Launius (Brains Vs. Brawn)

Within working-class literature, it is my contention that what I call the “working-class encounter with the academy” is a persistent thematic preoccupation of twentieth-century U.S. writers from working-class backgrounds. One of the hallmarks of these texts is the “two worlds” trope, in which the worlds of home and school are configured as opposed and in conflict. (W283)

the working-class encounter with the academy (W285)

class injuries sustained in the encounter with the academy; these projects include “fighting to make universities in the United States places where working-class experience can be remembered, described, honored, and changed” (218). (W285)

conflicts and anxieties about the consequences of schooling on working-class masculinity animate these texts. Each of these writers experiences, manages, and ultimately resolves, to greater or lesser de- grees, his conflicts over masculinity, at least textually speaking, and moreover, does so in ways that are linked to his views on literacy and education. Their struggles over masculinity, then, affect not just their acquisition of literacy, but also the political perspective they derive from that literacy acquisition (W285) gender greatly impacts these writers’ encounters with the academy, but it is not, for the most part, explicitly and consciously discussed. (W286)

working-class masculinity (W289)