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.
