Past Conferences
How Class Works - 2004 Conference (June 10-12, 2004)
SCHEDULE

Thursday, June 10, 2004
7:30 P.M - opening plenary session
0.0 The Working Class with State Power in a Neo-liberal World
(co-sponsored by the Office of the Provost and the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center)
Neil Coleman – Head, Parliamentary Office, Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU)
Rafael Freire – National Executive Council, Director of International Affairs, Brazilian Workers’ Central Union (CUT)

Friday, June 11
9:00 – 10:30 a.m. plenary:
Class in a Global Economy
Leslie Sklair – London School of Economics, UK
Thea Lee – AFL-CIO
Walden Bello – Focus on the Global South, Bangkok

10: 50 – 12:20
Simultaneous sessions – group 1

2:00 – 3:30 p.m. plenary:
2.0 The Working Class and Conservative Politics
(co-sponsored by New Labor Forum)
Jefferson Cowie – Cornell University
Adolph Reed – New School University
Heather Boushey – Center for Economic Policy and Research, Washington DC

3:50 – 5:20 p.m.
Simultaneous sessions – group 2

7:30 p.m. Banquet
Congressman David Bonior – American Rights at Work

Saturday, June 12
9:00 – 10:30 a.m. plenary:
3.0 The Mosaic of Class, Race, and Gender
Joan Williams – American University
Jack O’Dell – Veteran peace, labor, and civil rights organizer

10:50 – 12:20
Simultaneous sessions – group 3

2:00 – 3:30 p.m. plenary:
4.0 Class and War
Gene Bruskin – AFL-CIO and US Labor Against the War
Chris Brandt – Poets for Peace
Charley Richardson - Military Families Speak Out
Angelo Verga – Poets for Peace
Medea Benjamin – Global Exchange

3:50 – 5:20 p.m.
Simultaneous sessions – group 4

5:30 – 6:15 p.m. - conference evaluation and adjournment

SIMULTANEOUS SESSIONS – Group 1, Friday 10:50 – 12:20

1.1 Class and Culture

David Greene – psychology, Ramapo College, New Jersey
“Defining working-class as culture: have you eaten the cheese?”
Vivyan Adair – women’s studies, Hamilton College
“The missing story of ourselves: poverty class in academe”
Janet Zandy – English, Rochester Institute of Technology
“To render a working-class life”
Brenda Kirby – psychology, LeMoyne College, Syracuse, NY
“Defining and using class and class labels in empirical research”

1.2 Issues in Inequality

Tina Wagle – graduate studies, Empire State College, Buffalo
“The concept of relative wealth yields social reproduction for urban Puerto Ricans”
Maynard Seider – Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts
Elizabeth Aries – Amherst College
“Social class, schooling, and social reproduction in the U.S.: a review of the research”
Pellegrino Manfra, Queens Community College CUNY
“Globalization and income inequality in the United States”
Teal Rothschild, Anthropology/Sociology., Roger Williams Univ., Providence RI
“Teaching class and inequality: how students ‘get’ privilege and inequality”

1.3 Teaching Class through Literature

Kathy McDonald – English, Borough of Manhattan Community College/CUNY
“Teaching working class literature in an age of multiculturalism”
Cherie Rankin – English grad. Illinois State Univ.
“Notes from a novice pedagogue: proletarian literature in the contemporary classroom”
Joseph Entin – English, Brooklyn College CUNY
“Reflections on teaching, class, and American modernism”
Anastasia Nikopoulou – English, University of Cyprus, Nicosia
“Class works through common bonds: melodrama as a motley genre”

1.4 Labor and Globalization

Celeste Escobar – undergraduate, Hunter College CUNY
“The domestic workers issue in a globalized era”
Sam Ashman – research student, political science, University of Birmingham, UK
“Class, capital, and uneven development”

1.5 Families, Communities, and the Reproduction of Class

Karen Hansen – Sociology, Brandeis University
“On luck and money: perception of privilege across class”
Annette Lareau – Sociology, Temple University
Elliot Weininger – Sociology, SUNY Brockport
“Class, childrearing, and culture”
Nicholas W. Townsend – Anthropology, Brown University
“Home ownership: individual effort, good communities, and the denial of class”
Anita Ilta Garey – Family Studies, U Conn
“Reproducing class divisions in ‘universal’ programs for families”

