Labor and the Global Market: Literature, Film and History

Semester and Year	SP 2012
Course Number	IDSEM-UG1644
Section	001
Instructor	Valerie Forman
Days	Tue,Thu
Time	3:30 PM - 4:45 PM
Units	4.0
Level	U
Foundation Requirement	HUM, GLOBAL

Notes/Restrictions

Same as COLIT-UA 800 002.

Description

Globalization has become a much-debated and deeply controversial topic. In this class, we will focus on the ways that labor has been represented and understood, especially in relationship to the development of capitalism in its global form. We will explore how the movement of capital, commodities, and workers across the globe and with seeming indifference to national borders shapes the idea of work and those who perform it. Of equal importance in our study will be the way that work transforms the structure of the global economy. Some primary questions we will explore are: How has the demand for labor required migration and imposed geographical dislocations? How does labor create value within these new locations? How do some gain control of the work of others? How do workers organize themselves and develop community in new locations? How does this relationship of power change over time? Some likely texts for the course include: Shakespeare, The Tempest ; Ngugi wa Thiong'o’s postcolonial play, I will Marry When I Want ; a Haitian novel about a sugar cane worker who migrates to the Dominican Republic. We will place these fictional texts in conversation with visual representations by Diego Rivera, works by Marx, by anthropologists and narrative filmmakers on sex tourism and domestic labor, and by documentary filmmakers and historians on global corporations and utopian economies.

Syllabus

IDSEM-UG1644

Course Type

Interdisciplinary Seminars (IDSEM-UG)