{"title":"‘They Died from Misadventure and Accident’: Learning from our Missing Ancestral Failures","authors":"Bob Zecker","doi":"10.13001/jwcs.v8i1.8049","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13001/jwcs.v8i1.8049","url":null,"abstract":"White ethnics have fashioned a valorizing narrative of hard-working ancestors playing by the rules and ‘making it.’ This narrative distinguishes between ‘us’ and parasitic ‘them’ (today’s marginalized non-white migrants) in a highly selective fashion. What if we interrogate the universality of the Ellis Island saga? Recovering stories of forgotten people, immigrant ‘failures,’ by applying Carlo Ginzburg’s microhistory approach, reveals many victims in early 1900s America. This paper interrogates these gaps in my maternal grandpa’s family, the Albaneses of Newark. My grandpa had an older sister (born in Italy) only everyone swears there was no Maria, even though there she is in the 1910 census, 19-year-old lamp-factory worker. Then I discovered in November 1910, there was a horrible Aetna Lamp Factory fire, two blocks from their home. This fire resulted in 27 deaths, three months before the better-known Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. Was this why Maria disappeared? Another sister fled an abusive husband, only to be threatened with prosecution under the Mann Act for crossing state lines for ‘immoral purposes.’ Then there was brother Ben, riding freight cars for years before ending up in an L.A. flophouse. Other invisible immigrants appear in brief newspaper notices, as of a 19-year-old striker shot in the back by Pinkertons, or runaway men whose photos called out from the ‘gallery of missing husbands.’ Revealing industrial-age microhistories of loss and trauma can (potentially) resurrect empathy toward today’s migrants or remind us of the hefty blood price capitalism exacted from workers, in 1910 no less than 2023. ","PeriodicalId":258091,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Working-Class Studies","volume":"25 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122590725","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Invisible Laborers: A storied love letter to other working-class mothers in academia","authors":"Miranda Mosier-Puentes","doi":"10.13001/jwcs.v8i1.8053","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13001/jwcs.v8i1.8053","url":null,"abstract":"This paper began from my own desire to see the words of other working-class mothers in academia, to find the proof of our existence. I use autoethnography, or scholarly personal narrative, to nest my own stories of being a working-class mother within earlier scholars’ (Leeb, 2004) observations of the particular ways classism targets working-class women in academia. I also draw from Tiffe’s (2014) observations of the strengths of working-class people, in our abilities to disrupt the neoliberal university’s relationships to time, care, and bodies, and consider how working-class mothers in academia enact these disruptions through our presence.","PeriodicalId":258091,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Working-Class Studies","volume":"111 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134326973","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Demolition Derby, Working-Class Identity, and Capitalist Geographies","authors":"B. Williams","doi":"10.13001/jwcs.v8i1.8039","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13001/jwcs.v8i1.8039","url":null,"abstract":"In order to understand the formations of identities within a working-class population, this paper draws on ethnographic field research with participants and fans of demolition derby competitions in two regions of Arkansas. It attempts what Arjun Appadurai calls a ‘genealogical’ reading to discover within semiotic evidence foreclosures of identity that challenge the power of capitalist fixation and movement of value within and through these regions. The paper uses the term ‘material integrity’ to describe how participants and fans of demolition derby understand the economic dynamics in which they participate. In Northwest Arkansas, a region characterized by the fixation of capital, class is ‘read down’ by nominating perceived lower classes, but in White County, Arkansas, a region with little fixed capital, class is ‘read up.’ As a ground-up spectacle and performance, demolition derby reveals the value of material integrity as an integral aspect of a working-class identity and provides some evidence of what Don Mitchell calls ‘working-class geographies’ and Ben Rogaly’s ‘non-elite cosmopolitanism.’","PeriodicalId":258091,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Working-Class Studies","volume":"356 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124500608","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Stockman, F. (2021) American Made: What Happens to People When Work Disappears. Random House.","authors":"Joseph J. Varga","doi":"10.13001/jwcs.v7i2.7629","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13001/jwcs.v7i2.7629","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":258091,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Working-Class Studies","volume":"28 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116693333","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Giunta, E. and Trasciatti, M., eds. (2022) Talking to the Girls: Intimate and Political Essays on the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. New Village Press.","authors":"Janet Zandy","doi":"10.13001/jwcs.v7i2.7617","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13001/jwcs.v7i2.7617","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":258091,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Working-Class Studies","volume":"225 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114470075","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘Mamas If Your Daughters Grow Up to Be Cowboys, So What?’: Women Refiguring Rurality and Class in Country Music","authors":"Lillian Nagengast","doi":"10.13001/jwcs.v7i2.7601","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13001/jwcs.v7i2.7601","url":null,"abstract":"Drawing on the burgeoning fields of rural studies and working-class studies, this essay examines contemporary country music by female artists. Namely, it considers rurality and class in the music of artists Miranda Lambert, Kacey Musgraves, and Mickey Guyton. While country music scholars have long attended to how rurality and class function in country music by men, country music scholarship has largely disregarded these concepts in the music of female country artists. Whereas male country artists typically reference rurality and the working-class as a means of identification, Lambert, Musgraves, and Guyton reference these social constructs to interrogate, destabilize, and refigure. In crafting multilayered responses to contemporary dialogues on rurality and the working-class, these women not only call attention to country music’s premises, but they also produce variations of rurality and class.","PeriodicalId":258091,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Working-Class Studies","volume":"221 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130261290","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Chibber, V. (2022). Class Matrix: Social Theory after the Cultural Turn. Harvard University Press.","authors":"Michael Beyea Reagan","doi":"10.13001/jwcs.v7i2.7619","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13001/jwcs.v7i2.7619","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":258091,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Working-Class Studies","volume":"256 ","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"120979068","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Wilkinson, C. (2021). Perfect Black. University Press of Kentucky.","authors":"Michelle B. Gaffey","doi":"10.13001/jwcs.v7i2.7615","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13001/jwcs.v7i2.7615","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":258091,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Working-Class Studies","volume":"111 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126907176","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘The End of Lonely Street’ and ‘Songsters of the Troubled Heart’","authors":"Ian C. Smith","doi":"10.13001/jwcs.v7i2.7607","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13001/jwcs.v7i2.7607","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":258091,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Working-Class Studies","volume":"5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114919391","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Michele Fazio, Aimee Zoeller, Mark F. Fernandez, Court Carney, G. Stadler
{"title":"Taking the Great Leap Forwards: Teaching Woody Guthrie in the College Classroom","authors":"Michele Fazio, Aimee Zoeller, Mark F. Fernandez, Court Carney, G. Stadler","doi":"10.13001/jwcs.v7i2.7603","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13001/jwcs.v7i2.7603","url":null,"abstract":"This essay explores the work of Woody Guthrie and other folk artists who have followed in his tradition of documenting working-class people’s experiences in song. In addition to outlining the creation of the Teaching Woody Guthrie Faculty Learning Collective–a group of teacher-scholars, activists, and musicians who are dedicated to collaborating across disciplines to illustrate Woody Guthrie’s relevance in today’s precarious world–the essay includes suggested curriculum to teach folk music and political activism in the college classroom. \u0000 ","PeriodicalId":258091,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Working-Class Studies","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122245405","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}