What’s Work? Humanistic Approaches to Understanding Work

A Symposium
October 30-31, 2025

The Fritz-Hüser-Institut für Literatur und Kultur der Arbeitswelt (Dortmund, Germany) and the German and English Departments of Georgetown University, D.C., in cooperation with the Georgetown Humanities Initiative, organized a symposium that explored the specific knowledge that the humanities provide for an understanding of work.

While social sciences are primarily concerned with structural aspects of work, they rarely focus on its human dimensions. Apart from studies that work with oral history or storytelling methods and narrative interviews in sociology, the social sciences do not take into account subjective narratives of work. The approach of the humanities, and in particular of literary and cultural studies, differs significantly from this approach. While studying structural patterns as well, the humanities deeply engage with the meanings and consequences of work through interpretation of varied artifacts like narratives, novels, poems, films, sculpture and painting, photography, performance, and other artistic expressions. In addition, the humanities can approach narratives of work at the intersection of social, political, medical, psychological and economic perspectives as well as a linguistic and discursive phenomenon.

This event featured keynote presentations from Dr. Sarah Ann Wells (University of Wisconsin, Madison), Dr. Sonali Perera (Hunter College/CUNY), Dr. Steffen Siegel (Folkwang University of the Arts Essen), Dr. Jasper Bernes (University of California, Berkeley), and Dr. Sandor Hites (Research Center for the Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest). The full program of presentations is available here.

Additional support for this symposium came from the Weise Family Fund.