 The Youngstown Center for Working-Class Studies (CWCS) was the first multi-disciplinary academic center in the US devoted to the study of working-class culture broadly defined.What distinguished the center was an interdisciplinary approach to the study of working-class issues.The center was launched in 1996 after a group of Youngstown faculty organized two interdisciplinary conferences in the early 1990s, one on the 1930s and the next on working-class studies, and received a grant from the Association of American Colleges and Universities to explore the category of class as part of a broader project promoting diversity on college campuses.