Work: The Labors of Language, Culture, and History in North America

Like all fundamental categories, work becomes ever more complex as we examine it more closely. The terms "work," "labor," "job," "employment," "occupation," "profession," "vocation," "task," "toil," "effort," "pursuit," and "calling" form a dense web of overlapping and contrasting meanings. Moreover, the analysis of work must contend with how histories of class struggle, gendered and sexual divisions of labor, racial hierarchies, and citizenship regimes have determined who counts as a worker and qualifies for the rights, protections, and social respect thereof. And yet waged work is only the tip of an enormous iceberg that feminist theorists call "socially reproductive labor"-the gendered, mostly unpaid, and hidden work of caring for, feeding, nursing, and teaching the next generation of workers. This collection of essays explores the richness of work as a linguistic, cultural, and historical concept and the conjunctures that are changing work and its worlds.

J. Jesse Ramirez (Ph.D. American Studies, Yale University) is Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of St. Gallen. Sixta Quassdorf (PhD English, University of Basel) is a post-doc research assistance at the University of St. Gallen.

J. Jesse Ramirez and Sixta Quassdorf (St. Gallen) Introduction: The Work of Work Elizabeth Kovach (Giessen) Towards a Framework for Reading U.S. American Literary Expression in Terms of Conditions, Values, and Emotions Related to Work Fabian Eggers (Berlin) "Quality Time" with David Foster Wallace: The Pale King's Emotional Economy Simon Trüb (Basel) The Tragedy of Being-Precarious in Contemporary American Drama Anne M. Mulhall (Dublin) Impotentiality in Anne Boyer's Garments Against Women Juliane Strätz (Mannheim) Revolt Through Passivity? Getting High and Staying in with Ottessa Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and Relaxation Christian Hänggi (Basel) Marx v. Bezos: South Park's First Labor Episodes Johannes Fehrle (Basel) Working the People, Working the Earth: The Exploitation of Humans and the Environment in North American Slave Narratives Salem Elzway (Ann Arbor) Technoliberal Machines: Robotic Work(ers) from Science Fiction to Assembly Line Rebekka Rohleder (Flensburg) "Happy People at Work": Work Society's Other Spaces in Margaret Atwood's The Heart Goes Last Notes on Contributors Index of Names