Primary Source Gallery

In this post, I want to show you guys some sample primary sources that engage with our course theme, the rhetoric of work. First among these is this advertisement by Levi's Jeans.

This image (source) is part of the "Go Forth" campaign, which has a number of very interesting components, including many many of these such advertisements and a short film set in an economically depressed community.

Images and advertisements, while ripe for analysis, are not the only form of primary source that our class can examine. One of my favorite work-related sources is music.

I recently discovered this song by Chatham County Line while listening to the Avett Brothers station on Pandora.

Country music and folk are some of the most fertile sources for work-related songs. But everybody works (or works to avoid work), so no matter your flavor, you can find songs about work, labor, the economy, hitting it big, or any number of related topics.

I probably don't have to include TV examples, since they are everywhere. NBC's Office and 30 Rock are among my favorites for work and class related topics.

So for class this week, be thinking about primary sources that deal with your favorite work-related topics. Below are a few more examples that I think could yield eight pages.

An ad I've seen watching the Daily Show on Hulu:

Two parodies from the defunct series Better Off Ted (hilarious and streaming on netflix):

and this one (funnier, probably a better source, but embedding was disabled).

If you are keen on political cartoons, NPR's "Double Take" feature juxtaposes two opposing viewpoints on politics, and with the recent union busting hoopla in Wisconsin, here in Ohio, and elsewhere in the nation, unions have been a hot political topic. Here are two pairs of cartoons posted on NPR's website: March 13 and March 25.

Work and Class in Popular Culture

American culture has a complicated relationship with class. According to the President, the United States became the envy of the world through the hard work of “the great middle class.” Are these great American workers the same people who clock in at Dunder Mifflin Paper Company in the TV series The Office? How are they related to the people singing along with Johnny Paycheck when he croons, “Take this job and shove it”?

In this course, we will examine how depictions of work, labor, and class operate rhetorically, as messages that convey particular ideas. We will analyze primary sources in music, literature, politics, TV and media. Most of us are here at OSU on our way to a dream job, and many of the people in our class may already have experience in the workforce. This class aims to develop your skills as academic writers, but our goals extend beyond the classroom to public writing and to ways of thinking. Rather than jumping to judgment or focusing on making arguments, in this class we will build on your skills as analytical thinkers, an asset in any field. We will do so by asking questions such as… How do images of work in popular culture assign value to different kinds of labor? How are some jobs marked as women’s or men’s work? Why is work such a persuasive theme in advertising and television?