The Working-Class Studies Association (WCSA)[1] 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.[2] 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[3].
The origins of the Working-Class Studies Association can be traced to the Center for Working-Class Studies at Youngstown State University in Ohio and the Center for Study of Working Class Life at Stony Brook University. 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 approach to the study of working-class issues.[4] 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 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 that brought college classes to the union hall.[5] This work, in addition to continuing biennial conferences on working-class studies, was further supported by two grants from the Ford Foundation starting in 2000.[6]
The Center for Study of Working Class Life was established in 1999 at Stony Brook University under the leadership of economist 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.”[7] 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.[8] In April 2004, Linkon and John Russo met with 15 participants to develop a mission statement, map out the structure of the organization, and work through organizing issues.[9] 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.[10] 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 (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.[11]
The WCSA publishes The Journal of Working-Class Studies, an online, open accesspeer reviewed journal (ISSN 2475-4765). New issues come out twice yearly. The inaugural issue was December 2016.[12] 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.[13]
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.[14]
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.
The 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[15] hold annual WCSA Conferences.[16] 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 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.[17]
Awards
The WCSA Awards include the Tillie Olsen 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 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.[18][19]
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.[20]
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 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.[21]
Archives related to the WCSA include those for the Center for Working-Class Studies, housed at the Maag Library, Youngstown State University.[22] 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.[23]
Related Research Articles
The State University of New York is a system of public colleges and universities in the State of New York. It is one of the largest comprehensive systems of universities, colleges, and community colleges in the United States. Led by chancellor John B. King, the SUNY system has 91,182 employees, including 32,496 faculty members, and some 7,660 degree and certificate programs overall and a $13.37 billion budget. Its flagship universities are SUNY Stony Brook on Long Island in southeastern New York and the SUNY Buffalo in the west.
Youngstown is a city in and the county seat of Mahoning County, Ohio, United States. At the 2020 census, it had a population of 60,068, making it the eleventh-most populous city in Ohio. It is a principal city of the Youngstown–Warren metropolitan area, which had 430,591 residents in 2020 and is the seventh-largest metro area in Ohio. Youngstown is situated on the Mahoning River in Northeast Ohio, 58 miles (93 km) southeast of Cleveland and 61 miles (100 km) northwest of Pittsburgh.
Stony Brook University (SBU), officially the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is a public research university on Long Island in Stony Brook, New York. Along with the University at Buffalo, it is one of the State University of New York system's two flagship institutions. Its campus consists of 213 buildings on over 1,454 acres of land in Suffolk County and it is the largest public university in the state of New York.
Youngstown State University 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 America East Conference (AmEast) is a collegiate athletic conference affiliated with NCAA Division I whose members are located in the Northeastern United States. The conference is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts.
The Coastal Athletic Association (CAA), formerly the Colonial Athletic Association, is a collegiate athletic conference affiliated with the NCAA's Division I whose full members are located in East Coast states, from Massachusetts to South Carolina. Most of its members are public universities, and the conference is headquartered in Richmond. The CAA was historically a Southern conference until the addition of four schools in the Northeastern United States after the turn of the 21st century, which added geographic balance to the conference.
The Central Atlantic Collegiate Conference is a college athletic conference affiliated with the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) at the Division II level. Its twelve member institutions are located in the northeastern United States in the states of Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania.
The Stony Brook School is a private, Christian, co-educational, college-preparatory boarding and day school for grades 7–12 in Stony Brook, New York, United States. It was established in 1922 by John Fleming Carson and fellow members of the Stony Brook Assembly. Its founding headmaster was Frank E. Gaebelein.
Walsh University is a private Roman Catholic university in North Canton, Ohio. Founded in 1960 by the Brothers of Christian Instruction as a liberal arts college, it currently enrolls approximately 2,100 students. The university offers more than 70 undergraduate majors and seven graduate programs, as well as multiple global learning experiences.
The Skyline Conference is an intercollegiate athletic conference based in the New York City area that competes in the NCAA's Division III.
Brier Hill is a neighborhood in Youngstown, Ohio, that was once viewed as the city's "Little Italy." The neighborhood, which was the site of the city's first Italian settlement, stretches along the western edge of Youngstown's lower north side and encircles St. Anthony's Church, an Italian-American Roman Catholic parish. Each year, at the end of August, the Brier Hill Fest attracts thousands of visitors from Northeast Ohio and Western Pennsylvania.
