"Straddling Class in the Academy is an important book, filled with honest and powerful narratives from students, staff and faculty. It expands our understanding of poor and working class backgrounds and informs our next steps in addressing the dynamics of social class in our college classrooms and workspaces. Read this book and discover truths that confirm our own reality about social class on campus, challenge us to think differently, and compel us to take action."
--Paulette M. Dalpes, Vice President of Student Affairs, Community College of Aurora

"Ardoin and martinez have compiled a vital resource for all in academia. Together with their co-authors, they provide invaluable first-hand accounts that help readers take ownership of their own class identity while also providing possibility models and pathways for persistence. Perhaps the largest contribution this book makes to higher education is that it provides narratives and tools to build campuses that serve equitably across class. This book is a must-read for all in higher education."--Peter Paquette, Dean of Students, Coastal Carolina University

Why do we feel uncomfortable talking about class? Why is it taboo? Why do people often address class through coded terminology like trashy, classy, and snobby? How does discriminatory language, or how do conscious or unconscious derogatory attitudes, or the anticipation of such behaviors, impact those from poor and working class backgrounds when they straddle class?

Through 26 narratives of individuals from poor and working class backgrounds - ranging from students, to multiple levels of administrators and faculty, both tenured and non-tenured - this book provides a vivid understanding of how people can experience and straddle class in the middle, upper, or even elitist class contexts of the academy.

Through the powerful stories of individuals who hold many different identities--and naming a range of ways they identify in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, age, ability, and religion, among others--this book shows how social class identity and classism impact people's experience in higher education and why we should focus more attention on this dimension of identity.

A concluding chapter proposes means for both increasing social class consciousness and social class inclusivity in the academy.