Critical Social Inquiry 0228 - Labor Organizing in the Care Economy: The History and Politics of Care Work

This course will explore the critical, often hidden, struggles for autonomy and equitable labor practices among household (domestic) workers, and workers in home health care, hospitals, day care centers and the broader service economy. Care workers have developed some of the most creative and transformative labor organizing strategies of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This course will center on struggles for union recognition at pivotal moments of economic transformation such as the Reconstruction era, the Civil Rights Movement, post-1965 immigration, the Great Recession and the Pandemic. The course will also highlight the efforts of scholars and activists to develop oral histories of care workers as part of a critical strategy for including their labors in dominant conceptions of what constitutes the "working class." Students will read social history, ethnography, and worker interviews as well as develop research projects based upon collections located in the Sophia Smith Archives at Smith College. Keywords:labor history, U.S. history, gender studies, Africana studies, immigration

In/Justice The content of this course deals with issues of race and power Students should expect to spend 8 hours weekly on work and preparation outside of class time BOOKS: Title:Household Workers Unite: The Untold Story of African American Women Who Built A Movement Author:Premilla Nadasen ISBN: Cost:$22