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A Class of Its Own: Re-Envisioning American Labor Fiction
Editor: Laura Hapke and Lisa A. Kirby
Date Of Publication: Dec 2008
Isbn13: 978-1-4438-0105-8
Isbn: 1-4438-0105-4
A Class of Its Own positions important and rediscovered American social protest authors within both a scholarly and student-centered context. The volume draws on the expertise and pedagogy of established and younger scholars who move gracefully from theories of what makes a text “working class” to how studies of class empower college teachers and courses. Among the authors discussed in the volume’s essays and prominent in the book’s syllabi section are Zora Neale Hurston, Stephen Crane, Agnes Smedley, and Ana Castillo.

Laura Hapke teaches at New York City College of Technology of the City University of New York. She has published widely in American/labor/cultural studies. Her most recent book is Labor's Canvas: American Working-Class History and the WPA Art of the 1930s.

Lisa A. Kirby is an Assistant Professor of English at North Carolina Wesleyan College. Her areas of specialization include working-class literature, women’s studies, and 20th-century American literature. Her work has appeared recently in Philip Roth Studies, Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, and Academic Exchange Quarterly.

As the interdisciplinary field of Working-Class Studies grows, books like A Class of Its Own are shaping a new way of thinking about academic work. By linking the scholarly study of working-class literature with strategies for teaching the same texts, this book demonstrates the commitment of Working-Class Studies scholars to make their research not merely smart and insightful but also useful. A Class of Its Own is scholarship that makes a difference.

Dr. Sherry Linkon, Professor of English and American Studies and Co-Director of the Center for Working-Class Studies at Youngstown State University

Hapke's approach is ... novel and engaging for anyone interested in the many fields that 'Labor's Canvas' encompasses; cultural studies, labor history, art criticism and economic history. Political Biography is also a part of Hapke's palette in that an underlying narrative thread in Labor's Canvas is the political affiliation, and thus implicit sympathy with the labor subject matter, of each of the more than thirty artists under study in the book.

Cameron M. Weber, New School for Social Research, EH.NET

Price Uk Gbp: 39.99
Price Us Usd: 59.99

Sample pdf (including Table of Contents)

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