Making Workers: the History and Theory of Care Work

Catalog description

This course will explore the history of care work, from nursing to teaching, sex work to surrogacy. Beginning with theories of reproductive labor, we will move on to the history of coerced and enslaved care and then to caring as free labor. Focusing primarily on the United States, this course examines several interrelated questions: how do the daily labors of cooking, cleaning, caretaking, and gestating fit within the capitalist mode of production? How have these labors been made to produce profit? Who performs the labor of care and how are the structures of caring workforces influenced by ideologies of race, gender, and citizenship? We will conclude by exploring the various ways theorists, activists, policymakers, and workers have imagined new ways of performing and valuing care.