"How Fully Can We Feel in the Doing": Labor in American Literature

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

In this course, we will examine the role of labor in American literature from the decades before the Civil War to the late 20th century through the critical lens of Audre Lorde's theorization of the erotic. Through this theorization, Lorde identifies the intimate and varying relationships to power that are revealed when gender identity, race, sexuality, and class intersect with labor in U.S. American culture. We will critically examine what these classed, gendered, and raced aspects of labor reveal about American culture, ideology, identity, and future trajectories. We will interrogate, reflect, and deconstruct how writers affirm, challenge, and negotiate identity and conceptualize American society through representations of labor.