Instr:                  Suzanne Leonard
Office:               CRT 593,   229-6077
e-mail:               sleonard@uwm.edu
Office hours:    by appointment

Course Information:                   MW  1:30-3:20   BUS N130
 

Course Description

This class will examine the figure of the "working woman" in filmic representation in order to pursue an analysis of how such representations alternately glorify, critique, and comment on the position of women who work. Although the word "work" generally connotes a form of waged labor, we will expand this definition to explore other types of labor, including intellectual, emotional, and domestic forms. Moreover, we will explore racial and class-based designations of work, in attempt to discuss what kinds of women are represented doing what and why.

Additionally, we will use this rubric to examine how women's work so often becomes sexualized, corporealized, and glamorized, in an attempt to address the larger issue of how women's work functions in cultures that have yet to reach gender parity in terms of wage earnings. The figure of the working woman, in its various manifestations, can thus be used to chart social, cultural, and economic conditions, in the sense that the work women are presented as doing has much to say about what types of labor are valued and devalued in their cultures during various historical periods. Our theoretical methodology for such analysis will include ideological, feminist, Marxist, and postcolonial critiques, among others.