2010-2011 Academic Catalog

Jul 07, 2025

2010-2011 Academic Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

HIST 218 - Work and Play in the City: Then and Now

This course is intended as a capstone for students majoring in sociology and history. By integrating student research into the course, it encourages the interdisciplinary exchange of research methods and questions. Drawing upon the fields of American history and sociology, we will examine the experiences of urban work and leisure in the 19th and 20th centuries. More specifically, we will explore the interconnections between these two realms of urban life: How has the changing nature of industrial labor and location shaped leisure pursuits and urban form? Why, for example, did new forms of working-class leisure like dancehalls and amusement parks emerge at the turn of the century? How have consumer desires and the experiences of mass culture, and dispersed neighborhoods influenced workers’ identities – ethnic, gender, racial and class? Are the politics of labor and the politics of consumption linked or at odds with each other? In the end, studying work and leisure, production and consumption side-by-side in these sites reveals the complexity of urban life. Ms.Richter, Mr. Ross as a co-taught course, only once. Many of the ideas, however, may be incorporated into Ms. Richter’s Consumer Culture Seminar offered every other year.

Cross Listed: HIST 318, SOC 218, UDSC 218

Faculty: TBA