Hellen Lee
English Department

ENGL 250L American Women Writers

By taking a diachronic approach, we will examine the gendered discourses of U.S. labor and culture from the 1850s to present day. We will study fictional, historical, sociological, legal, and ethnographic texts and we will analyze the varying socio-cultural contexts in which women’s laboring groups have written about and fought for solidarity. Because, in seeking fair wages and safe working conditions, women’s and labor organizations have occasionally rallied around issues as seemingly divergent as anti-immigration to foreign policy to gay rights, we will focus on the intersections between labor movements and social movements and the ways in which they are constructed around notions of ethnicity, gender, nation, and sexuality.