Sisters and Brothers, Scholars, Activists, Unionists, Feminists, Students, and Others Who Believe Class Still Exists! The Conference Formerly Known as Youngstown invites you to Come Help Build the Multi-Disciplinary Field of Working Class Studies! Working Class Studies Association Conference June14-17, 2007 Macalester College, St. Paul, Minnesota Theme:  Class Matters:  Working-Class Culture and Counter-Culture ( as always we will accept any proposals related to the study of working class life) Dorm-rooms and Hotel  available Call for papers/proposals deadline:  February 15 (details at end of announcement) For the last twelve years a movement has been growing in higher education, the new field of Working Class Studies.   Like Women's Studies, African American or Latino studies, this field gives people from a variety of academic disciplines and activists a place to discuss issues of class in America and the world.  It includes people from all academic disciplines; unions; grass roots activists, and other non-academic settings.  It also provides a high degree of consciousness about other important social issues and how they interact with class. A few years ago the Working Class Studies Association (WCSA) was founded.  This year is the first year the WCSA is putting on "The Conference Formerly Known as Youngstown".  Long-time local activists Peter Rachleff, labor historian and activist, current WCSA president-elect, and Barbara Jensen, community psychologist, feminist, and working class studies writer and activist, are proud to announce this conference will be in Saint Paul/Minneapolis this June. The Twin Cities are a hotbed of all kinds of social, political, and artistic activity and already has an active working class studies committee. Working Class Studies, as a specific field to be nurtured in colleges and universities, began in Youngstown, Ohio, at the Youngstown State University in 1995. Since that time, people from all over the United States, and the world, have gathered at least yearly, to help build awareness of class and explore the many issues and themes that class creates.  Alternating bi-annual conferences in Youngstown and State University of New York at Stoneybrook, have sustained and nurtured Working Class Studies. Now we invite you to become part of this crucial and growing movement. We are expecting scholars and activists, writers and readers, singers and dancers, artists and art-lovers, and more.   There will be intellectual stimulation, political discussion, cultural performance and appreciation, and, above all, the building of community among all of us who believe that class STILL EXISTS in the United States!  We call out to teachers and students, workers and labor activists, the unemployed and the retired, the angry, the frustrated, and the hopeful.  Bring your energy and passion to the Twin Cities. We are seeking papers, presentations, performances, and posters that represent, analyze, and engage class, particularly working class life, experience, history, and culture.  We have already gotten some marvelous proposals from marvelous people, including Janet Zandy, Renny Christopher, Sherry Linkon, David Roediger, Minkah Makalani, Joe Uehlein, Laura Hapke, Mark Nowak, Jerry Tucker, and Steve Zeltzer, just to name a few.  Poet, playwright, and political activist Amiri Baraka will be taking part.  Twin Cities labor activists from the airlines, hotel workers, janitors, and immigrants' struggles will make presentations and participate.  New films will be screened and live music performed. As always, proposals for all kinds of papers or presentations related to class will be considered, as well as those specifically related to this conference's theme of working class culture. Deadline for proposals is mid-February.  Please throw your hat in the ring.  Let us know if you have questions or concerns.  But, above all, plan to come! While we are digging out from a snowstorm today, we are confident that mid-June will be beautiful in the Twin Cities, in time for the Working Class Studies Association conference.  You may have attended previous conferences in Youngstown, Ohio, or Stony Brook, Long Island, and we promise one that will -- at the least -- be up to those standards.  Especially if you come! Peter Rachleff and Barbara Jensen CALL FOR PAPERS Class Matters:  Working-Class Culture and Counter-Culture Deadline: Febuary 15th Annual Conference of the Working-Class Studies Association Macalester College, St. Paul, Minnesota This conference will explore working-class culture in all its forms - activism, oral history, pop culture, literature, the arts, storytelling, and more.  Working-class culture can be a source of unity as well as division, and it is constructed in the workplace as well as in the realms of "leisure" and popular culture.  At this conference, we hope to explore the various meanings of working class culture: How has working-class culture changed over time?  Is there is a diasporic, transnational, and/or global working-class culture?  How do working-class people use representations, organizations, and everyday life to resist the dominant culture?  How do working-class cultures reflect divisions among working-class people?  What makes working class cultures?  What are the effects on these cultures by the dominant culture in society?  What of relationships between "cultural workers" and their audiences?  What about control over the means of cultural production (publishers, music producers, universities, etc.) and the commercialization of working-class culture? And Other Issues! We are eager to provide a venue in which scholars of working-class culture using Humanities, Social Science, grass roots activist lenses can come together with each other, and with creators of working-class culture. As always, proposals for all kinds of papers or presentations related to class will be considered, as well as those specifically related to this conference's theme of working class culture. We invite proposals for presentations, panels, posters, papers, roundtables, and performances.  Submit 1-page abstracts with a brief biographical statement February 15, 2007 to: Peter Rachleff History Department Macalester College 1600 Grand Avenue St. Paul, Minnesota 55105 Or by email to <mailto:rachleff@macalester.edu>rachleff@macalester.edu.