Field Studies in Humanities: CFS 398-0
Credits available: 1-4 in Fall, Winter, Spring, or Summer.
Credits toward degree: CFS credits typically count towards general elective credits.
For Weinberg students who started at Northwestern before Summer 2023, this course will count one credit toward Weinberg Distribution Requirement for Area VI: Literature and Fine Arts.
For Weinberg students who started at Northwestern in or after Summer 2023 (including transfer students), this course will count one credit toward the Weinberg Foundation Discipline in Literature and Arts.
For students in other NU schools, please talk with your academic advisor to see if this or other CFS classes count towards any requirements for you.
Course Description
We are surrounded by images and stories of people at work. Whether we look to films, novels, songs, paintings, video games, or TikTok…the things people make to entertain each other or express themselves are often rippling with ideas about how we work, what kinds of work we value or deride, and much more. Using the methods of the humanities (especially close study of language, narrative, image, and craft), we’ll examine pieces of this cultural “content” as “texts” (things we can study, interpret, and critique) that can give us clues into the cultural narratives and values shaping your internship experiences this quarter. We’ll probe the “work culture” of your internship sites but also the broader “work culture” enveloping and producing it—as well as the art forms and genres we use to make sense of both. We’ll draw connections to historical contexts, current labor topics, and your internship, which constitutes a crucial “text” of this course. I encourage you to bring internship and other work experiences to bear on our discussions and your assignments. At the same time, we’ll practice thinking beyond personal experience to other notions of “what work is” (to quote poet Philip Levine)—and what work could be.
Possible Instructors: Liz McCabe, Johana Godfrey, and others
Watch instructor video