Feminist Studies of Work - YMGS613

• Title: Feminist Studies of Work
• Guaranteed by: Programme Gender Studies (24-KGS)
• Faculty: Faculty of Humanities
• Actual: from 2023
• Semester: summer
• E-Credits: 6
• Examination process: summer s.:written
• Hours per week, examination: summer s.:2/1, Ex [HT]
• Capacity: 25 / unknown (25)
• Min. number of students: unlimited
• 4EU+: no
• Virtual mobility / capacity: no
• State of the course: taught
• Language: English
• Teaching methods: full-time
• Teaching methods: full-time
• Note: course can be enrolled in outside the study plan; enabled for web enrollment
• Guarantor: Mgr. Ĺubica Kobová, M.A., Ph.D.
• Teacher(s): Mgr. Ĺubica Kobová, M.A., Ph.D.
• Class: Courses available to incoming students
• Incompatibility : YMGS313, YMGS413
• Is incompatible with: YMGS313, YMFA55, YMGS413

Annotation

Last update: Mgr. Ĺubica Kobová, M.A., Ph.D. (28.02.2022)

The course proceeds from the understanding of work in capitalist economy as wage labor and subsequent feminist criticism of this understanding from the perspective of social reproduction. Following themes are thus covered: wage labor; production/reproduction; Fordist and post-Fordist gender contract; precarious labor; low-paid jobs in manufacturing and services; affective and emotional labor; articulation (reconciliation) of working and family life; union organizing; automation and post-work society; work ethics; disability and work. The readings include feminist, sociological, political and economic theory, case studies, ethnographies and historical writing. The course is taught seminar-style, i.e. it consists mainly of the discussion of assigned readings and films and documentaries. Formal lecturing will be kept to a minimum.

Syllabus

Last update: Mgr. Ĺubica Kobová, M.A., Ph.D. (19.02.2024)

Course schedule

Week 1 (February 19, 2024) Introduction

 

Week 2 (February 26, 2024) From standard employment relation to precarious work

Mrozowicki, A., & Trappmann, V. Precarity as a Biographical Problem? Young Workers Living with Precarity in Germany and Poland. Work, employment and society, 0(0), 0950017020936898. https://doi.org/10.1177/0950017020936898

 

Week 3 (March 4, 2024) Factory work

Maciejewska, M. (2012). Exhausted bodies and precious products: women's work in a Special Economic Zone for the electronics industry in Poland. Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation, 6(2), 94-112.

Week 4 (March 11, 2024) Sexual harassment at work

(Ed.) (2018). Where freedom starts : sex, power, violence, #MeToo : a Verso report. London & New York: Verso. Chapters: 7: The Politics of Sexual Harassment (Linda Gordon, s. 50 – 60), 9: Socializing Security, Unionizing Work : #MeToo as our moment to explore possibilities (Tithi Bhattacharya, s. 68 – 75).

 

Week 5 (March 18, 2024) Productivity and time-management in factory work

Gregg, M. (2018). Counterproductive : time management in the knowledge economy. Duke University Press. Chapter 2: Executive athleticism (pp. 53 – 77).

 

Week 6 (March 25, 2024) Domestic labor

Farris, S. R. (2012). Femonationalism and the "regular" army of labor called migrant women. History of the Present, 2(2), 184-199. https://doi.org/10.5406/historypresent.2.2.0184

 

March 25, 2024 in class Reaction paper topics assigned

 

Week 7 (April 1, 2024) No class. Easter Monday.

 

April 7, 2024 23:59 Reaction paper deadline

 

Week 8 (April 8, 2024) Work, family and private life articulation

Warren, T. (2015). Work–life balance/imbalance: the dominance of the middle class and the neglect of the working class. The British Journal of Sociology, 66(4), 691-717. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468- 4446.12160

 

April 14, 2024 23:59 Reaction paper – deadline for peer feedback

 

Week 9 (April 15, 2024) Shorter working hours

Weeks, K. (2011). The problem with work : feminism, Marxism, antiwork politics, and postwork imaginaries. Duke University Press. Chapter 4: „Hours for what we will“ (pp. 151 – 174).

 

Week 10 (April 22, 2024) Emotional and affective labor

Hochschild, A. R. (1983). The managed heart : commercialization of human feeling. University of California Press. Chapter 6: Feeling management (pp. 89 – 136).

 

Week 11 (April 29, 2024) Burnout and mental health care

Murray, N. (2019). No crying in the breakroom. In D. Frayne (Ed.), The work cure : critical essays on work and wellness (pp. 45 - 60). PCCS Books.

Berrie, D., & McDonagh, E. (2019). Reproducing anxiety : social reproduction and communities of care. In D. Frayne (Ed.), The work cure : critical essays on work and wellness (pp. 75 - 92). PCCS Books.

 

Week 12 (May 6, 2024) Post-fordism, creativity and gender

McRobbie, A. (2016). Be creative. Polity Press. Chapter 4: The gender of post-fordism: "passionate work", "risk class" and "a life of one´s own", pp. 87 - 114.

 

Week 13 (May 13, 2024) The refusal of work

Weeks, K. (2017). Down with Love: Feminist Critique and the New Ideologies of Work. WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly, 45(3), 37-58. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/674327

 

May 13, 2024 23:59 Final research paper – abstract submission deadline

 

Syllabus can be subject to change during the semester.