Can SpongeBob, Rihanna and Melville help college students rethink the role of work in their lives? For students in Emory’s comparative literature seminar “Work, Work, Work, Work, Work,” the answer is yes.
For Emory College Class of 2025 graduate Tristyn Watson, the class was the quintessential capstone to her college experience.
“I took this course during the last semester of my senior year,” says Watson, who majored in chemistry and minored in philosophy while at Emory. “It felt like the perfect choice for that transitional period between the academic world and the traditional job market.”
Professor of comparative literature Irving Goh asks students in the class to challenge one of today’s most common beliefs: that we should always be working.
The course title nods to Rihanna’s 2016 hit (“Work, work”), but the connection is more than playful.
“The track suggests that almost everything in our contemporary world — including personal relationships — is work, be it emotional labor or otherwise,” Goh explains. “From that kind of world, I want my students to think of an exit.”
Stepping away from constant productivity
Over 13 weeks, students move through a wide range of texts and ideas, from Derek Thompson’s essay on “workism” and Max Weber’s “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” to the “quiet quitting” in Herman Melville’s “Bartleby” and the “lying flat” moments of Franz Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis.”
“It was unlike any other class I had taken at Emory,” says Emory College junior Eden Myers, who is majoring in history and art history. “We slowed down. We read entire novels and wrestled with their ideas instead of rushing through.”
Even SpongeBob gets a place in the lineup. “SpongeBob’s ‘best day ever’ begins with working at the Krusty Krab,” Goh notes. “The celebration of work appears almost everywhere in popular culture.”
Who’s essential, who gets to rest?
The class — which is being taught again this semester — draws from a mix of contemporary fiction, critical theory and unexpected pop culture references. Goh weaves together literary works such as Ottessa Moshfegh’s “My Year of Rest and Relaxation,” Ling Ma’s “Severance,” Hilary Leichter’s “Temporary” and Raven Leilani’s “Luster” with theoretical frameworks from Silvia Federici, Kathi Weeks, Sarah Sharma and Tricia Hersey.
These combinations, he says, help students see how deeply embedded the idea of work is in everything from advertising to literature — and how it intersects with gender, race and class.
“The way we perceive the world is deeply tied to our conception of work, and by looking at characters from these readings, I believe we were able to get to the core of important questions about work and who must perform it,” Watson says. “Our class was confronted with questions like: What is work? How much of yourself do you give to work? Can you maintain ownership of your life when your time becomes work’s time?”
Goh chose many of the course’s core novels because they were published just before, during or after the COVID-19 pandemic — a period that brought new conversations about “quiet quitting,” “lying flat” and the gig economy. From the gallery girl who opts out entirely in “My Year of Rest and Relaxation,” to the “permanent temporary” worker in “Temporary,” to the Asian American protagonist in “Severance” who keeps working through an apocalyptic pandemic, students see how different authors imagine, and complicate, the idea of a life without labor.
“Some of my students, especially those who have worked for gig platforms, relate directly to these depictions,” Goh says. “They also see how privilege, race and gender shape who can opt out — and who can’t.”
Toasting to downtime
The timing, Goh says, couldn’t be more relevant.
“The world of work and the way we regard work have been undergoing dramatic shifts from the start of COVID to the present,” he explains. “It’s urgent to think of alternatives before ‘workism’ consumes us totally again.”
The course isn’t just about critiquing others’ work habits. Week 12 invites students to examine the politics of rest, and the final week explores the idea of striking without striking through the “Tangpingist Manifesto,” which imagines a form of labor resistance not through protest or disruption, but through withdrawal, opting out and doing less.
Along the way, Goh challenges students to think about who benefits from current labor systems and what a truly democratic “end of work” might look like, where everyone stops working at the same time.
Sometimes, the questions turn back on the professor himself.
Goh recalls one student who asked how he could be thinking about the “end of work” while also being a prolific scholar. “I didn’t expect my students to call me out on my productivity,” he laughs. “We had a good laugh — I told them that prolific scholar is my evil twin brother.”
Ultimately, Goh hopes students will leave with a deeper understanding of how their work is connected to the labor of others. “Be passionate about the work you do, yes,” he says. “But be attentive and appreciative of the unseen labor that supports yours. And respect every form of work.”
For Myers, the course did exactly that. “By the end of the class, I felt more secure existing in such a fast-paced, work-focused community because I’d finally slowed down and stepped back long enough to understand what work means to me,” she reflects.