This interdisciplinary course explores the relationship between the American worker and globalization, defined as the integration of the world’s economic activities through trade, direct foreign investments, technology flows, and immigration. Since the 1980s the United States has become much more closely integrated into the world economy. In particular, the diffusion of new technologies has transformed the American economy and work processes. The outcomes have been mixed for the American worker. Those workers whose skills were scarce but greatly in demand have done well, others have lost ground, and the earnings gap between skilled and unskilled workers widened significantly during the last two decades. This trend toward wage inequalities, if allowed to continue, could undermine the work ethic and destroy the American dream of upward social mobility. The course will bring together writings of imminent sociologists, political scientists and economists to examine the causes of widening pay disparities among American workers, identifying those factors that are attributable to globalization (such as competition from imports, off-shoring of manufacturing and service jobs, and the growing presence of immigrant workers) and those that are direct results of public policy choices. The students will then explore alternative policy instruments to help reverse the trend toward greater income disparities, protect the most vulnerable workers and prevent “the race to the bottom