GLS 524: The Contemporary American Workplace
Instructor: Mike Wentworth
William Least Moon, traveler extraordinaire and author of the classic road narrative Blue Highways, has observed that rather than ask the other's name, which would seem to be the expected lead, strangers in America, upon some chance meeting, will ask instead "What do you do for a living?" In other words, what's your job? The notion that we, as Americans, work "for a living" or, in view of the current economic downturn, "work for life," says a great deal about the personal and cultural significance that we attach to work and the workplace. We as a nation have always prided ourselves on our work ethic and as far back as Poor Richard's Almanack we've bought into the assumption that prosperity and success are determined to a large extent by "hard work." Indeed, self-identity and self-worth, for better or worse, are largely influenced by what we do for a living, though we evidently must really love what we're doing since, contrary to sociologists' projections several decades ago, we're working longer hours than ever before. Come to think of it, aside from the home, Americans spend more time at the "work place" on the job than anywhere else and based on our waking hours, home, be it ever so humble, finishes a distant second to the job site. Though the workplace has played a longstanding and pivotal role in our national history and popular folklore, our course will focus on the contemporary American workplace in a variety of fictional and non-fictional texts, including Ben Hamper's Rivethead: Tales from the Assembly Line, Thomas Lynch's The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade, Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickled and Dimed, or (Not) Getting by in America, Richard Russo's Straight Man, David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross, Linda Nieman's Boomer: Railroad Memoirs, James R. Dickenson's Home on the Range: A Century on the High Plains, Debra Ginsberg's Waiting: True Confessions of a Waitress, and Ted Conover's Rolling Nowhere: A Young Man's Adventures Riding the Rails with America's Hoboes. While compelling as stories in their own right each of the assigned texts should invite any number of disciplinary perspectives--economic, psychological, sociological, historical, philosophical, literary--and should likewise invite any number of meaningful personal connections. The course will further address the current status of work and the workplace in regard to such issues and concerns as the dignity of work, ethics and the workplace, gender and ethnic discrimination, work as reality and myth, work and leisure, standard of living relative to cost of living, retirement, the workaholic syndrome, job satisfaction, management and labor relations, and education and the marketplace. Aside from the featured texts, we may examine the role of the contemporary American workplace in popular music as well as popular and documentary film (Wall Street, Roger and Me, American Dream). Written requirements will consist of a personal work-related narrative (7-8 pp.) and a critical investigative study based on one or more of the assigned texts or an independent course-related project (10-12 pp).
Last Update: February 10, 2008
