Jan Behrs’ “Double Invisibility: Intersections of Class, Race, and Gender in Contemporary German Literature,” confronts the prescriptive pressures of the publishing industry. His paper indexes recent shifts in German fiction: a renewed interest in class-conscious writing, exemplified by novels like Christian Baron’s A Man of His Class (2020), and a turn toward intersectional concerns. Behrs notes how Deniz Ohde’s Scattered Light (2020) speaks to the latter by depicting the precarious life of a Turkish-German girl in a deindustrializing neighborhood. Noting how Ohde’s novel was acclaimed by the same media that panned Baron’s novel as clichéd and formulaic, Behrs raises questions about formal conventions and the social station of fiction writers. In this regard, the paper takes up issues of mobility in the arts, specifically questioning how working-class novelists must adhere to the dictates of the publishing world or run the risk of ghettoization.

Extending Behrs’ prescriptive concerns, Ben Clarke’s “Irvine Welsh and Determinism,” considers external pressures placed on working-class lives. Clarke examines recent novels like Dead Men’s Trousers (2018) and The Long Knives (2022), highlighting Welsh's acknowledgment of James Hogg as an influence through a focus on determinism. This paper reiterates how determinism registers discursively, both as a top-down source exerting full control over a subject and as a bottom-up refusal grounded in social practices. Welsh embraces the tension between these states as his characters pit agency against class formations that designate existence. The paper shows how he constructs freedom as a process rather than an achieved state, constantly renegotiated within determinate spaces. Given Welsh’s cultural prominence, Clarke’s paper emphasizes fiction’s propensity to insert new models of ideological resistance into the social realm.

Next, Luka Lei Zhang discusses Balli Kaur Jaswal’s recent fiction in “Now You See Us: The (In)Visibility of Filipino Migrant Workers in Singapore and Beyond.” Echoing Behrs’ claims about technique and cultural capital, she explores the detrimental impact of working-class fiction tailored to middle-class sensibilities. This paper contends that migrant workers are often rendered “invisible” in literary and cultural representation, partially due to the complex social position they occupy. In response, middle-class writers and cultural intermediaries have emerged as catalysts in making these workers more “visible.” Zhang focuses on Jaswal's Now You See Us (2023), critiquing the portrayal of “unseen” domestic workers across different registers of perception. The paper contrasts Jaswal's literary construction of visibility with the kind of self-representation seen in writing by actual migrant workers, arguing for the pressing necessity to challenge, and perhaps even wholly transcend, the fetishistic impulse of “visibility” in contemporary working-class representation.

Last, Simon Lee’s “Broader Allegories: 21st-Century Political Struggle in Beasts of England,” considers Adam Biles’ 2023 revision of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, highlighting satire’s capacity to “take stock” of a contemporary moment. Biles’ role as the Literary Director of Shakespeare and Company situates him as an entrenched voice in the world of letters, one attuned to the history of class-conscious writing and fiction’s capacity to assess the “state of a nation.” While Orwell’s original still lands political punches, Lee argues that Beasts of England speaks to the continued potency of satire by broadening Orwell’s precise allegory into a more pliable network of allegorized “types.” Rounding out this panel’s exploration of impact, Lee claims that Beasts of England reinforces the capability of fiction centered on issues of class struggle and political dominance to reframe present-day issues in meaningful ways.

By positioning contemporary fiction as a mirror of class dynamics, these four presentations offer global perspectives on the present-day effects of working-class representation while championing the continued presence of working-class issues in literary studies. The organizer and panelists will collectively ensure that all presentations conclude in 13 minutes or less, granting ample time for introductions, transitions, and at least 15 minutes of unstructured discussion.