English · Boston College
This course focuses on American literature about work, especially blue-collar work, service work, and women's work. In reading working lives, we will also be reading national narratives about class, gender, race, and immigration. In diverse texts ranging from Walt Whitman to Gish Jen, we will ask how power and privilege are represented in this literature. What are the underlying assumptions? How have contemporary class divides taken root from our history? By looking at style, voice, figurative language, and structure, we will discover how writers strategically shape meaning across genres.
