Domestic work, including the production of food, care of children, and maintenance of the household, is necessary for survival. Yet this work is often socially invisible. This course will use a range of types of materials, including social science texts, films, fiction, and first person accounts to look at how household labor itself and the people who do it have varied since the 19th century, primarily in the United States. This course has three central concerns: changing economic and social conditions and their relationship to domestic work, including household technology; the demographic characteristics and working conditions of women doing paid and unpaid domestic labor; and changing ideas, ideologies, and representations of domestic work in society. All of these concerns are linked to the overarching theme of the race, class, and gender inequalities that tend to characterize this labor.