J. Jesse Ramirez (Ph.D. American Studies, Yale University) is Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of St. Gallen.Sixta Quassdorf (PhD English, University of Basel) is a post-doc research assistance at the University of St. Gallen.

Once a symbol of freedom and opportunity, work has become a symptom of national and international crisis. Yet is the crisis of work necessarily dystopian?This collection of essays explores the richness of work as a linguistic, cultural, and historical concept and the conjunctures that are changing work and its worlds.

J. Jesse Ramirez and Sixta Quassdorf (St. Gallen)Introduction: The Work of WorkElizabeth Kovach (Giessen)Towards a Framework for Reading U.S. American Literary Expression in Terms of Conditions, Values, and Emotions Related to WorkFabian Eggers (Berlin)"Quality Time" with David Foster Wallace: The Pale King's Emotional EconomySimon Trüb (Basel)The Tragedy of Being-Precarious in Contemporary AmericanDramaAnne M. Mulhall (Dublin)Impotentiality in Anne Boyer's Garments Against WomenJuliane Strätz (Mannheim)Revolt Through Passivity? Getting High and Staying in with Ottessa Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and RelaxationChristian Hänggi (Basel)Marx v. Bezos: South Park's First Labor EpisodesJohannes Fehrle (Basel)Working the People, Working the Earth: The Exploitation of Humans and the Environment in North American Slave NarrativesSalem Elzway (Ann Arbor)Technoliberal Machines: Robotic Work(ers) from Science Fiction to Assembly LineRebekka Rohleder (Flensburg)"Happy People at Work": Work Society's Other Spaces in Margaret Atwood's The Heart Goes LastNotes on ContributorsIndex of Names

Like all fundamental categories, work becomes ever more complex as we examine it more closely. The terms "work," "labor," "job," "employment," "occupation," "profession," "vocation," "task," "toil," "effort," "pursuit," and "calling" form a dense web of overlapping and contrasting meanings. Moreover, the analysis of work must contend with how histories of class struggle, gendered and sexual divisions of labor, racial hierarchies, and citizenship regimes have determined who counts as a worker and qualifies for the rights, protections, and social respect thereof. And yet waged work is only the tip of an enormous iceberg that feminist theorists call "socially reproductive labor"-the gendered, mostly unpaid, and hidden work of caring for, feeding, nursing, and teaching the next generation of workers. This collection of essays explores the richness of work as a linguistic, cultural, and historical concept and the conjunctures that are changing work and its worlds.