32212
Hauptseminar
WiSe 23/24: The Office Novel
James Dorson
Kommentar
From the mid nineteenth century until the present, the office has been one of the most enduring symbols of white-collar work. At the same time, the meaning of the office has varied drastically across different periods and for different groups. While the office used to be a badge of middle-class success, security, status, efficiency, independence, an urban lifestyle, and self-actualization, from the 1960s it increasingly became associated with alienation, routine, repetition, boredom, inefficiency, dependence, burnout, and being a “cog in the machine” or “other-directed.” Today, remote work at home or in coffee shops (the “coffice”) as well as the ongoing flexibilization and precarization of middle-class work in the new economy have contributed to a growing consensus—only punctuated by the pandemic and the AI revolution—that the heyday of the office is over. And yet, the office persists as both a real space where people congregate to work and as a contested symbol in the cultural imagination.
This class examines the changing significance of the office in American culture and society through the lens of the office novel. Beginning with Herman Melville’s satirical office tragedy Bartleby, the Scrivener (1853) and ending with Ling Ma’s Severance (2018), a generic fusion of office realism and the zombie apocalypse, the class provides a literary history of the rise and demise of the office as one of the most culturally significant sites for negotiating questions of work, class, and identity. In addition to the novels on the syllabus, we will also read historical and theoretical texts dealing with office work.
Schließen
16 Termine
Regelmäßige Termine der Lehrveranstaltung
Do, 19.10.2023 10:00 - 12:00
Do, 26.10.2023 10:00 - 12:00
Do, 02.11.2023 10:00 - 12:00
Do, 09.11.2023 10:00 - 12:00
Do, 16.11.2023 10:00 - 12:00
Do, 23.11.2023 10:00 - 12:00
Do, 30.11.2023 10:00 - 12:00
Do, 07.12.2023 10:00 - 12:00
Do, 14.12.2023 10:00 - 12:00
Do, 21.12.2023 10:00 - 12:00
Do, 11.01.2024 10:00 - 12:00
Do, 18.01.2024 10:00 - 12:00
Do, 25.01.2024 10:00 - 12:00
Do, 01.02.2024 10:00 - 12:00
Do, 08.02.2024 10:00 - 12:00
Do, 15.02.2024 10:00 - 12:00