ABSTRACT
Autobiographical writing by working-class academics has helped to inspire and shape working-class studies. In addition to personal essays and memoirs, scholars have produced scholarly studies that build analyses and generate theories through critical reflection on life experience. These scholarly personal narratives represent a “signature genre” for working-class studies, a form that reflects and advances core values and practices of the field. Such projects foreground and validate working-class voices and perspectives, focusing on individuals and communities rather than institutions. They also respond to, counter, and complicate existing theories and claims about working-class life. This grounded approach uses experience to translate the “structure of feeling” of working-class culture into analyses that treat working-class subjects with respect, empathy, and critique, modeling an ethical approach to the study of working-class life. In addition, scholarly personal narratives help build community within the field.
