History
Undergraduate Seminar
Tu Th 12:10-4PM
Fall 2020 B Term
In this seminar students will conduct oral histories of essential service and care workers on the front lines of the COVID-19 crisis, develop a conceptual and theoretical framework for service and care work, and be trained in the art of oral history. They will interrogate the archive, discuss oral history as a methodological approach and historical source and will be trained in the technical skills of preparing a consent form, formulating questions, using recording equipment, and transcribing interviews.
This course builds upon the instructor’s research and writing about care and domestic work. Students will examine the gendered and racialized history of the expanding service sector in the 20th century, interrogating the language of “care work” and what Arlie Hochschild called the emotional labor that is central to it. Students will analyze how the notion of care has become a form of coercion making it difficult for workers to establish boundaries or make demands.
Link to Vergil
Note: only courses offered during the two previous semesters have active Vergil links.
