The Working Life

by John Alberti

Timely, smart, and hip, this engaging reader teaches students to think critically about the importance and place of work in their lives. A particularly relevant reader given the career-minded orientation of today's students, The Working Life helps students “see” work more practically and critically, both in terms of their eventual career paths and their immediate college environment. Approaching the idea of work from multiple perspectives, the readings present work as both a source of fulfillment and meaning and a place of frustration and fatigue. Throughout The Working Life helps students use writing to examine their own complex attitudes, values, and beliefs about work in life, work as life, and our lives at work. Each of the six sections focuses on a different aspect of work and contains readings ranging from scholarly articles to contemporary journalism, visual representations of work from the media and fine arts, fiction and non-fiction stories about work, and a sample of screenshorts from a work-related Website.

Paperback

First published October 27, 2003

About the author

John Alberti is professor of English and chair of the English department at Northern Kentucky University, and he has published widely in the areas of cinema studies, writing studies, and popular culture. He is editor of Leaving Springfield: The Simpsons and the Possibility of Oppositional Culture, and the author of several titles including Screen Ages: A Survey of American Cinema, Masculinity in the Contemporary Romantic Comedy: Gender as Genre, and The Killing.