Shareholders, Strikes, and Scams in American Business History

Catalog description

Who are the people of American capitalism? How was our political economic system built by executives, managers, workers, entrepreneurs, investors, and the unemployed? This course examines the development of firms and businesses, the growth of labor organizing, and the political economic regimes that influenced both. In order to understand how businesses emerge, grow, change, and sometimes fail, this course looks at the broader context of the labor force and its indispensability and challenges to the development of American capitalism. The course will look at case studies of specific firms each week in order to address topics such as slavery and segregation, labor violence and radicalism, consumption, industrialization and deindustrialization, household and gendered labor, regulation and deregulation, automation and technological change, and the gig economy. Students will read secondary sources from scholars such as Destin Jenkins, Julia Ott, Jefferson Cowie, Sven Beckert, and Daina Ramey Berry, and primary sources such as newspaper articles, short stories, court cases, films, letters, and testimonies.