English 192-011
Freshman Seminar: American Work: From the Puritans to Dilbert
Instr: Mulvihill, John
Office: CRT 294; 229-5025
e-mail: jmulvi@uwm.edu
Office hours: TBA
Course Information: MW; 9:30-10:45am; CRT 286
Course Description
Work. It's as American as baseball and apple pie. Some people think Americans overdo it. Perhaps you've heard the epithet "the overworked American" or the saying that "Europeans work to live, but Americans live to work."
In this course, we'll first look at the historical roots of the famous American work ethic and the forces and institutions that have sustained it over time. You will reflect on the sources of your own attitudes about work-cultural (religious, generational, ethnic) as well as personal (parental). However, much of our time will be spent examining and analyzing how American essayists, memoirists, fiction writers, poets, painters and cartoonists, filmmakers, and others have portrayed American work and shaped perceptions of it. You'll be asked to depict, to give shape and meaning to-in written, visual, or oral form-your own past (or imagined future?) work experience or that of someone else.
