AP/ANTH 4530 3.00 The Anthropology of Race, Gender and Labour
Not offering in Fall/Winter 2026-27:
This course examines anthropological perspectives on the politics of labour as impacted by race and gender. This class will focus on ethnographic texts and films. We will take a national as well as transnational perspective in examining the everyday experiences of workers. What counts as work? Why are women of colour and immigrant women overrepresented in certain kinds of work? We will examine theories of intersectionality, the state, and transnationalism. We will examine for instance service work, nursing, sex work, domestic work in order to examine women’s experiences of the gendering of labour. We will examine contemporary public debates and legal decisions concerning “professional dress,” which often centres whiteness in self-presentation by excluding for instance women wearing the Hijab or women with Black hair. How do processes such as capitalism, postcolonialism, globalization and transnationalism impact theories of “work” and the “worker” in relation to other aspects of identity such as race, ethnicity and gender?