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Working-Class Women in the Academy: Laborers in the Knowledge Factory
The voices of 20 women from working-class backgrounds are heard in this collection of essays. Each of the women has lived through the process of academic socialisation - as both student and teacher - and each has thought long and deeply about her experiences from an explicitly feminist perspective
344 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1993
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About the author
Michelle M. Tokarczyk
6 books2 followersMichelle M. Tokarczyk is a Professor of English at Goucher College.
(from http://www.goucher.edu/academics/wome...)
(from http://www.goucher.edu/academics/wome...)
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 16, 2011
This was really a mixed bag. I bought it because I loved Lubrano's "Blue collar roots white collar dreams" and I thought this would be the same thing - interviews with working-class women who became academics.
It's not. It's long winded academic-style essays about being black/women/lesbians from working class families. The starting "chapters" are written in such strong academic prose that I threw the book down almost immediately upon opening.
It sat on my shelf for years and years. When I finally made it through the terrible opening chapters, I realized there was some good to be found. Some chapters are self-narratives with lots to identify with. Some chapters are actually social science reports on working-class academics. As a social scientist, I did enjoy those ones. Some described life at as a new college student, joining the faculty, teaching students they could identify with, holding the balance of being a PhD student and a course instructor at the same time. I could relate to a lot of it and it validated my experiences, and was why I purchased the book in the first place.
But the majority of chapters are from an English Department or Literature perspective. Humanities professors write so differently than psychology professors that I really found the style to off putting. Then there were some really theoretically heavy chapters that I honestly skimmed. I wasn't interested in learning about the Marxist theory of blah.
I was just rounding the homestretch, with 50 pages left, when I hit the chapter on Language. Up until thing, I was planning to sell or donate the book when I was finished. The Language chapter made a difference. It spoke of how working-class students have such a harder time achieving "academic writing style" and how professors judge this as a problem with motivation or potential. They don't realize that middle class students speak in academic style and have since they were 5 and therefore have a huge headstart.
I thought of my struggles as an undergrad. I thought of what I hoped to do with my writing seminar this upcoming semester. I thought of what I HADN'T done to respond to students who were probably in these shoes. I decided I need to keep this book, if only to pull out this chapter as a beacon of light for students who come to me with frustration over university writing demands.
This isn't a book you can just sit down and read. It's an academic book. It would make a great textbook. If you were interested in feminist working-class literature, which I'm not.
It's not. It's long winded academic-style essays about being black/women/lesbians from working class families. The starting "chapters" are written in such strong academic prose that I threw the book down almost immediately upon opening.
It sat on my shelf for years and years. When I finally made it through the terrible opening chapters, I realized there was some good to be found. Some chapters are self-narratives with lots to identify with. Some chapters are actually social science reports on working-class academics. As a social scientist, I did enjoy those ones. Some described life at as a new college student, joining the faculty, teaching students they could identify with, holding the balance of being a PhD student and a course instructor at the same time. I could relate to a lot of it and it validated my experiences, and was why I purchased the book in the first place.
But the majority of chapters are from an English Department or Literature perspective. Humanities professors write so differently than psychology professors that I really found the style to off putting. Then there were some really theoretically heavy chapters that I honestly skimmed. I wasn't interested in learning about the Marxist theory of blah.
I was just rounding the homestretch, with 50 pages left, when I hit the chapter on Language. Up until thing, I was planning to sell or donate the book when I was finished. The Language chapter made a difference. It spoke of how working-class students have such a harder time achieving "academic writing style" and how professors judge this as a problem with motivation or potential. They don't realize that middle class students speak in academic style and have since they were 5 and therefore have a huge headstart.
I thought of my struggles as an undergrad. I thought of what I hoped to do with my writing seminar this upcoming semester. I thought of what I HADN'T done to respond to students who were probably in these shoes. I decided I need to keep this book, if only to pull out this chapter as a beacon of light for students who come to me with frustration over university writing demands.
