ENG 257 The American Working Class in Fiction and Non-Fiction

Using the concept of the "American Dream" to examine work, class, and social mobility, students will learn to appreciate the power of class in shaping individual lives and our culture. There is a prevailing belief in America that we are a "classless" society, but this course interrogates this concept. Through critical examination of a variety of works of fiction and non-fiction, students will explore ways that the inequalities of class, ethnicity, race, and gender interrelate to sustain the power and interests of economic elites.

Credits

4

Course Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this course, the student will be able to:
1. Read and critically analyze texts that represent working class lives—including films, essays, poetry, stories, images, and songs
2. Write and think critically about class as part of the production of a research-based project
3. Analyze the various strategies producers of texts use to explore and represent the role of class status and work on the individual consciousness and experience
4. Examine how textual representations of class intersect with issues of race, ethnicity, gender, national origin, sexuality, and other identity categories
5. Identify specific strategies employed by writers/filmmakers to represent the opportunities and limitations of different class positions, as well as to interrogate the social and economic structures that support the existence of the class based system
6. Interrogate the invisibility of working class values and lives in popular culture and academics in order to suggest alternative perspectives on these spaces viewed through the lens of working class concerns
7. Engage from a literary perspective what it means to be working class in the United States with particular attention to the relative risks and benefits of different kinds of work and the potential for developing alternative economic systems