Campus Activism: Disability Justice and Unwaged Labor Movements

Catalog description

In this class, we will look at the history of different unwaged labor movements and disability justice critiques of capitalism in order to think about why some kinds of labor become legible as ‘work’ under capitalism while others don’t, and the implications of this. Understanding the educational system as preparation for the work force, we will examine the disciplinary strategies of schooling, and its programs for either cultivating or repressing certain qualities in body and mind. This is an interdisciplinary class that will engage education/pedagogy, labor, and disability studies in order to examine our society’s institutions of governance (schools, families, workplaces) as well as movements of organized resistance to these institutions, such as Wages for Housework, Wages for Students, Socialist Patients’ Collective (SPK), and contemporary campus activist movements. Students with an interest in learning practical organizing skills should enroll.