UGRD > LABOR
Labor Courses
LABOR 111G Work and Society +
Description:
In this course, students will be actively engaged in learning about the interaction between the nature of work and the organization of society. How does the structure of work affect the nature of society? How does the nature of society affect the structure of work? What are the characteristics of a ''good job''? How does the larger social context affect whether jobs are ''good'' or ''bad''? How do issues of gender and race play out in the job market? Who gets what jobs and why? How do the gender and racial job issues connect to gender and racial issues in the larger society? Drawing on students' own work experiences, combined with readings, films, and visits from activists in unions and other workers' organizations, the course will explore some of the challenges of race, gender, and class that arise in the workplace and interact with broad issues of social relations. A theme running through the course will be the extent of workers' power and their quest for social and economic justice. Moreover, this course is defined not simply by its subject matter, but also by the emphasis that is placed on critical thinking, writing, and oral presentation. This emphasis is facilitated by the subject matter; by examining issues of controversy and conflict surrounding the work-society relationship, the course leads students to develop their critical skills in order to understand fully those issues. (Note: In discussions of race, gender, and class, it is necessary to recognize that there are many differences within these groups as well as between them. When we talk about average differences between groups and make generalizations about differences between groups, it is important not to lose sight of the difference within each group.) More Info
Offered in:LABOR 120L Sports and Inequality: Race, Class, Gender, and the Labor of Sweat +
Description:
This course explores the place of sports in US history and culture. How have sports shaped US history/culture, and how has US history/culture shaped sports? As we read stories of races won, baskets made, fights fought, and players competing, we will explore sport-as-labor and focus on this main themes: the impact of immigration, industrialization, and urbanization on the games Americans played; the class origins of sports like baseball, boxing, football, tennis, and golf; sport and conflict between labor and capital; racial prejudice, gender exclusion, and integration in sport; athleticism and the evolving ideas about masculinity, femininity, and race; the links between sport, patriotism, and national identity; and sport as an arena for political protest. More Info
Offered in:LABOR 180 Special Topics in Labor Studies +
Description:
The study of special topics in Labor Studies. Consult program's description of current offerings to find out about the topics being explored this semester. More Info
Offered in:- TBA
LABOR 210L Labor and Working Class History in the United States +
Description:
This course examines the history of labor and working people in the United States from the colonial period to the present. It explores the diversity of work and working-class experiences, the history of labor movements, labor conflicts, and the larger processes of social, economic, and political change that have affected work and workers. While work and organized labor receive central attention, the course gives equal consideration to the comparative dimensions of class and cultural identity, race and gender, immigration and ethnicity, family and community, technology, politics, and government policy. We will work to improve our skills in critical reading and writing. Lectures, readings, videos, and discussion explore the actions, opinions, identities, and experiences of diverse women and men. You will work on understanding and interpreting the materials. Short essays, in-class exams, and presentation will provide opportunities to develop your interpretations systematically and polish your writing skills. More Info
Offered in:LABOR 222G Labor and Migration +
Description:
This course places today's controversies about immigration in a broader social and historical context. We explore migration both within and between countries, considering the different reasons that women and men of diverse cultures, nations, races, and ethnicities leave one place and settle in another. It looks at migration historically, studying the reasons for fluctuations in the scale of migration (especially immigration to the United States) over time, and reasons for changes in the United States' degree of ''openness'' to immigrants. The course considers the conditions of work and life for immigrants themselves - including differences in conditions for different immigrant groups- as well as effects on people in the countries from which immigrants come. It looks at immigration restrictions not only in terms of their effects on the number of people entering the United States, but also in terms of their effects on the status and rights of people who live and work here. The course also looks seriously at the relationship between the conditions under which immigration takes place, on the one hand, and wages and conditions of work, on the other. It pays particular attention to the effects of immigration law and enforcement on immigrant workers' bargaining power at work. More Info
Offered in:LABOR 240L Work, Environment, and Revolution in Latin America +
Description:
This course explores the place of work, environment, and political struggle in the past and present of Latin America. How have struggles around work and environment shaped Latin American history and culture? The course examines themes of environmental justice, food sovereignty, indigenous rights, and labor conflicts within the context of economic and environmental transformation. More Info
Offered in:LABOR 250L The Hands that Feed Us: Food, Labor, Race, and Migration in the U.S. +
Description:
This course explores two broad inter-related questions. First, how has the labor required to bring food from seas, fields, factories and kitchens to our plates changed over time? And, second, how have workers in fields, factories, restaurants, and homes resisted and transformed the labor arrangements that have defined food production and consumption? These two broad framings necessarily lead us to explore other questions. How have race, gender, immigration and colonial dynamics shaped the division of labor across the food chain? What are the implications of emerging forms of resistance and solidarity on food, agrarian livelihoods, and the service industry? We will examine how patterns of inequality have manifested in spheres such as domestic unpaid food work, farms and food processing, retail, and hospitality. Along the way, we will consider opportunities to realize a food system that upholds equity and dignity for workers. More Info
