Retail work lives : precarity and belonging in Queens

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Michael S. Sickels
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
University Of Missouri ◽  
Work Lives ◽  
Labor Politics ◽  
Multicultural Management ◽  
Part Time ◽  
Meaningful Relationships ◽  
The University ◽  
Retail Workers

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] This dissertation is an ethnographic study of retail work in Queens, New York. Through 10 months of fieldwork and 52 interview with retail workers, I look at how workers find meaning and belonging in precarious jobs. Retail capitalism depends on precarity, or a flexible and disposable workforce. Most retail workers are part-time with low wages and little job security. Though many popular and scholarly works depict corporate retail as a "bad job," retail workers themselves are diverse, competent, and form meaningful relationships. My dissertation examines the effects of precarity on one hand and the "work lives" of retail workers on the other. I find that retail workers use retail brands to construct personal identity, often contradicting the meanings intended by the retailers themselves. I also find that workers value intimacy and friendship at work, often more than they value the work itself. I argue that multicultural identity is particularly important to retail workers in Queens and other super-diverse cities. Retailers attempt to profit from this diversity through multicultural management, but generally fail to create a truly inclusive environment. My dissertation is important for anyone interested in work and labor, particularly low-status service jobs and other precarious work. It is important not to view workers as cogs in a machine, even in the most exploitative and temporary conditions. Precarious workers are active agents in constructing their work lives, though they may not always recognize the social and economic conditions that shape their world. By considering the forms of belonging that matter to workers--identity, intimacy, and inclusivity--we may be able to imagine forms of labor politics that energize a new generation of workers.

Sharp things, or the silver lines are not scars

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Teresa Milbrodt
Keyword(s):  
Financial Stability ◽  
Romantic Relationship ◽  
Insurance Coverage ◽  
Health Insurance Coverage ◽  
Stained Glass ◽  
University Of Missouri ◽  
Adjunct Instructor ◽  
Constant Change ◽  
Part Time ◽  
The University

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] This novel is the story of Tianne, a twenty-eight-year-old stained glass artist. She works two part-time jobs as a clerk at a stained glass supply store, and as an adjunct instructor at a community college. Her boyfriend Jeremiah is an academic adviser at the same college, but wants a career performing in comedy clubs. He uses a wheelchair due to spina bifida, and is cheerfully blunt that he could die from an undetected kidney infection. Tianne wrangles her own invisible disability, since endometriosis causes her to have awful cramps during her period that can keep her home from work. Tianne loves her jobs but worries about bills after her car breaks down. She envies Jeremiah's financial stability until he's fired for speaking his mind too many times to administration. Tianne fears for his health insurance coverage, while Jeremiah debates careers as a high school guidance counselor or touring comedy clubs. Throughout the book Tianne tries to chart a path though the instabilities of her body, Jeremiah's body, their career paths, and their romantic relationship, knowing that nothing is permanent. Hers is a story not of looking for stability, but coming to terms with instability, and finding spaces of adaptation to constant change.

scholarly journals Review of Poor Queer Studies: Confronting Elitism in the University by Matthew Brim (Duke University Press)

Lateral ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian Switzer
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Queer Studies ◽  
New York University ◽  
General Applicability ◽  
Staten Island ◽  
Career Training ◽  
Part Time ◽  
Duke University ◽  
The University

The review focuses on the practical work of Poor Queer Studies. Rather than retheorize queer studies from the class perspective of "rich" and "poor," Brim makes a case study of his work as a professor of queer studies at the College of Staten Island (CSI). Insisting on the particularity of his and his students’ relationship to queer studies, Brim makes an example of the work they do together in the classroom, and the ways they live their studies on public transit, at home with their families, and in their part-time jobs. This review questions the extent to which poor queer studies differs from the modern university’s reduction of all education to career-training. Brim’s praxis of poor queer studies is always undertaken with individual students in specific socio-economic circumstances—a particularity that makes it different than market-driven job-training. This review also raises questions about the general applicability of this case study. Would poor queer studies work elsewhere as it does at CSI? Berlant’s idea of exemplarity is helpful in answering this question. Unlike examples that confirm a norm, there are examples that change norms. Brim’s example of poor queer studies works to exemplarily change what counts as normal. Practically, this means no longer thinking of queer studies as operating without class distinction—and reclaiming part of the work of the discipline from seemingly classless rich queer studies at places like Yale and New York University.

Journalism's next generation : socialization of high school journalists

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Marina A. Hendricks
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
Next Generation ◽  
University Of Missouri ◽  
Prior Review ◽  
Multimedia Environment ◽  
Time Work ◽  
Part Time ◽  
The Media ◽  
The University

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] Like their professional counterparts, high school journalists are confronting the societal and technological forces that are reshaping journalism. As members of journalism's next generation, high school journalists are charged with the responsibility of carrying journalism forward long after senior journalists exit the newsroom. This case study incorporated ethnographic observation and interviews to examine how high school journalists are socialized into journalism as an occupational ideology (Deuze, 2005). It focused on how high school journalists make meaning of public service, objectivity, autonomy, immediacy, and ethics through the intersection of their journalistic roles. It also looked at how high school journalists are socialized into journalism in the educational setting. Lastly, it considered the role of agents of socialization, such as individual educators, peers, family, part-time work, and the media. The findings suggest that high school journalists who practice free of threats from prior review and restraint are acclimating to the shared autonomy of the multimedia environment. High school journalists also are adapting to new considerations of immediacy that provide them with flexibility to act as disseminators or interpreters, as the situation warrants. Finally, high school journalists in an autonomous environment exert a strong socialization influence on their peers.

