The Chronicle: A Class Traitor in Academe
By Thomas H. Benton
An Academic in America
“Thomas H. Benton,” an associate professor of English, offers his take on academic work and life.
It’s easy to find books on race and gender in academic life, but only a handful focus on social class.
I know of four. They are all essay collections that came to me like life preservers when I was drowning in graduate school: Strangers in Paradise: Academics from the Working Class (1984), edited by Jake Ryan and Charles Sackrey; Working-Class Women in the Academy: Laborers in the Knowledge Factory (1993), edited by Michelle M. Tokarczyk and Elizabeth A. Fay; This Fine Place So Far From Home: Voices of Academics from the Working Class (1995), edited by C. L. Barney Dews and Carolyn Leste Law; and Teaching Working Class (1999), edited by Sherry Lee Linkon.
All four books include female and minority writers, and, as such, they underline how the ties of solidarity that come from class awareness are often stronger than the divisions that generally preoccupy academe.
Follow