Pi Sigma Alpha, the National Political Science Honor Society, is the only honor society for college and university students of political and social sciences in the United States. Its purpose is to recognize and promote high academic achievement in the field of political science. It is a member of the Association of College Honor Societies (ACHS) and adheres to all the standards set by ACHS for an upper-division, specialized honor society. Pi Sigma Alpha is not a social fraternity or club.
Deindustrialization is a process of social and economic change caused by the removal or reduction of industrial capacity or activity in a country or region, especially of heavy industry or manufacturing industry.
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 movement in North and South America. Its current president is James Gregory, professor of history at University of Washington.
The Youngstown–Warren, OH Metropolitan Statistical Area, typically known as the Mahoning Valley, is a metropolitan area in Northeast Ohio with Youngstown, Ohio, at its center. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the metropolitan statistical area (MSA) includes Mahoning and Trumbull counties. As of the 2020 census, the region had a population of 430,591, making it the 125th-largest metro area in the country.
The economy of Youngstown, Ohio, United States, flourished in the 19th and early 20th centuries, with steel production reaching all-time highs at that time. The steel boom led to an influx of immigrants to the area looking for work, as well as construction of skyscrapers in the area. The city's population peaked at 170,002 in 1930, just at the onset of the Great Depression. World War II also brought a great demand for steel. After World War II, demand for steel dropped off dramatically, and industrial base of Youngstown began to see a decline.
Gary R. Mar is an American philosopher and logician specializing in logic, the philosophy of logic, the philosophy of mathematics, analytic philosophy, philosophy of language and linguistics, philosophy of science, computational philosophy, the philosophy of religion, and Asian American philosophy. Professor Mar is a member of the Philosophy Department at Stony Brook University. Gary Mar was the last student to have a Ph.D. directed by Alonzo Church. He is co-author with Donald Kalish and Richard Montague of the second edition of Logic: Techniques of Formal Reasoning.
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 common definitions of "working class" in use in the United States limit its membership to workers who hold blue-collar and pink-collar jobs, whose income is insufficiently high to place them in the middle class, or both. However, socialists define "working class" to include all workers who fall into this category; thus, this definition can include almost all of the working population of industrialized economies.
Acadiensis: Journal of the History of the Atlantic Region is a semi-annual peer-reviewed academic journal covering the history of Atlantic Canada. The current editors-in-chief are Erin Morton and Peter Twohig. It is published by the Department of History at the University of New Brunswick, with articles in either English or French. The name Acadiensis originated with an earlier periodical with the same name, a general interest quarterly magazine for the Maritime provinces, with an emphasis on local history. It was published in Saint John, New Brunswick by David Russell Jack from 1901 to 1908 but failed due to insufficient financial support.
E. Ann Kaplan is an American professor, author, and director. She currently teaches English at the Stony Brook State University of New York, and is the founder and director of The Humanities Institute at Stony Brook University. She coined the term "“Future-Tense Trauma Cinema” for a select group of films, a sub-set of the Science Fiction film, that focus on human and natural causes of complete social collapse instead of, as in standard Sci-Fi, displacing cultural anxieties into allegories of aliens invading planet Earth from elsewhere."" She is also one of the precursors of the Madonna studies.
↑ Fazio, Michele; Launius, Christie; Strangleman, Tim (2021). Routledge international handbook of working-class studies. Routledge international handbooks. Abingdon New York, NY: Routledge. ISBN978-1-138-70982-9.
↑ Cohen, Victor. “The Origins of Working-Class Studies: An Interview with Sherry Linkon and John Russo.” The Minnesota Review: A Journal of Committed Writing, nos. 63-64, 2005, pp 61-80.
↑ Sharlet, Jeff. “Seeking Solidarity in the Culture of the Working Class.” Chronicle of Higher Education, vol. 45, no. 46, July 23, 1999, pp 19-20.
↑ “History of the CWCS.”Center for Working-Class Studies. Youngstown State University. Accessed 5 October 2017.
↑ “Overview”Center for Study of Working Class Life. Stony Brook University. Accessed 5 October 2017.
↑ “History”WCSA: The Working-Class Studies Association. Accessed 5 October 2017.
↑ Linkon, Sherry and John Russo. “The Directors’ Report” Working-Class Notes, vol. 7 no. 2, Spring 2004.
↑ Russo, John and Sherry Linkon. “The Directors’ Report. Working-Class Notes, vol. 8 no. 1, Fall 2004.
↑ “Working-Class Studies Association Moves Ahead.” Working-Class Notes, vol. 9 no. 1, Fall 2005.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
