Meet the Student Curator:
Hello, I am Lola! I am a third-year English Literature student born in Sheffield and raised in San Francisco. I am deeply passionate about how narratives are cultivated: how and what information is curated, canonised, or omitted entirely. I am invigorated by the opportunity to burgeon a wider class consciousness at the university and its facilities through the lives and narratives of working-class women from the 20th century to present, placing imperative emphasis on intersectionality.
During my study at the University of York, the need for greater working-class visibility in academic spaces has become apparent. These observations have shaped my desire to help foster a library environment that acknowledges and honours the complex, intersectional identities within the working class.
As someone from a working-class background, shaped by generations of strong working-class women, this curation encapsulates a desire to represent and honour the lives and stories that have informed my own. With the curation topic’s persistent relevance, I wish to amplify the narratives, complexities, communities, and resistance of working-class women through literature, art, and media. During this process, I will be curating an array of materials from the University Library, with additional diverse media beyond traditional literary forms. By including theatre, oral histories, protest ephemera, songs and chants, community engagement, and museum exhibitions, this curation will embrace forms that diverge from traditional academic boundaries. These stories act not singularly as records, but also as abundant sources of cultural, intellectual, and emotional insight.
Why Read Working-Class Narratives?
In discussions of power and representation, those who get to tell their story, and those who do not, are central to this curation’s visibility efforts. Today, contemporary working-class authors are flourishing, so to platform their narratives during such cultural momentum is both necessary and appropriate.
Literature offers an intimate encounter between reader and narrative voice, highlighting an essential element of visibility for, in this context, working-class women. There is a unique accessibility granted by diverse narrative mediums, enabling marginalised voices to be understood and heard with depth and personality. Working-class women have been at the forefront of resistance, creativity, and survival, yet with minimal opportunity to infiltrate dominant literary and academic discourses, their stories are often overlooked. By engaging with such narratives, the reader is able to interact with alternative societal perspectives, ones that consider the politics of labour, domesticity, migration, poverty, motherhood, and resistance. These narratives challenge structural oppressors, and reveal much about the material conditions of daily life and the lived realities for many.
Why Now?
In an era of fraught economic conditions and ever-expanding inequality, the voices of working-class women provide tremendous insight and lived truths. Amid cost of living crises, reductions of public services, housing instability, and amplified class divides, such narratives expose the impact of systemic intricacies along the intersecting lines of class, gender identity, race, and ability. I wish to emphasise individuals, their narratives, their voices of resistance, with such engagement serving as an act of recognition and political engagement, essential in the plight for visibility. This curation acts both on behalf of platforming underrepresented voices, but also as a deep admiration for the transformative nature inherent in the works. In centring working-class women’s narratives, this project will attempt to reaffirm their cultural and political significance; and contribute to an increasing representation, and diversification of the library’s presented material.
An Enduring Curation:
I aspire to curate a project that foregrounds a class-conscious, intersectional perspective within feminism that highlights narratives and existences often overlooked in media and literary discourse. I aim to assemble a thoughtful, transformative body of work that reflects the lived experiences of working-class intersectional marginalisation. I understand there are limitations, but such ignites an extended invitation to my peers, with hopes of an ongoing student engagement. I aim to create a curation that may begin with me here at the university library, but lives on through reinterpretation and further development to establish a dynamic, democratic collection for students in the future. Curation, to me, is a political and creative act, one that has the power to disrupt dominant narratives and empower those who resonate, and those who are allied in the cause. I want my internship project to exemplify this ethos while honouring the trust placed in me as its curator. I hope that the curated material presented will at the very least scratch the surface of such robust narratives, with the aim of introducing you to ideas, people, and experiences you may have not encountered yet. In granting this visibility, I encourage my peers to continue this exploration, championing engagement with working-class narratives of all kinds.