HIS 358 - Work and Leisure in Modern America (1)

Examines the relationship between Americans’ working lives and their pursuit of leisure in the transformation from the Industrial to the Post-Industrial Era (1880s-1980s). Topics will include women’s changing role in the workforce; the impact of popular and mass culture (such as film, radio, and television) upon the separation of work and leisure; the decline of public culture and the rise of privatized forms of leisure; the disappearance of industrial jobs in the emerging service-information economy; and the rise of corporate cultures, such as Disney, in the global context of the current economic revolution. We will explore how the forces of urbanization, immigration, production and consumption, technological innovation, and class stratification, contributed to the bifurcation of culture into “high” and “low” as well as engendering the evolution of popular to commercial to mass culture. This course also counts towards the GSS major. Prerequisite: junior standing or permission of instructor. Offered every third year. No S/U option.
(Humanities)