Work and Class in the Box Store University: Autobiographies of Working-Class Academics

The autobiographies of working-class academics look at the American university from a working-class perspective that critiques the practices of American universities, especially their unreasonable hierarchies, their denigration of teachers and teaching, and their labor practices. Focusing on two of the seven collections of essays by academics from working-class backgrounds—Ryan and Sackrey’s Strangers in Paradise (1984) and Janet Zandy’s Liberating Memory (1995)—we can trace the alienation of working-class academics and the increasing extent to which this alienation becomes part of an explicit opposition to the corporate university’s labor practices. As the university becomes dominated by flexible labor patterns with parallels to those initiated by companies such as Wal Mart, “working-class academic” now refers not only to academics with working-class backgrounds, but also to those in the new white collar working class that includes part-time faculty. Autobiographical essays by part-time faculty such as those in Michael Dubson’s collection Ghosts in the Classroom (2001) are part of the effort to end the exploitation of academic labor.