Please join us in the library at 11:00 on Wednesday, December 4^th for a joint presentation by Visiting Scholars Eric Knowles and Monica McDermott, “Divergent Identities Among the White Working Class: Implications for Attitudes About Race and Immigration”.

Eric Knowles received his Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley and B.A. in Psychology and Philosophy from Cornell University.   Knowles is currently an Associate Professor of Psychology at New York University and its Director of Graduate Studies for Psychology. He has been at New York University since 2012.  He studies how intergroup thought affects behavior and attitudes–with a particular focus on political judgment.

Monica McDermott received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Harvard University and her B.A. in History and Sociology from Villanova University.  McDermott is currently an Associate Professor of Sociology at the Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics, Arizona State University. Her monograph, “Working-Class White: The Making and Unmaking of Race Relations,” (University of California, 2006) was an ethnographic study of interracial interactions and white identity in Atlanta and Boston.  Her areas of interest include race and ethnicity, social class, immigration and public opinion.

While at the Foundation, McDermott and Knowles (in collaboration with Jennifer Richeson, Yale University) are working on a book manuscript which focuses on the attitudes and beliefs of white working-class individuals toward racial minorities amid changing U.S. demographics. The book aims to a) establish the political stakes for the white working class, b) lay theoretical groundwork from sociology and psychology introducing the notions of coalitional and adversarial intergroup relations, c) present the initial experimental work and subsequent interview studies, with an emphasis on the forms of working-class white identity that emerge from the latter, and d) present the survey experiment’s results—hopefully pointing to interventions that encourage working-class whites to form class-based, cross-race coalitions.