1.6 Organizing Across the Workplace and the Community

Chris Rhomberg – Sociology, Yale
Louise Simmons – School of Social Work, U Conn
“Community-labor coalition building in a multi-racial community: the case of New Haven”
David Reynolds – Labor Studies Center, Wayne State University, Detroit
“Partnering for change: lessons from the new wave of labor-community coalitions”
Mandi Isaacs-Jackson – American Studies grad., Yale
“New Haven’s Trade Union Plaza: ‘by working people for working people’”
Janice Fine – Urban Studies and Planning, MIT, and Economic Policy Institute
“Contemporary immigrant worker centers in the U.S. and the prospects for movement building at the nexus of class and ethnicity”

1.7 The Vernacular of Class in Working Class Studies – a roundtable

Michael Zweig – Center for Study of Working Class Life, SUNY Stony Brook
Jack Metzgar – Humanities, Roosevelt University, Chicago
Sherry Linkon - Center for Working Class Studies, Youngstown State University
Dorian Warren - American Studies grad, Yale

1.8 Masculinity and Class

Donna Buehler – Employee Assistance Program, SUNY Stony Brook
“Domestic violence at work”
Gary Jones – History, Muhlenberg College
“’Get your man’: the Pennsylvania Department of State Police, labor, violence, and masculinity during Progressive Era Pennsylvania, 1890-1917“
Tyson Smith – Sociology grad, SUNY Stony Brook
“Working-class masculinity and professional wrestlers on Long Island”

1.9 Women and Class: Exploring Self, Identities, Power, and Resistance in Women’s Narratives

Sandra J. Jones – Women’s Studies Research Center, Brandeis
“’Neither one place nor the other entirely’: positioning oneself on the borders”
Michele Callahan Wolfson – Education, Wheelock College
“I didn’t know there was a difference: an Irish immigrant woman’s narratives of the undercurrents of class experience”
Stacy M. Pirog – Brandeis ‘03
“’I work because I choose to’: creating a self-satisfying working-class life”
Barbara Jensen – psychology, Metropolitan State University, Minneapolis
“Resilience, resistance, and working-class pride”

SIMULTANEOUS SESSIONS – Group 2, Friday 3:50 – 5:20

2.1 Women in the Global Economy

Piya Pangsapa – Women’s Studies, SUNY Buffalo
“Factory women and their working class identities”
Robert Cherry – economics, Brooklyn College, CUNY
“Nickel and dime jobs: can they benefit vulnerable women?”

2.2 Crossing Class Boundaries

Brenda Bretz – associate provost, Dickinson College, Carlisle, Penna.
“Working-class students at a private, selective liberal arts college: crossing class boundaries and living in two worlds”
Mark Edward Braun – social sciences, SUNY Cobleskill
“Working-class college students: interviews with first generation students at a small state college in upstate New York”
Sandra J. Jones – Women’s Studies Research Center, Brandeis University
Betsy Leondar-Wright – United for a Fair Economy
“Linking personal stories to cross-class collaboration”
Sarah Battaglia – graduate program coordinator, Hispanic Languages and Literature, SUNY Stony Brook
“From Brooklyn to the ‘burbs: traversing the class divide”
Rachel Sherman – sociology, Yale
“Class acts: normalizing unequal entitlement in luxury hotels”

2.3 Class and Women’s Studies

Christie Launius – Women’s Studies, Ohio University
“Class in the Women’s Studies classroom”
Gail Verdi – education, College of New Rochelle (New York)
“Literacy development and the acquisition of social practices in the lives of four working-class women academics”

2.4 Representations of Class

Adrienne Burk – CWIL, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, BC
“Positioning the past”
Christopher Martin – Communication Studies, University of Northern Iowa
“How labor gets framed: news by the corporate media”
Stephanie Lawler – Sociology and Social Policy, University of Durham, UK
“Maintaining middle-class boundaries: representation as class war”
Pepi Leistyna – Applied Linguistics, Umass Boston
“Laughing matters: entertainment television’s mockery of the working class”

2.5 The Relationship of Working Class Studies and Labor Studies – a roundtable

Michael Zweig – Center for Study of Working Class Life, SUNY Stony Brook
John Russo – Center for Working Class Studies, Youngstown State University
Jamie Daniel – University of Illinois, Chicago and AFT
Joe Wilson – Graduate Center for Worker Education, Brooklyn College, CUNY

2.6 Teaching Class in Context

Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz – Queens College Worker Education Extension Center
Emily Schnee – Queens College Worker Education Extension Center
“Is Worker Education Class Education? Teaching Class in Context”
Tom Nesbit - Continuing Education, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver
“Social Class and Adult Education”

2.7 Reflections on Ralph Miliband’s Contribution to State Theory

Paul Wetherly – Politics, Leeds Metropolitan University, UK
“Class power and state power: Miliband’s ‘instrumental’ conception of the state”
Clyde Barrow – Policy Studies, Umass Dartmouth
“Reconsidering Miliband and state theory: a defense of instrumentalism”
Michael Newman – Politics, London Metropolitan University, UK
“Miliband and Lasky on class, democracy, and the state”