This isn't a book you can just sit down and read. It's an academic book. It would make a great textbook. If you were interested in feminist working-class literature, which I'm not.
December 15, 2021
In this unique anthology of essays, twenty women from working-class backgrounds voice their experiences in the academy. Each of the women has lived through the process of academic socialization—as both student and teacher—and each has thought long and deeply about her experience from an explicitly feminist perspective. The essays answer the following questions:
- What are the issues—pedagogical, theoretical, and personal—that affect the professional and private lives of these women?
- How do they resolve tensions between their roles as middle-class professionals and their roots in working-class families?
- How do class and gender intersect in the academy?
They offer this collection of essays not as a tangible answer to the dilemma of class, or of gender and class, or of gender, class, and the academy. They do envision it as a structure for conversation, and they hope the essays stimulate many others outside their textual borders.
My three favorite essays from this collection are: Bell hooks’ "Keeping close to Home: Class and Education," Cheryl Fish’s "Someone to Watch Over Me: Politics and Paradoxes in Academic Mentoring," and Sharon O’Dair’s "Vestments and Vested Interests: Academia, the Working Class, and Affirmative Action."
Lastly, I’d like to leave here one of the most powerful excerpts from this study, which exceptionally reflect both my experience at the University of Virginia and in academia:
“Elitist or now, campuses are divided by each of the diversities—race, ethnicity, gender, class, age, sexual orientation, handicap—insidiously or overtly replicating the social field and its hierarchies. Campuses also impose their own hegemony on this socially structured marginalization, a pecking order wrought in an early history. Indeed, this should come as no surprise since the ivy-educated, who have been trained in the old power relations, dominate university systems whether private of state operated. This dominance results from the organization of state universities from their inception along traditional stringencies for tenure, tracking, and preferment in a mirror-imaging of the elite schools themselves; therefore, hiring practices favor candidates with particular credentials. How else to lure faculty of “quality” not an institute of higher education than by assuring them that power can and will come their way?”
- What are the issues—pedagogical, theoretical, and personal—that affect the professional and private lives of these women?
- How do they resolve tensions between their roles as middle-class professionals and their roots in working-class families?
- How do class and gender intersect in the academy?
They offer this collection of essays not as a tangible answer to the dilemma of class, or of gender and class, or of gender, class, and the academy. They do envision it as a structure for conversation, and they hope the essays stimulate many others outside their textual borders.
My three favorite essays from this collection are: Bell hooks’ "Keeping close to Home: Class and Education," Cheryl Fish’s "Someone to Watch Over Me: Politics and Paradoxes in Academic Mentoring," and Sharon O’Dair’s "Vestments and Vested Interests: Academia, the Working Class, and Affirmative Action."
Lastly, I’d like to leave here one of the most powerful excerpts from this study, which exceptionally reflect both my experience at the University of Virginia and in academia:
“Elitist or now, campuses are divided by each of the diversities—race, ethnicity, gender, class, age, sexual orientation, handicap—insidiously or overtly replicating the social field and its hierarchies. Campuses also impose their own hegemony on this socially structured marginalization, a pecking order wrought in an early history. Indeed, this should come as no surprise since the ivy-educated, who have been trained in the old power relations, dominate university systems whether private of state operated. This dominance results from the organization of state universities from their inception along traditional stringencies for tenure, tracking, and preferment in a mirror-imaging of the elite schools themselves; therefore, hiring practices favor candidates with particular credentials. How else to lure faculty of “quality” not an institute of higher education than by assuring them that power can and will come their way?”
December 16, 2008
I started this a while ago, and it's proving to be a good read. There is a lot in here that I relate to, and I think it would have been really useful to have read this at the beginning of my college career instead of 6 years later. This volume is basically individual narratives, so I think a good companion volume would help, one that tied all the theory and application together. (I must really mean that, because the last time I asked the universe to give me more academic theoretical writing was like, never.)
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews