In this section of English 242, we will read fiction that allows us to interrogate how the valorization of productivity—the capacity for production in a given amount of time—emerges in modern U.S. culture from the late nineteenth century to the present, and the implications of this high value. The course will think critically about the centrality of “work ethic” to narratives of U.S. progress, looking at different sites of formal and informal labor and their workers: the factory, the farm, the firm, etc.

We’ll ask how fiction and narratives represent and also negotiate notions of productivity, especially in its dealings with one of the key terms in measuring productivity: time. The course will examine developmental time, the work day, reproductive cycles, among others, and how fiction intervenes in counterposing these temporal regimes.

Readings for this course will include Theodore Dreisder’s Sister Carrie, George Schuyler’s Black No More, Jaun Laya’s His Native Soil, and a reader of short fiction and secondary work.

Since this is a “W” course, reading tasks will be coupled with a good deal of writing, workshopping your
writing, and responding to classmates’ writing. Much of the course will be given to practicing close
reading techniques and constructing well argued, engaging literary analyses. Assignments will include
weekly online posts and responses, two short papers, and one long essay.