Offered in:- TBA
LABOR 275L Learning to Labor: Work and Education in US History +
Description:
This course explores the intertwined history of education and work in the United States. We will ask how schools and school systems, arose in the nineteenth-century US, and what purpose the people who ran and attended these schools expected them to serve. We will chart the expansion and specialization of school systems across the country, and ask how schools came to sort workers into jobs, reinforcing racial and gender inequality in the process. Who teaches, and what do they teach? Who trains and employs teachers, and under what conditions? More Info
Offered in:LABOR 315 Labor, Community, and Social Justice Organizing +
Description:
Communities across the US and the world are struggling with growing inequality and distribution of resources, ineffective political systems, and environmental degradation. Organizing is the process of bringing people together and challenging them to act on behalf of their shared values and interests. Organizers develop the relationships, motivate participation, facilitate strategy and enable people to gain new appreciation of their values, the resources, and interests and a new capacity to use their resources on behalf of their interests. In this course, students will use case study methods to explore the various applications of organizing, methods of organizing and strategic approaches to organizing campaigns. The primary focus will be labor and labor/community organizing, but the course will be useful to any student who wishes to pursue organizing approaches to social justice. More Info
Offered in:LABOR 325 Workers' Rights and Human Rights +
Description:
This course not only explores how diverse groups of working people from around the world have understood and defended their rights over time, but examines the historical evolution and relationship between what came to be understood as ''workers' rights' and ''human rights.'' How have the very notions of workers' rights and human rights changed over time, what has their relationship been, and how have these understandings shaped the efforts by various actors to both defend and attack the rights of working people? How has the understanding, application, and defense of rights been shaped by race, gender, nationality, and class? More Info
Offered in:LABOR 330 Race, Class, and Gender at Work: Divisions in Labor +
Description:
The workplace is one of the most important arenas in which race, gender and class inequality is created or reproduced. This course explores how and why race, class and gender shape employees' experiences in the workplace and in communities. We will focus on questions of how to define race, class and gender at work; how historic divisions have impacted inequality in the U.S. in the past and today; how work is changing in the US (lower levels of unionization, increased inequality, rise in low wage work, etc.): how workers have responded to these changes in the workplace; and how unions, worker organizations, and public policy have or have not addressed these critical issues. More Info
Offered in:LABOR 335 Globalization and Labor +
Description:
This course examines a number of global dynamics that have prevented trade unions and workers from developing world-wide solidarity; the negative impact these dynamics have had on the power, rights, and living conditions of workers; and current strategies to overcome these dynamics. In particular, the course focuses on critiquing and developing strategies whereby US workers can work to strengthen the rights of workers and unions outside of the United States, the importance of such strategies, and the difficulties of undertaking them. More Info
Offered in:LABOR 340 Field Placements in Workers' Organizations +
Description:
Students majoring or minoring in Labor Studies may elect, with advisor approval, to complete a field placement with a labor union or worker organization. Applicants for Field Placement must be in good academic standing with a GPA of 2.5 or better. Union placements may include the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, the state federation of many Mass. Unions; regional associations such as the Greater Boston, Merrimack Valley or North Shore Labor Councils; SEIU Local 615, representing service workers; Teamsters Local 25, representing transportation and warehouse workers; or others. Examples of worker organizations offering placements include the Massachusetts coalition for Occupational Safety and Health (MassCOSH), Jobs with Justice and Community Labor United. A field Placement is an opportunity for students who are considering the field as a career to apply classroom knowledge in practice while gaining experience and networking within the labor movement. More Info
Offered in:LABOR 345 Labor and Sex Trafficking in a Global Economy +
Description:
This course explores the global trafficking of human beings in historical, legal, economic, political, and social contexts, encompassing both labor and sex trafficking. More Info
Offered in:- TBA
LABOR 390L Working-Class Boston +
Description:
This course explores the working-class and urban history of Boston across nearly 400 years, with a focus on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We will discuss the ways in which dynamics of race, gender, religion, and citizenship have shaped, and continue to shape, the lives of working people and the city of Boston. More Info
Offered in:- TBA
LABOR 450 Labor and the U.S. Economy +
Description:
This course places contemporary problems of labor - union decline, wage stagnation, rising inequality, rising insecurity - in the context of the history of U.S. capitalism. Major topics include income and wealth distribution, workplace power relations, labor radicalism, unemployment, race and gender discrimination, household labor, the welfare state, migration, and globalization. No prior study of economics is assumed. More Info
Offered in:- TBA
LABOR 480 Independent Study +
Description:
This course is an opportunity for labor studies students to pursue an independent research project or examine a specific area of labor studies under the mentorship of a single professor> The course will typically involve a major research paper. The student will met with the supervising faculty member prior to initiating the independent study to create a syllabus and writing assignments appropriate to a 400-level course in Labor Studies. The student will submit a written statement at the beginning of the semester describing the scope of the project and responsibilities; the faculty member will sign off on the statement. The student will then meet weekly with the professor, including an end-of-semester review. More Info
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