Parents' perspectives on sex education : nuanced accommodation in a bilaterally constructed world

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Audrey K. Madison
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
Sex Education ◽  
University Of Missouri ◽  
Opt Out ◽  
History Of ◽  
Opposite Sex ◽  
The Common ◽  
The University ◽  
Abstinence Only

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] Research on sex education regularly presents a polarized depiction of debate, which often puts parents on the defensive and condenses their viewpoints into incongruous, dichotomous camps. This study aims to challenge this rhetoric by presenting findings of nuanced parental viewpoints that frequently get over-simplified, and offers alternative explanations to these complex issues. Positioned within the history of American education in general and sex education in particular, it is further possible to see how vestiges of this history affect current school-led sex education and discussions about it. Through the teasing-out of parental opinions, it became clear that, on the most fundamental level, parents seem to agree that children need sex education. Results indicate that parents' own experiences with sex education play a major part in how they think of their role as sex educators with their children. Additionally, most parents express a desire to ensure their children are better informed and prepared than they were. Parents find their role as sex educator to be very important, although differences between fathers and mothers and parents of opposite sex children complicated this role. Acceptance of this role is a common theme, some parents more determined than others to educate their children about sex (but all acknowledging the feeling that they "have to"). Parents' descriptions of their strategies for sex education revealed differences in active versus passive approaches, questions of "how," "when," and "what" often complicating their approaches. Findings also show that parents have varying opinions on school-led sex education, but many are concerned with biases that may be conveyed in school. The notion that parents fall neatly on one side of the debate or the other is played with and challenged through the purposeful application of parental tropes. This practice revealed that parents do not precisely or consistently conform to these dichotomous boundaries. Finally, comparisons of New York, New York and Omaha, Nebraska demonstrate how schools can accommodate and assist parents in sex education by offering more complex options instead of either "opt in" or "opt out." By taking this approach, Omaha Public Schools district may be able to avoid future contentious arguments over sex education, although this remains to be seen. Throughout this paper, alternatives to the current literature are presented as a method of doing away with the common binary of comprehensive sex education versus abstinence only education. By examining parental opinions of sex education at home and at school, new ways of conducting sex education research are presented and justified.

What's Happening Today

2017 ◽  
pp. 30-51
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Graduate Student ◽  
College Campuses ◽  
University Of Missouri ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Third ◽  
Curricular Content ◽  
The University ◽  
The City

This chapter provides a detailed look at four recent examples of activism on American college campuses. The first of these case studies is the University of Missouri, where racial tensions following the Ferguson shooting heightened tensions among students who believed the campus was not racially accepting. The second case explores the City University of New York and their handling of faculty and graduate student contracts, salaries, and appointments. The third case presented is Seattle University, where students and administrators clashed over curricular content. The final case detailed here is the University of California's attempt to significantly raise student tuition, and how students, faculty, and the public joined forces to protest these increases.

Towards a Language of the Stage: the Work of DV8 Physical Theatre

1995 ◽  
Vol 11 (44) ◽  
pp. 371-380 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fiona Buckland
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
The Body ◽  
Audience Response ◽  
New York University ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
Part Time ◽  
The Media ◽  
Experimental Dance ◽  
The University

In the following article Fiona Buckland describes how the leading British experimental dance company, DV8 Physical Theatre, was formed out of a disillusionment with its own dance medium, and how DV8 now works towards a reinvestment of creative need in stage performance. The first part reviews the company's work, methodology, and content to date, while the second offers a detailed analysis and explication of their award-winning and provocative Dead Dreams of Monochrome Men (1988), which expresses the paradox of gay male cruising as a need for security and desire for risk, both in terms of content and as an exhilarating contact-release form. The article explores the dynamism and theatricality of a style in which the body is both subject and mode of performance, and also the media, critical, and audience response DV8 performances have evoked. The author, Fiona Buckland, received her MA in Film and Theatre from the University of Sheffield in 1993, after which she worked there and at Sheffield College as a part-time lecturer in movement and choreography. She has also held workshops in Loughborough, Sheffield, and New York, and is currently the recipient of a Fulbright award on the doctoral programme in Performance Studies at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University.

Of the burning

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Travis Scholl
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Black Church ◽  
Dietrich Bonhoeffer ◽  
Yale University ◽  
Archival Research ◽  
Rare Book ◽  
University Of Missouri ◽  
Negro Spirituals ◽  
Nonfiction Essays ◽  
The University

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] "Of the Burning" is a hybrid collection of nonfiction essays and sermon-poems. The narrative threads weaved through the collection include original archival research into the life and work of Harlem Renaissance writer James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938), historical research into the year German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-45) spent in New York City (1930-31), and my own autobiographical recollections of serving as a vicar in a multicultural black church in the Bronx (2005-07). The original archival research consists primarily of work with Johnson's manuscripts for his books God's Trombones (1927) and The Book of American Negro Spirituals (1925), accessed at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University in October 2016.

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