Humanities Arts Cultural Stu 0249 - Workers Lives/Workers Stories

This course explores the condition of work in the United States from the late nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth century. We will be reading historical essays and monographs, autobiographies and biographies, short stories and novels. Our reading will be supplemented by a weekly labor film screening and we will discuss documentary as a genre of storytelling. We will discuss the various critical approaches to the different narratives forms that workers, historians, fiction writers and filmmakers have chosen to tell their own and labor's varied stories. We will trace how work has changed over time in different regions and how workers responded to those changes. Issues of gender, race and class will be prominently featured in this class. Students will be expected to submit writing each week, to make oral presentations on the reading and to complete a final project.

Power, Community and Social Justice Writing and Research Multiple Cultural Perspectives This course satisfies the Division I distribution Requirement. Students in this course are expected to spend 6-8 hours weekly on preparation and work outside of class time.