists, teachers, students, journalists, artists, small press publishers, and others interested in building the field of working-class studies. The association holds an annual conference and other events, promotes the field through a variety of awards, and publishes ''The Journal of Working-Class Studies''.


History

The origins of the Working-Class Studies Association can be traced to the Center for Working-Class Studies at
Youngstown State University Youngstown State University (YSU or Youngstown State) is a public university in Youngstown, Ohio, United States. It was founded in 1908 and is the easternmost member of the University System of Ohio. The university is composed of six undergrad ...
in Ohio and the Center for Study of Working Class Life at
Stony Brook University Stony Brook University (SBU), officially the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is a public university, public research university in Stony Brook, New York, United States, on Long Island. Along with the University at Buffalo, it is on ...
. A complementary series of biennial conferences sponsored by these centers fostered a community of scholars, activists, artists, publishers, and journalists invested in the study of and advocacy for working-class life, culture and interests. The Youngstown Center for Working-Class Studies (CWCS) was the first multi-disciplinary academic center in the US devoted to the study of working-class culture broadly defined. What distinguished the center was an
interdisciplinary Interdisciplinarity or interdisciplinary studies involves the combination of multiple academic disciplines into one activity (e.g., a research project). It draws knowledge from several fields such as sociology, anthropology, psychology, economi ...
approach to the study of
working-class The working class is a subset of employees who are compensated with wage or salary-based contracts, whose exact membership varies from definition to definition. Members of the working class rely primarily upon earnings from wage labour. Most c ...
issues. The center was launched in 1996 after a group of Youngstown faculty organized two interdisciplinary conferences in the early 1990s, one on the 1930s and the next on working-class studies, and received a grant from the
Association of American Colleges and Universities The American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) is a global membership organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States. It works to improve quality and equity in undergraduate education and advance liberal education. ...
to explore the category of class as part of a broader project promoting diversity on college campuses. Under the leadership of co-founders Sherry Linkon and John Russo, the center supported a range of activities promoting awareness of and respect for working-class life and culture, including an educational program in collaboration with Local 1375 of the
United Steelworkers The United Steel, Paper and Forestry, Rubber, Manufacturing, Energy, Allied Industrial and Service Workers International Union, commonly known as the United Steelworkers (USW), is a general trade union with members across North America. Headqua ...
that brought college classes to the union hall. This work, in addition to continuing biennial conferences on working-class studies, was further supported by two grants from the
Ford Foundation The Ford Foundation is an American private foundation with the stated goal of advancing human welfare. Created in 1936 by Edsel Ford and his father Henry Ford, it was originally funded by a $25,000 (about $550,000 in 2023) gift from Edsel Ford. ...
starting in 2000. The Center for Study of Working Class Life was established in 1999 at
Stony Brook University Stony Brook University (SBU), officially the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is a public university, public research university in Stony Brook, New York, United States, on Long Island. Along with the University at Buffalo, it is on ...
under the leadership of
economist An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social sciences, social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this ...
Michael Zweig. Like the Youngstown center, The Center for Study of Working Class Life took an interdisciplinary approach to investigating the meaning of class in contemporary society, although with a stronger emphasis on “tools of the social sciences.” Starting in 2002, their How Class Works conference became the biennial complement to the Youngstown center’s working-class studies conference. The Youngstown conference met every other odd year, and How Class Works met every other even year, multiplying opportunities for cross-disciplinary interaction and collaboration. The Working-Class Studies Association began to develop in early 2003 in the course of planning that year’s Youngstown conference. In April 2004, Linkon and John Russo met with 15 participants to develop a
mission statement A mission statement is a short statement of why an organization exists, what its overall goal is, the goal of its operations: what kind of product or service it provides, its primary customers or market, and its geographical region of operation ...
, map out the structure of the organization, and work through organizing issues. The group included academics and graduate students from multiple fields as well as independent scholars and labor educators. The organization held a founding meeting at Stony Brook in June 2004, setting the stage for its first official business meeting at Youngstown in May 2005. The constitution and a slate of candidates for the steering committee were presented at this meeting. Membership received ballots in June and subsequently approved the constitution and first steering committee of the WCSA. The initial slate of officers included Sherry Linkon (President),
Peter Rachleff Peter J. Rachleff is Co-Executive Director of the East Side Freedom Library, and a retired professor of history at Macalester College in the St. Paul, Minnesota specializing in United States labor, immigration and African American history. Rach ...
(President-Elect), Jamie Daniel (Secretary) and Michael Zweig (Treasurer). At-large members of the first steering committee were Tim Strangleman, Michele Fazio, Mary Romero, and Andrew Ross. The WCSA took responsibility for organizing odd-year conferences beginning in 2007, working with host committees at welcoming universities and colleges: Macalaster College,
University of Pittsburgh The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The university is composed of seventeen undergraduate and graduate schools and colle ...
,
University of Illinois at Chicago The University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) is a public research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its campus is in the Near West Side community area, adjacent to the Chicago Loop. The second campus established under the Universi ...
,
University of Wisconsin-Madison A university () is an institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". Uni ...
,
Georgetown University Georgetown University is a private university, private Jesuit research university in Washington, D.C., United States. Founded by Bishop John Carroll (archbishop of Baltimore), John Carroll in 1789, it is the oldest Catholic higher education, Ca ...
, and
Indiana University Bloomington Indiana University Bloomington (IU Bloomington, Indiana University, IU, IUB, or Indiana) is a public university, public research university in Bloomington, Indiana, United States. It is the flagship university, flagship campus of Indiana Univer ...
. Beginning with the 2018 conference, the WCSA assumed responsibility for even-year conferences as well, beginning with
Stony Brook University Stony Brook University (SBU), officially the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is a public university, public research university in Stony Brook, New York, United States, on Long Island. Along with the University at Buffalo, it is on ...
.


