Monthly Archives: April 2026

Student Blogs

Thesis Taking Shape

This week, I focused on clearly structuring my thesis by breaking my work into five central themes. Each theme is supported by a primary text that I will close read and a set of secondary sources that will guide and deepen my analysis. This organization is helping me move from broad ideas into a more focused and intentional argument about care as both labor and intimacy.

The first theme is care as survival and forced labor, which I will explore through Kindred. In this section, I will analyze how caregiving is not a choice but a condition of survival, shaped by power and coercion. To support this, I will use Rewriting Slavery through Time, Tithi Bhattacharya’s work on social reproduction theory, and Who Cares? by Nancy Folbre, which will help frame care as labor that sustains life while existing within exploitative systems.

The second theme is absence, displacement, and emotional replacement, which I will examine through Atlanta Season 3 Episode 7, “Trini to de Bone.” This section will focus on how caregivers take on emotional roles that parents cannot fulfill, often becoming invisible until they are gone. Supporting this analysis, I will use Raising Brooklyn by Tamara Mose Brown and Mary Romero’s Nanny Diaries and Other Stories, both of which explore immigrant caregiving, community, and the hidden labor that sustains families.

The third theme is racialized care and historical labor, which I will explore through The Help. In this section, I will look at how caregiving exists within systems of racial inequality, where emotional bonds are real but shaped by structural oppression. To ground this historically, I will use To ’Joy My Freedom by Tera Hunter and Seven Days a Week by David Katzman, along with Mothercoin, to connect past and present representations of Black women’s labor and care.

The fourth theme is modern caregiving, surveillance, and performance, which I will analyze through Such a Fun Age. This section will focus on how caregiving today is shaped by race, visibility, and the performance of both care and identity. To support this, I will use And Nanny Makes Three by Jessika Auerbach and Niall Hanlon’s work on emotional labor, which will help me examine how care is both expected and managed within professional and social contexts.

The fifth theme is emotional intimacy, motherhood, and resistance, which I will explore through Lucy. In this section, I will focus on how Lucy’s strained relationship with her mother shapes her understanding of care, intimacy, and independence. To support this, I will use Of Woman Born by Adrienne Rich, The Reproduction of Mothering by Nancy Chodorow, and a feminist-postcolonial reading of Lucy, all of which examine motherhood, identity, and the emotional complexities of caregiving relationships.

Across all five sections, I will use Joan Tronto’s theories of care as a unifying framework to connect these themes. This structure allows each text to contribute something specific while still building toward my larger argument about the politics of care.

Student Blogs

Breaking the Texts, Building the Argument

This week, I began narrowing down my primary texts and organizing how I will approach each one through specific themes. Instead of trying to make each text do everything, I decided that each will focus on one key aspect of caregiving that connects to my larger thesis. At this point, my primary texts are Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid, Kindred (series adaptation of Octavia Butler’s novel), Atlanta “Trini 2 De Bone,” The Help by Kathryn Stockett, and Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid.

From the feedback from my presentation last week, I have broken these texts into themes that allow me to explore different dimensions of care. With Lucy, I am focusing on emotional intimacy versus resentment, looking at how caregiving can exist alongside resistance and unresolved identity. With Kindred, I decided to use the series version so I can do a deeper visual and narrative analysis, focusing on care as survival and forced labor, especially within systems of power. I still have two more episodes to watch before fully selecting my scenes. For Atlanta, I will focus on absence and emotional displacement, particularly how the caregiver shapes the child in ways the parents cannot. In The Help, I will explore racialized care and conditional love, paying attention to how genuine emotional bonds exist within unequal systems. For Such a Fun Age, I plan to focus on surveillance, performance, and the tensions of modern caregiving, though I still need to select specific quotes and scenes. I am also still working on identifying the most effective passages in Lucy to close read.

Moving forward, my main task for this upcoming week is to begin connecting these primary texts to my supplemental readings on the politics of care, labor, and intimacy. The goal is to make sure that each close reading is grounded in theory and contributes to my overall argument rather than standing alone. As I continue watching, rereading, and selecting specific excerpts, I am working toward building a cohesive structure where each text supports a different part of my thesis.