2.8 Class, Health, and Health Care

Martha Livingston - Health and Society, College at Old Westbury, SUNY
Title TBA
Matt Anderson - Family and Social Medicine, Bronx, NY
“Doctors discover class: the origins of 19th century social medicine”
Rachel Kreier – Economics grad., SUNY Stony Brook
“Information and quality sorting by patient ability to pay in the New York State market for heart surgeons”

2.9 Strikes: Learning Class Consciousness in Struggle

William Mello – Labor Studies, University of Indiana, Kokomo
“Strikes and the politics of reform on the Port of New York: 1945-1960”
Ruth Needleman – Labor Studies, University of Indiana, Northwest
“Race and class in the 1919 steel strike”
Stan Ketchum – Labor Studies student, University of Indiana, Northwest
“Why the AFL-CIO doesn’t strike for universal health care”
Ed Hiatt – Labor Studies student, University of Indiana, Northwest
“Spiraling cost of living and the 1919 steel strike”

2.10 Jack O’Dell and the Success of Principled Non-sectarianism

Karen Ferguson – History, Simon Fraser University (SFU), Vancouver BC
John Munro – history grad, UC Santa Barbara
“Continuities in the freedom movement: Jack O’Dell in the early Cold War”
Ian Rocksborough-Smith – history grad, SFU
“Jack O’Dell’s working class affinities”
Charles Demers – writer/journalist, Vancouver, BC
“Armed with a legacy: lessons learned from Jack O’Dell”

2.11 Film - Stolen Childhood
Robin Romano – filmmaker

SIMULTANEOUS SESSIONS – Group 3, Saturday 10:50 – 12:20

3.1 Class, Law, and Lawyers

Olena Kobzar – undergraduate political science, York Univ., and grad. Carleton Univ.
“Rethinking law and class in North America”
Robert Sauté – Sociology grad, CUNY Graduate Center
“Unionization, professionalism, and zealous advocacy: the New York Legal Aid Society in the 1960s”
Others TBA

3.2 Race and Class in Communities

Jonathan Scott – English, Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY
“A crack in the monolith: Eminem’s missed opportunity”
Maggie Ussery – grad, Temple University; anthropology and sociology, Ursinus College
“Refusing to be humbled: the social and economic adaptations of black workers in Philadelphia”
Sean I. Ahern – New York City
“Race and reform: breaking ranks with the Shanker legacy”
Jay Arena – Sociology grad., Tulane
“Marxism meets urban regime theory: a model for understanding racist neoliberalism and class conflict within a majority black city”

3.3 Class Structures in Health Care

Robb Burlage – Five Borough Institute, NYC
“Medical-finance complexes and the structure of health care institutions”
Robert Padgug – NYC Health and Hospitals Corporation
“Hospitals, the uninsured, and the failure of cross-subsidization”
Dr. Elena Padilla – Scholar-in-Residence, St. Barnabas Hospital, the Bronx
Title TBA

3.4 Unseenamerica: Art, Class, and Voice – a roundtable

Nathalis Guy Wamba – Labor Education, Queens College CUNY
Carolyn Curran – organizational development consultant
Esther Cohen – Bread and Roses, 1199/SEIU

3.5 Issues in Class Dynamics in Capitalism

John Manley – Political Science, Stanford University (emeritus)
“’Who can we shoot?: the unexceptional American welfare state”
Richard Wolff – Economics, Umass Amherst
Steven Resnick – Economics, Umass Amherst
“Class conflict and the capitalist state”
Ted Allen – Brooklyn, NY
“Base and superstructure and the socialist perspective”
Ian Roberts – Sociology, University of Durham, UK
“Social capital and the working class”

3.6 Talking Class in the Labor Media - a roundtable

J.J. Johnson – 1199 News
Marsha Niemeijer – Labor Notes
Martin Fishgold – International Labor Communications Association
Frank Emspak – Workers Independent News Service


3.7 Sexual Rights and Representation – a roundtable discussion
Johanna Jones – Union Semester Program, Queens College, CUNY
Amber Hollibaugh – Senior Action in a Gay Environment, and Queers for Economic Justice
Richard Kim – The Nation Institute, and Queers for Economic Justice
Dean Spade – Sylvia Rivera Law Project
Carmen Vazquez – Empire State Pride Agenda

3.8 Beneath the Glass Ceiling: Does Race Keep Classes Divided?

Yvonne Scrugges-Leftwich – National Labor College, George Meany Center for Labor Studies
four National Labor College students
papers from Comparative Research Methods and Senior Seminar – NLC class of 2003

3.9 Class Culture and Social Change – a roundtable
Betsy Leondar-Wright – United for a Fair Economy
Barbara Jensen – psychology, Metropolitan State University, Minneapolis
Jack Metzgar – humanities, Roosevelt University
Fred Rose – Pioneer Valley Project, Springfield, Mass.

