Working Studies: Week 10.1: Invisible Hands (The Garment Industry)

Today we begin reading Corinne Goria's Invisible Hands: Voices from the Global Economy. Like Studs Terkel's Working, Invisible Hands is an oral history. Like other oral histories published as part of McSweeney's Voice of the Witness series, Invisible Hands has "the mission of using oral history to illuminate contemporary human rights crises."

Over the next two weeks, we will be reading selections from this collection in order to better understand how to produce our own oral histories. While our subsequent lessons will be focused primarily on how Goria and her collaborators produced these oral histories and conducted interviews, today we will be focused almost exclusively on content. Last Wednesday, you should have been assigned a selection from "The Garment Industry" section in the book. If you were not assigned one or were absent, you need to contact me ASAP so that you know what passage to read.

Reading:

Invisible Hands, 13-24, 29-33

One interview from "The Garment Industry" section

Acuna-Dickens (Aketer Interivew)
Emory-Maccarillo (Juarez interview)
Myers-Zapeda (Barrios interview)
Viewing: Edgar Degas, The Milliners (website)

Study Questions:

1. Summarize the events described in your oral history. What do you believe is the most important aspect of the oral history your read?

2. Select a significant passage to share with the class. What is significant about it?

3. Look at the painting by Degas above. How might you be able to relate this depiction of 19th-century milliners (hat makers) to what we read today in Invisible Hands?

the mission of using oral history to illuminate contemporary human rights crises - See more at: http://voiceofwitness.org/about/#sthash.2BM0jGiG.dpuf