introductions thread

[wrdnrd]

There seemed to be some interest in getting to know each other a little, which i think is sensible and potentially really fun -- and potentially also really nerve-wracking for the shy and anxious among us. Like me. :) I feel really awkward when i'm put on the spot to make an introductory post all on my own, so let's try an introductory thread and see how that works.

The downside is that it will get old and slip down the main page so that as a group we might not see a new introduction if it happens weeks from now. Using Dreamwidth's tracking feature to keep an eye on the post is always a good option. And if i see an uptick in the number of members, i'll try throwing open a new post for introductions and general conversation.

And if it doesn't work at all, we can always ditch the idea later!

I'll kick off introductions with one of my own. Because i started the community, i'm going to blather a bit at length so people can get an idea of who i am and where i'm coming from, but please feel free to say as much or as little as you feel comfortable sharing!

Comments

[wrdnrd]

I'm Chris. I live in Seattle with my spouse and 3 cats.

I grew up in Central Pennsylvania in the '70s and '80s. (Politically i've been shaped by both the Three Mile Island accident and the Centralia mine fire.) For much of the time my family (single mom, myself, my younger brother) lived below the poverty line, which certainly influences my interest in class issues. Altho' my grandparents helped to raise us and they were (to all appearances) relatively middle class, which muddies and confuses my own class identity.

(And in 2002 my grandfather died and left us with all of the credit card debt he'd run up while trying to maintain his comfortable middle class existence. I'm still coming to terms with that -- middle class existence with feet of clay.)

Anyway. I have very passionate feelings about the rural poor/working class. I'm still learning about what poor/working class means in urban areas. I'm still learning about the U.S.'s place in global class affairs. I'm especially interested in exploring intersections of class/race, class/gender. I'm also very interested in class and education/academia, because my mother was trained to be an elementary teacher and taught me to highly value education -- and i love education and i even love academia, but i'm also wary and suspicious of academia's place in class structures.

If it will help give you a better idea of who i am: I'm 37. I'm white. I am very definitely middle class these days. I'm hetero and have been married for 9 years (tho' i'd like to add that legal marriage is not the choice i'd make these days -- at the time i was merely following thru' with what i felt was expected of me by family and culture). I'm Christian (but "unchurched," as they say) and Quaker-leaning (i am very definitely NOT Evangelical). And i am (more or less) a cis-gendered woman.

If there's anything i haven't touched on that you'd like to know more about, please ask! :)

[softestbullet]

Hi Chris. :D

[liseuse]

Okay! Here goes! (I feel duty bound because, umm, I said I wouldn't mind introductions. But now I have stage fright. Umm.)

Hello! My name is Hannah, and I live in York (England, not Nebraska or Pennsylvania or any of the other countries/states where there is also a place called York) with my mother, Pseudo-Stepfather and two cats.

I grew up in North Yorkshire in the 90s and then the Isle of Wight in the 00s - which is all rural and contained. The rural aspect of my upbringing has a lot to do with how I think about class. My parents, on the other hand, grew up on some of the biggest council estates in Manchester, and my mother is the daughter of immigrants from Ireland in the late 40s, which also has a big impact on how I think about my class, and class in general. I grew up fairly solidly working class, but we edged into the middle class as I got older.

Through education, and the concerted efforts of my mother and father, I am fairly solidly middle class these days. I went to what is classed a 'good' university for my BA, and a 'good' university for my MA and I'm currently ploughing through a PhD. All this education, however, has had the effect of making me very conscious about my class and how I interact with people of other classes, and what my upbringing has given me.

It also means that, like Chris, I am on a steeper learning path about urban class issues/poverty than I am about rural ones. Our family narrative is very much one of the estate being a success after rural poverty, and a lot of my thinking about class involved fighting against/thinking about that narrative. Academically I do look at class in my research but in a very different way to how I think about it in my everyday life (my research is about the C17 in England, and our class divisions don't apply) but one of the post-PhD options I am considering is a career in exploring access to postgraduate education and how it is, potentially, affected by class and class-stereotyping to a greater level than undergraduate education.

For a rounder picture, I am a 24 year old, white, queer, single and cis-gendered woman. I am Catholic, albeit one of those liberal ones who gets shunned by slightly more Catholic-Catholics. Politically I am very much on the left and my current bedtime reading is a book entitled Images of Plague and Pestilence.

(deep breath)

[maladroit]

Hi! I’m Brenda (but you can call me Mal), I live in the southern part of the state of Georgia with my husband, youngest daughter, a dog, a cat and a turtle.

The only experience I have with class is what I have lived, when folks were always telling me I was so strong to make it through the single-mother years, where I don’t remember it being that hard. Or maybe I’m just forgetful like that. I have no education to tell me whether I am working class or lower-middle class or living barely above the poverty level. I also have ties to education (both of my parents taught at some point, my dad at vo-tech schools and my mom taught the kids younger than her after she finished 8th grade in Newfoundland; I have always worked as some form of support staff for an institution of higher education) that are difficult to unravel from my images of myself and my family.

I have always lived in Georgia. I lived my first two years in a house, then spent six years living in a singlewide trailer in a trailer park, then spent two more years in a house, then a trailer with my mom and brother when my parents divorced, then…so mobile homes (or manufactured homes, as a friend of mine insisted on calling them when she moved into one) and I have a long history and a hate/hate relationship. I used to not sleep at night if thunderstorms threatened because of the whole tornado/trailer park association.

My interest in class discussion is mainly for my own understanding, especially after a posting by wrdnrd that made me re-evaluate my reaction to an e-mail circulating last year about outfit choices of people frequenting a certain buy-everything-here chain store.

I am a white, 41 year old hetero female, not a redneck but love and am related to several, can’t decide if I’m a country girl or a city girl, and will probably unintentionally put my foot in my mouth at least once a month in these discussions. Please feel free to tell me when I am talking with my mouth full.

Re: (deep breath)

[wrdnrd]

Interesting: We always called them "modular homes" (i grew up in a double-wide, tho' it did have a real basement under it). I wonder if that's a regional difference. And a "trailer" is always the one with the wheels on it -- that's never a "modular home."

(Sorry! Can't turn off the linguistics geek. ;)

Re: (deep breath)

[liseuse]

They are generally called static caravans on this side of the pond. Mobile home has been coming into usage more frequently over the past few years, but most people would still refer to them as static caravans I think.

trailer, mobile home, static caravan...

[maladroit]

The only other cultural reference I can recall is from a Jimmy Buffett song...I assume I call them trailers because I spent 6 years living in a trailer park? (so now I'm thinking "internalized classism, much?" at myself. hmmm)