Working

The average person spends one third of her life working. But what is work? Why do we do it? Whose labor is valued, and whose is invisible? From nineteenth-century factories to the girl boss, this course looks at the cultural imagination of work in the United States. Possible texts include: novels Mildred Pierce and My Year of Rest and Relaxation; television series Mad Men and The Hills; and nonfiction writing by Studs Terkel and Barbara Ehrenreich. Students will encounter related materials in visits to Stanford Special Collections and the upcoming Cantor Arts Center exhibition "Day Jobs." For their final assignment, students will conduct oral histories or produce creative work to be collected in a course publication.