This course seeks to explore, through directed readings and class discussions, the changing meaning of work in American society over the last two centuries.Given the breadth of the subject matter, the course does not attempt to take a comprehensive approach but rather to introduce some key themes associated with American workers and study them in historical perspective. The main text and the class's frame of reference for discussion will be Daniel Jacoby's Laboring for Freedom, an interdisciplinary study that places the worker's aspirations for freedom at the center of the history of work in America. Using Jacoby as a foil, the class will read and discuss works featuring contesting views, i.e. those that focus on issues of underclass, racism, immigration, poverty and gender bias that have confronted the work place. The class will explore together how these issues affect the values that we attach to work, and in particular the notion of worker's freedom. Undergraduates who have completed less than 51 credits must have the permission of the assistant dean for BALS to register.