Elizabeth Krontiris
Lecturer in the Writing Program
Current and upcoming courses
On the Clock: Capitalism and the Politics of Time
WRIT171
“Free time is shackled to its opposite,” writes the critic Theodor Adorno. In a world full of incessant demands for productivity, our free time, he observed, never feels truly free. We’re always watching the clock, trying to get the most out of our workday and then using our down time to ready ourselves to work again. We may be managing our time, but we don’t really own it. This course asks: what does it mean to live your life ‘on the clock’, and what might it look like to get ‘off’ of it? What would make your time feel like it is genuinely your own? We’ll seek answers to these questions first by exploring the issue of time management, reading theories about how to do it as well as histories and critiques of the impulse to maximize your time. Next, we’ll take up political and theoretical perspectives on how capitalism shapes our relationship to time. We’ll discuss where we get the idea that time is money and something we can spend or save. We’ll also consider what it means that our time is something we can sell and that someone else can own, and we’ll ask what the stakes are of commodifying time that way. Last, we’ll examine the idea and practice of leisure and explore what it takes for free time to be truly free.
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The Value and Meaning of Work
WRIT170
In this course, we will examine the role that work plays in contemporary life and investigate how the value and experience of working get shaped by modern capitalism. We’ll start by reflecting on the character of the 21st century “gig” economy: Does working now mean something fundamentally different than it did for previous generations? Are we really working harder for less reward, as some argue? Is the recommendation to “pursue your passion” good advice? Next, we’ll examine theoretical perspectives on work, looking at how capitalism shapes the relationship between people and their work, how it structures our relationship to time and leisure, and how it codes certain forms of work as gendered labor. Last, we’ll take up questions about workers’ rights, worker power, and the extent to which we have a responsibility, as a society, to ensure stable and fulfilling work for all. This course asks students to think about the problem of work in both personal and structural terms, considering how it features in their own lives and how it reflects the larger social structures within which our lives play out.