Scholars, Activists Gather at Pitt June 3-6 to Address Economic Crisis and Today's Activism

PITTSBURGH-The 2009 conference of the Working Class Studies Association (WCSA) will be held June 3-6 in the University of Pittsburgh's William Pitt Union, 3959 Fifth Ave., Oakland. This biennial gathering-four days of panels, workshops, and performances-draws hundreds of activists, artists, educators, scholars, and students from around the world.

The conference comes to Pittsburgh after stints in Youngstown, Ohio, and St. Paul, Minn. This year's conference theme is Class Matters.

"Pittsburgh is the right place for an event on the theme of Class Matters," said Nicholas Coles, conference organizer and associate professor in Pitt's Department of English. "Aside from being attractive to visitors, the city has a deep tradition of industry, labor, and ethnic migrations, and now the turn to a greener economy. The time is right, too. Understanding how class affects us socially and economically may be more important now than any period since the 1930s."

Conference speakers include historian David Montgomery on class and empire, educator Ira Shor on class in the classroom, writer Bill Fletcher Jr. on the current economic crisis, and union leader Fred Redmond on labor and globalization. There also will be evening performances, including music by Anne Feeney and Friends, Mike Stout and the Human Union, and Nelson Harrison and the Pittsburgh Jazz Network All-Stars; a dramatic adaptation of Thomas Bell's "Out of this Furnace;" and "The Point of Pittsburgh," a history of the city told through readings, music, and visual art.

In addition, tours have been arranged to historical sites in the Monongahela, Ohio, and Allegheny river valleys.

"The conference caps off the Pittsburgh 250 celebration by looking at the city's history of production and struggle, how time and again the aims of political and corporate elites collided with homegrown, organized resistance-how this class-based resistance often created improved conditions," said conference cochair Charles McCollester, director of the Pennsylvania Center for Labor Relations and professor of industrial and labor relations at Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP).

In addition to WCSA, IUP's labor center, and Pitt's School of Arts and Sciences, the June conference is supported by programs and volunteers from Pitt's Departments of English, Anthropology, History, and Sociology and the Cultural Studies and Women's Studies programs; Carlow University Women's Studies Program; Carnegie Mellon University Department of English; Chatham University; Duquesne University Women's and Gender Studies Center; Youngstown State University Center for Working-Class Studies; the United Steelworkers of America; and the Battle of Homestead Foundation.

For more information, visit the conference Web site at www.workingclassstudies.pitt.edu.

The WCSA promotes models of working-class studies, both inside and outside of academia, that serve the interests of working-class people. These include critical discussions of relationships among class, race, gender, sexuality, and nationality. WCSA is a multidisciplinary and international association; its members include social workers, documentary filmmakers, writers, labor educators, and activists, as well as scholars and teachers across a range of academic fields.

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