Full Description
As the recent pandemic illustrated, many folks are only one or two paychecks away from bankruptcy. The economic disparities made starkly clear in the wake of shutdowns have brought home the need for thinking critically about class in ways that many U.S. citizens have traditionally resisted. This collection of memoirs and cultural analyses by established and newer scholars from a variety of disciplines seeks to reintroduce class in sophisticated, yet accessible, ways so that students may increase their critical literacy and consider the power of rhetoric to fight for equitable distribution of income and class power.
Contributors are: : Sarah Attfield, Jennifer Beech, Phil Bratta, Ryan Cooper Carl, Christina V. Cedillo, José M. Cortez, William DeGenaro, David Engen, Kelli R. Gill, Abby Graves, Matthew Wayne Guy, Katherine Highfill, Nancy Mack, Heather Palmer, Irvin Peckham, Valerie Murrenus Pilmaier, Philip L. Simpson, William Thelin and Edward J. Whitelock.
Contents
List of Figures and Tables
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: Defining and Defying Common (Mis)Understandings of the Working Class
Jennifer Beech and Matthew Wayne Guy
PART 1: Memoirs and Personal Essays
1 Social Class and Sociolects
Irvin Peckham
2 Becoming "Gente Educada": Navigating Academia as a Working-Class, Multiply-Marginalized Student
Christina V. Cedillo
3 Rhetoric: From a Community Yet to Arrive
José Manuel Cortez
4 Five Miles and a World Away: A Memoir
Edward J. Whitelock
5 Feeling Like an Imposter at College
Nancy Mack
6 (Un)Belonging in Liminality: Garage Stories
Phil Bratta
7 Book Smart AND Street Smart
Valerie Murrenus Pilmaier
8 "Remember the Spartans"
William Thelin
9 Honest Work
Katherine Highfill
PART 2: Critical Essays
10 Bodies in the World of Labor: Class, Affect, and Rhetoric in IWW's "What is What in the World of Labor?" Poster
Phil Bratta
11 Mind on Heaven: Working-Class Rhetorics in Serpent-Handling Rituals of Southern Appalachia
Heather Palmer
12 White Bread as a Working-Class Symbol
Kelli R. Gill
13 "Put Some Flowers in the Graveyard": The Gloomy Fate of the Working Class in George A. Romero's Land of the Dead
Philip L. Simpson
14 Working Class on the Small Screen
Sarah Attfield
15 #ActorsWithDayJobs: Geoffrey Owens, Job Shaming, and the Ideology of Work
William DeGenaro
16 (Literal) Self-Exposure: Celebrity "Activism" during Covid-19
Abby Graves
17 Returning to Van Buren Street: A Photographic Essay
David Engen
Index
