Reading, discussing, & challenging class(ism)

Hello! I hate writing 1st posts because i always feel like a pretentious twit, but i couldn't talk any of the cats into doing it for me so here goes.

The initial proposal for this community was a reading group, possibly using Barbara Jensen's bibliography from the class zine from WisCon 33. I haven't read anything from the biblio yet myself, but several titles looked likely (these are in no particular order except that i put the ones that seemed country-specific at the bottom) -- tho' i'm not sure how academic in tone they might be.  Also, links go to Worldcat so you can see if your local library has a book:

• Where We Stand: Class Matters. (bell hooks. Routledge, 2000.)
• Inequality: Social class and Its Consequences. (Eitzen, D.S., & Johnston, J.E. Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2007.)
• Class: A Guide Through the American Status System. (Paul Fussell. New York: Touchstone, 1992.)
• Economic Apartheid in America: a Primer on Economic Inequality & Insecurity. (Chuck Collins, C., & Felice Yeskel. New York: New Press, 2005.)
• Money, Morals, and Manners: the culture of the French and American upper-middle class. (Michele Lamont. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.)

Any other titles anyone would like to suggest?

Other things i thought might be interesting to tackle in the community:

• Sharing/analyzing news articles and weblinks.  For example: I've been coming across a lot of articles recently about poverty and food in the U.S. and classist assumptions about how poor people do/should eat.
• Possibly working toward a classism 101 toolkit: what is class locally/globally, what is classism, how can we recognize classism, how can we combat classism, et cetera.

Some ground rules (to be added to the community's profile page):

• Don't be an asshole.
• Locked, private posts are welcome (if something is sensitive and not for public consumption).
• Please don't post links to web articles that are not freely accessible.

Last question:  How do you each feel about introductory posts?  Comfortable with brief introductions on who we are and what brings us to discussions of class?  Or feel they're not really necessary?