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This course traces how the meaning of work in America has transformed from the Industrial Age to the era of influencers and gig labor. Students will learn various methods of historical inquiry to analyze how race, gender, class, and legal status have structured access to work and shaped the possibilities for worker power from the rise of industrial capitalism to the emergence of unions and collective bargaining, the New Deal labor regime, deindustrialization, financialization, and the expansion of service and informal work. We will also study how state intervention has changed the workplace and the economy. With this historical foundation in place, the course turns to the twenty?first century to ask how older labor concepts help us make sense of new forms of work.