Publications

The WCSA publishes ''The Journal of Working-Class Studies,'' an online,
open access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which nominally copyrightable publications are delivered to readers free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 de ...
peer review Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work (:wiktionary:peer#Etymology 2, peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the ...
ed journal (ISSN 2475-4765). New issues come out twice yearly. The inaugural issue was December 2016. The journal is co-edited by Sarah Attfield and Liz Giuffre; Christie Launius is the reviews editor. From 2006-2017, the association published a semi-annual newsletter, ''Working-Class Notes.'' It provided information about the organization, reports from officers, news and notes about members’ activities, and book reviews. This newsletter was a continuation of a newsletter by the same name published by the Center for Working-Class Studies at Youngstown State University (YSU) from 1998-2006. As of the fall of 2017 issue, ''Working-Class Notes'' ceased publication as its own entity. Most of the elements of the newsletter—a section called “Book Notes,” member news, the President’s letter, officer reports, and reports from affiliated centers—became available on the WCSA website. Lengthier book reviews, which had been a highlight of ''Working-Class Notes,'' moved to ''The Journal of Working-Class Studies.'' ''Working-Class Notes'' was initially produced by the Center for Working-Class Studies at YSU. It became a WCSA publication in 2006. It was edited by Karen Lynn Ford 2004-2005, Sherry Linkon from 2005-2010, and by Christie Launius from 2010-2017. Th
Book Notes
section has been edited by Jack Metzgar from 2007 to the present. In 2016, Cherie Madigan began editing the fiction and poetry notices while Metzgar continues editing nonfiction.


