Obscured Labor: Workers, unions, and guilds in Hollywood

Obscured Labor: Workers, unions, and guilds in Hollywood is a course I designed and taught as part of the Collegium of University Teaching Fellows (CUTF) at UCLA.

This class examines Hollywood industry practices through a focus on below-the-line, behind-the-scenes, and behind-the-screen creative, craft, technical, and administrative labor. Focusing on workplace and labor dynamics that often go unrecognized (or are actively obscured) in mainstream critical and commercial discourse about Hollywood can expand our aesthetic, cultural, and historical analysis of Hollywood media.

This class is organized into 3 themes that will provide a broad survey of Hollywood labor, exploring significant events from Hollywood labor history as well as current conflicts and issues impacting Hollywood workers today. Our course will cover the formation of the first Hollywood guilds and studio labor agreements in the 1920s-30s through contemporary efforts to unionize digital labor across Hollywood’s transnational and transmedia industry landscape. Of particular importance in this course will be a focus on the lived impact of industrial change on workers. This course centers on Hollywood’s California-based film and television productions, but places local and national Hollywood histories in conversation with other technological, economic, and socio-cultural developments as they impact multiple media industries across multiple countries.

Link to syllabus - In progress