Making Social Class Visible
A Conference in the Humanities and Social Sciences
October 1-2, 1999
Metropolitan State University
700 East 7th Street
St. Paul, Minnesota
This conference explores ways that public life in the U.S. and the private lives of individuals are shaped by scarcely acknowledged social class issues. Individual papers explore how class-based cultures affect individual lives, or consider the class dimensions of various "texts." Plenary sessions by invited speakers consider how attention to social class issues can energize teaching and research in the humanities or social sciences.
Invited Speakers
Lillian B. Rubin, author of Worlds of Pain: Life in a Working Class
Family, presents a workshop titled "Seeing Class in the Family: Uncovering Class Cultures in Everyday Life."
Renny Christopher, author of Carpenter's Daughter: A Working-Class Woman in Higher Education, presents a workshop titled "'Pay No Attention to that Bias Behind the Curtain': (Not) Teaching Class in the Humanities."
Carolyn Chute, author of The Beans of Egypt, Maine; Letourneau's Used Auto Parts; and Merry Men reads from fiction in progress.
Topics of Concurrent Sessions:
* Characterizing Class * Classed Leisure
* Working Class Students * Creating Class Privilege
* Narratives of Class Conflict * Classed Spaces
* Class in Women's Lives * Caught in the Machine of Class
Topics of Individual Presentations:
* Surrogate mothers * working-class writing * cross-country bus rides
* class and student writing * environmentalists vs. corporations
* working-class bodies * "socialization" of working-class students
* 19th century mystery novels * class and intercultural communication
* Frederick Douglass * adjunct faculty * restaurant menus 1880-1930
* Willa Cather * post-traumatic stress and working-class lives * Henry Roth
* working-class people vs. middle-class institutions * Dennis Rodman
* class, gender, and divorce 1895-1930 * adult women in college
* promoting baseball in 1912 *sex and social class in literature * and more
Conference time and location:
Conference activities are scheduled from noon Friday, October 1, through about 7 pm Saturday, October 2. The conference will be held on the campus of Metropolitan State University overlooking downtown St. Paul.
For additional information and registration forms email:
bob.gremore@metrostate.edu or phone (651) 772-7754
or send your name and postal address to:
Bob Gremore
Department of Literature and Language
Metropolitan State University
700 East 7th Street
St. Paul, MN 55106
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