Re-Imagining Class: Intersectional Perspectives on Class Identity and Precarity in Contemporary Culture

Contemporary culture not merely reflects ongoing societal transformations, it shapes our understanding of rapidly evolving class realities. Literature, theatre, and film urge us to put the question of class back on the agenda, and reconceptualize it through the lens of precarity and intersectionality. Relying on examples from British, French, Spanish, German, American, Swedish and Taiwanese culture, the contributors to this book document a variety of aesthetic strategies in an interdisciplinary dialogue with sociology and political theory. Doing so, this volume demonstrates the myriad ways in which culture opens up new pathways to imagine and re-imagine class as an economic relation, an identity category, and a subjective experience. Situated firmly within current debates about the impact of social mobility, precarious work, intersectional structures of exploitation, and interspecies vulnerability, this volume offers a wide-ranging panorama of contemporary class imaginaries.

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Contributors: Magnus Nilsson (Malmö University), Christian Claesson (Lund University), Christoph Schaub (University of Vechta), Olaf Berwald (Middle Tennessee State University), Valeria Pulignano (KU Leuven), Lander Vermeerbergen (Radboud University), Markieta Domecka (KU Leuven)
Deborah Dean (Warwick University), Sula Textor (Potsdam University), Irene Husser (University of Münster), Katrin Becker (University of Siegen), Marissia Fragkou (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki)
Sarah Pogoda (Bangor University), Daniel Brookes (University of Worcester), Tim Christiaens (Tilburg University), Joeri Verbesselt (KU Leuven).

Liesbeth François is teaching associate in the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics at the University of Cambridge, and fellow in Spanish at Downing College.

Michiel Rys is postdoctoral researcher of the FWO in the Research Unit of Literary Studies and Cultural Studies at KU Leuven.