Bored in the House: Work, Leisure, and the Domestic Mundane
SOC 277
Fall 2021
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01
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At the beginning of the Covid epidemic, Detroit rapper Curtis Roach released an instant classic on TikTok, a 15-second ditty capturing the zeitgeist of the coming wave of domestic isolation: "Okay I'm bored in the house, and I'm in the house bored." The recent waves of mass quarantine, both forced and quasi-voluntary, have crystallized our focus on the domestic, and its attendant crises. More than ever we must confront the vanishing material and psychic separations between work and leisure, the badly needed reimagining of public and private not anchored in a spectral domestic privacy, and the foundational dynamics of class, race, sexuality, gender, capacity, and institutionalized violence that structure where we can live, work, and play. Special topics of focus will include boredom as a technique of torture, social media and the gamification of leisure, content moderation and the mundanifaction of sex and violence, and the domestication of travel and tourism.
It is hoped that this course may also be used as an exercise in boredom praxis. We will do a bit of thinking about what we do when we are bored, and why, and will try to sit with and direct our boredom in gently experimental ways. This also extends to critically thinking about how we do work in this class, and our techniques and tactics of maintaining leisure time in academia. |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
SBS SOC |
| Course Format: Discussion | Grading Mode: |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: (SOC) |
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Past Enrollment Probability: Less than 50% |
| SECTION 01 |
Major Readings: Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore
- Instructor will provide at a later time
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Examinations and Assignments:
- Instructor will provide at a later time |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
- Instructor will provide at a later time |
| Instructor(s): Haber,Benjamin Times: ..T.... 01:20PM-04:10PM; Location: SCIE638; |
| Total Enrollment Limit: 19 | | SR major: 6 | JR major: 5 | | |
| Seats Available: 0 | GRAD: X | SR non-major: 2 | JR non-major: 2 | SO: 4 | FR: 0 |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
| Total Submitted Requests: 22 | 1st Ranked: 12 | 2nd Ranked: 2 | 3rd Ranked: 2 | 4th Ranked: 1 | Unranked: 5 |
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