Conferences

The Working-Class Studies Association and its Working-Class Academics section hold annual WCSA Conferences. In 2025, the conference will be at University of Technology Sydney, in 2024 it was held at SUNY Old Westbury in New York, in 2023 at University of Illinois, Chicago, in 2022 at Oregon State University, in 2021 on Zoom and Youngstown State University, and in 2019 at Kent University in England. In the group's early years, its conferences were held first in Ohio. The WCSA grew out of biennial conferences organized by the Center for Working-Class Studies at Youngstown State University starting in 1995 and, beginning in 2002, How Class Works, a biennial conference sponsored by The Center for Study of Working-Class Life at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Since its inception in 2004 the WCSA has sponsored and co-sponsored conferences biennially, and starting in 2018, annually. From 2006-2016 the association met biennially at How Class Works conferences in even numbered years. In 2007 the WCSA started sponsoring odd-year biennial conferences by presenting Working-Class Culture and Counter Culture at Macalester College. In 2009, the University of Pittsburgh hosted the WCSA’s Class Matters conference. In 2011, the Chicago Working-Class Studies affiliate of the WCSA presented Working Class Organization and Power at the University of Illinois-Chicago. Fighting Forward: A Labor and Working-Class Summit was held at Madison College’s downtown campus in 2013. This conference was co-sponsored with the Labor and Working-Class Studies Project, a collaborative campus-labor-community initiative based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 2015, WCSA co-sponsored Fighting Inequality with the
Labor and Working-Class History Association The Labor and Working-Class History Association (LAWCHA) is a non-profit association of academics, educators, students, and labor movement and other activists that promotes research into and publication of materials on the history of the labor mov ...
at Georgetown University. The 2017 conference was hosted by Indiana University Bloomington. After 2017, the WCSA began sponsoring conferences annually, beginning with Class at the Border: Migration, Confinement, and (Im)mobility, hosted by The Center for the Study of Inequalities, Social Justice and Policy at Stony Brook. Conference programs from 2001 to the present are archived on the WCSA website.


Awards

The WCSA Awards include the
Tillie Olsen Tillie Lerner Olsen (January 14, 1912 – January 1, 2007) was an American writer who was associated with the political turmoil of the 1930s and the first generation of American feminism, feminists. Biography Olsen was born to Russian Jewi ...
Award for creative writing, which honors published books of poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, and other genres; the C.L.R. James Award for published books for academic or general Audiences; the Russo & Linkon Award for published article or essay for academic or general audiences; the
Studs Terkel Louis "Studs" Terkel (May 16, 1912 – October 31, 2008) was an American writer, historian, actor, and broadcaster. He received the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 1985 for ''The Good War'' and is best remembered for his oral histor ...
Award for media and journalism; the Jake Ryan and Charles Sackrey Award: for books by writer(s) of working-class origins that speak to issues of the working-class experience in academia, and the Constance Coiner Award for best dissertation. There is also a Lifetime Achievement Award given periodically for significant service and contributions to the field. Press releases are issued about the awards and announced through social media, awardees are archived on WCSA's website, and they are given and celebrated each year at the annual conference.


Organization

Anyone may become a member of WCSA. The administration of WCSA is conducted by the Executive Committee, which is elected by the members. Elections are conducted by the Election Committee. The Executive Committee consists of the president, the president-elect, the immediate past-president, the secretary, and the treasurer in addition to four at-large members and the chair of the Working-Class Academics section. The current president is Sarah Attfield (University of Technology, Sydney). Past-president is Jen Vernon (Sierra College, California) and president-elect is Jeffrey Cabusao (Bryant University, Rhode Island).


Archives

Michael Zweig, professor
emeritus ''Emeritus/Emerita'' () is an honorary title granted to someone who retires from a position of distinction, most commonly an academic faculty position, but is allowed to continue using the previous title, as in "professor emeritus". In some c ...
and former director of the Center for Study of Working Class Life at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, has arranged for archival materials documenting the founding of the WCSA to be housed at the Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Archives at
New York University New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a Nondenominational ...
. Archives related to the WCSA include those for the Center for Working-Class Studies, housed at the Maag Library, Youngstown State University. Documents from the founding and development of the Center for Study of Working Class Life can be found in the university archive of the State University of New York at Stony Brook.Zweig, Michael, Message to the author. 5 October 2017. E-mail.


References


External links


Working-Class Studies Association Web SiteThe Journal of Working-Class StudiesWorking-Class Perspectives Blog
{{authority control Literary societies American studies Learned societies of the United States Labor studies organizations based in the United States Academic organizations based in the United States