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Writing Home: Essays on Class and Place
Weatherford, Jessica
Weatherford, Jessica
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Abstract
This creative nonfiction project explores the complexities of social class in the U.S. and investigates the ways that class hierarchies are maintained not only through income and occupation but also through disparate community geographies, educational inequalities, and cultural hegemony. Thus, I am looking at class hierarchies and their geographical-spatial dimensions, and I am considering how those hierarchies affect communities and the work of place-making. I do this by combining research and theory with memoir. Many of the personal and family stories in this collection compare class realities by moving back and forth among distinct places—for example, my working-class hometown versus the relatively exclusive college town across the river. In her book Anthropology and Social Theory, noted cultural anthropologist Sherry Ortner asserts that a discourse on class is largely absent in dominant U.S. culture (19). As such, in this project I am adding my own articulations and stories about class to larger conversations regarding social hierarchies. My hope is to help flesh out a more nuanced and substantial discourse on class hierarchies in the U.S. and on the ways that these hierarchies are manifested in, through, and between specific places.
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Date
2019-01-01
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University of Kansas
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This item contains archived web content.
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Weatherford_ku_0099D_16661_DATA_1.pdf
Adobe PDF, 1.43 MB
- Embargoed until 2169-05-31
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Keywords
Creative writing, Sociology, American studies, class cultures, creative nonfiction, environmental humanities, place studies, social hierarchies, working-class studies