If I could only discuss one topic for the rest of my career, it would be (social) class.
Class is one of those so-called taboo subjects — the kind we’re told not to talk about, yet it’s everywhere in our daily lives.
It shows up when we call a restaurant “nice” or a car “fancy”, when we define what is considered “professional,” or when we think about retirement — if that’s something we’re able to plan for.
It shapes how we speak, what we eat, where we live, the jobs we hold, who we are connected to, and what we value.
It influences whether we take a vacation, how we spend our downtime, if we use our sick days, or just tough it out.
Even our relationship with rest — whether we see it as a necessity or a luxury — reflects class norms.
Social class
a contextual system of interrelated forms of capital that influence invidivual and group access to resources, opportunities, and experiences.
(martinez & Ardoin, draft)
Class isn’t just personal—it’s structural.
It’s woven into our assumptions, habits, and both the visible and invisible systems that define what’s considered “normal.”
Talking about class goes beyond money; it’s about uncovering the expectations, beliefs, assumptions, and rules that quietly shape our daily lives—at work, at home, and everywhere in between. It shows up in policies and practices, in unwritten rules and everyday decisions. Class is all around us, whether we (want) notice it or not.
I created this section as a space to learn about, engage, and deepen your understanding of class. It’s not a comprehensive resource list—just a collection of materials that have helped me make sense of my own journey and better understand how class shapes the world around us.
I can partner with you to administer a class-related inventory that assesses how your department, division, or organization attends to class and its related dynamics, and use the results to inform targeted development and training initiatives as well as shift policies and practices as necessary.
Who are Class Straddlers?
Often times, Class Straddlers are existing in two distinct class contexts with different norms, values, ways of being.
Formally defined, Class Straddlers are those from poor or working classes of origin who find themselves in middle or upper-class contexts, and it can also reference how people define their current, felt class often because of educational opportunities (Ardoin & martinez, 2019).
Oftentimes, Class Straddlers exist in two distinct class contexts with different norms, values, languages, expectations, and ways of being. Navigating between these two different worlds takes practice, patience and humility. Sometimes it is joyous and connecting , sometimes it is painful and lonely, and sometimes it is simultaneously everything at the same time.
If you identify as a Class Straddler and want support navigating these different contexts, I can provide different strategies for your journey. If you work with or mangage Class Straddlers and want to more effectively support them in the workplace, I can provide various services for greater class inclusion.
Class is often a taboo subject resulting in people being afraid and unskilled to engage class in real ways.
While there is so much to learn about, discuss, and shift when it comes to class, here are some suggestions for you and your organization to consider as part of class conscious work:
Online Resources
Media
TV Shows
Abbott Elementary
American Auto
Better Things
Breaking Bad
Dear White People
Downtown Abbey
Gentified
Gilmore Girls
Kim’s Convenience
Last Chance U
Loot
Maid
Ozark
Paradise
Queen of the South
Reservation Dogs
Roseanne
Schitt’s Creek
Shameless
Squid Game
Succession
Superstore
The Bear
The Conners
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
The Gilded Age
The Middle
The Sex Lives of College Girls
The Simpsons
Movies
Bridesmaids
Cheetah Girls
Christmas Vacation
Crazy Rich Asians
Get Out
Good Will Hunting
Maid in Manhattan
Materialists
Parasite
Snowpiercer
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever
The Breakfast Club
The Hunger Games
The Wolf of Wall Street
Titanic
Podcasts
Class Divide
Class Matters, Deb-Jones-Douglass Institute
Classy, Jonathan Menjivar
Death, Sex & Money, Anna Sale and Slate Productions
The Uncertain Hour, Krissy Clark
Who Owns America? Bernie Sanders Says the Quiet Part Out Loud, Trevor Noah
Books we found useful on class and status
- Access to Inequality: Reconsidering Class, Knowledge, and Capital in Higher Education, Amy Stitch (2014).
- Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy, Editors: Anthony Harkins and Meredith (2019).
- Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, Isabel Wilkerson (2020).
- Class Lives: Stories from across Our Economic Divide (A Class Action Book), Editors: Chuck Collins, Jennifer Ladd, Maynard Seider, and Felice Yeskel (2014).
- Class Matters, Betsy Leondar-Wright (2005).
- College aspirations and access in working-class, rural communities: The mixed signals, challenges, and new language first-generation students encounter, Sonja Ardoin (2018).
- Educated: A Memoir, Tara Westover (2018).
- Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, Matthew Desmond (2017).
- Inside the College Gates: How Class and Culture Matter in Higher Education, Jenny M. Stuber (2012).
- In The Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities Are Plundering Our Cities, Davarian L. Baldwin (2021).
- Limbo: Blue-Collar Roots, White-Collar Dreams, Alfred Lumbrano (2005).
- Moving Up without Losing Your Way: The Ethical Costs of Upward Mobility, Jennifer M. Morton (2021).
- Social Class on Campus: Theories and Manifestations, Will Barratt (2011).
- Social Class Supports: Programs and practices to serve and sustain poor and working class-students through higher education, Editors: Georgianna L. Martin and Sonja Ardoin (2021).
- Somewhere We Are Human, Reyna Grande and Sonia Guiñansaca (2023).
- Straddling Class in the Academy: 26 stories of students, administrators, and faculty from poor and working class backgrounds and their compelling lessons for higher education policy and practice, Editors: Sonja Ardoin and becky martinez (2019).
- The Lives of Campus Custodians: Insights Into Corporatization and Civic Disengagement in the Academy, Peter Magolda (2016).
- The Working Poor: Invisible in America, David Shipler (2005).
- Those Winter Sundays: Female Academics and Their Working-Class Parents, Editor: Kathleen Welsh (2004).
- The Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges Are Failing Disadvantaged Students, Anthony Abraham Jack (2020).
- Where We Stand: Class Matters, bell hooks (2000).
- Working In Class: Recognizing How Social Class Shapes Our Academic Work , Editors: Allision L. Hurst and Sandi Kawecka Nenga (2016).