3.10 Using Film to Teach about Class

Bill Barry – Labor Studies, Community College of Baltimore County
Tom Zaniello – English, Northern Kentucky University
Renny Christopher – English, California State University, Channel Islands

SIMULTANEOUS SESSIONS – Group 4, Saturday 3:50 – 5:20

4.1 Class Formation and Politics in U.S. History

Gary Hicks – South Boston, Mass.
“Color lines continued: DuBois and the Freedman’s Bureau, Reconstruction, and questions concerning class formation”
Penny Lewis –Sociology grad., CUNY Graduate Center
“Class politics in the Vietnam anti-war movement”
Jonathan Martin – Sociology, Framingham State College, Mass.
“From working-class fatalism to activism”

4.2 Working Class Politics in the U.S. Today

Stuart Eimer – sociology, Widener College
“From unions to class: the promise and limits of central labor councils”
Nari Rhee – geography grad student, UC Berkeley
“Local policy reforms and labor’s electoral clout: toward a working class politics in Silicon Valley?”
Dennis Soron – post-doc at Neoliberal Globalism and its Challengers Project, University of Alberta
“Progressive environmentalism and the problem of working class consumerism”
Roland Zullo – labor studies, University of Michigan
“Strategizing labor political outreach: air war or ground war?”

4.3 Class in Communities

Paul Watt – urban studies, Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College, UK
“Class identity among working class public housing tenants in London”
Chris Haylett – geography, University of Manchester, UK
“Regenerating a working class ‘sense of place’”
Christopher Niedt – geography grad, UC Berkeley
“’Gentrification in the best sense of the word’: housing, regionalism, and redevelopment in southeastern Baltimore County”
Margot Olavarria – political science grad (PhD 2003), New School
“Builders of the city” pobladores and the territorialization of class identity in Chile”

4.4 Class and Community in the Global South

Frederico de Castro Neves – History, Federal University of Ceara, Rio de Janeiro
“The metropolis of hunger: work and conflict in Ceara, Brazil”
Peter Ranis – Political Science, York College and CUNY Graduate Center
“The impact of popular rebellion on labor and social movements in Argentina”
Franco Barchiesi – Politics, University of Bologna, Italy
“Classes, multitudes, and the politics of community movements in post-apartheid South Africa”
Ceren Özselçuk – economics grad., Umass Amherst
“Reclaiming the public interest: politics of class and community within the Turkish anti- privatization movement”

4.5 Class, Communication, and Community

Susan Leggett – Communications, Muhlenberg College, Allentown PA
“No connections? Documenting class privilege”
Lee Artz – Communications, Purdue Univ. Calumet
“Freire and Gramsci in communication studies”
Lora Taub-Pervizpour – Communications, Muhlenberg College
“When students see themselves as agents of social change”
DeeDee Halleck – Communications, UC San Diego (emerita)
“Dangerous formats: the impossible possibilities of community in the classroom”

4.6 Living Class through Race and Gender: Using Biography and Personal Experience to Deepen Understanding

Ruth Needleman – Labor Studies, Indiana University Northwest
Gerrie Casey – Anthropology, John Jay College, CUNY
Jojo Geronimo – Education Department, SEIU

4.7 Our Bodies/Our Selves? Lower-Class Status, Lower-Class Bodies

Michelle Tokarczyk – English, Goucher College
“What eating disorders do you mean? A class analysis of the feminist preoccupation with anorexia and bulimia”
Vivyan Adair – Women’s Studies, Hamilton College
“Public bodies: the construction and maintenance of poor women’s bodies in U.S. jurisprudence and public theory”
Betty Smith Franklin – Bloomingdale School, Statesboro, Georgia
“Working life and overworked bodies”

4.8 Adjunct Issues as Issues of Social Class in the University – a roundtable

Shirley Frank – English adjunct, York College and NYC College of Technology, CUNY
Kimberly Jones – Social Sciences adjunct, York College, CUNY
Vincent Tirelli – Political Science grad., CUNY Graduate Center, and PSC (AFT)
Dominic Wetzel – Sociology grad., CUNY Grad Center and Writing Fellow, John Jay College, CUNY

4.9 Film – Every Mother’s Son
Tami Gold - filmmaker