HSTAA 290: Migrant Workers History: Racial Capitalism, US Empire and Migrant Labor Activism
In this course students will engage a variety of primary and secondary sources (including many first person migrant narratives) to explore the history of migrant work, and workers, in the US, and how their status - specifically how they have often been categorized as deportable - has been central to the development of the US state and economy.
The course starts with the history of Chinese immigrant workers who came to the US during the period of the Civil War and goes up till the modern day. Students will be encouraged to take a hands-on approach to these histories. They will also spend time in the Labor Archives of Washington looking at primary sources and records related to the history of migrant labor in the Pacific Northwest and will learn how to use these documents to make visible migrant voices and histories.
GWSS 390B/CHID 480B: Feminist Social Reproduction Theory and Radical Politics of Care
Students will explore a broad range of social reproduction theories that look at capitalism and the ways in which it functions together with neoliberalism, racism and sexism. They will also engage in conversations about gender, race, class, ability and labor through an intersectional feminist framework.
By seeing society as a product of our labor (in several forms) and our main identity within this system as workers, students are encouraged to think critically about the kinds of systems that are, and can be produced through the work they do and how society might use its labor to bring about social change against contemporary forms of life that have led to the dispossession and devaluation of many.
POL S 319: American Political Thought From Reconstruction to the Present
Discussing the ideas of thinkers as varied as WEB DuBois and Ronald Reagan, Professor Jack Turner explores how labor has endured as a central theme of American political thinkers. From the legacies of slavery in American life, to the tensions between citizen and corporate power. How has work and economic class been used to understand politics in the United States?