Books by Evan Watkins

Analyzes the role of literacy work as a significant contributor to the formation of human capital in the workplace and in everyday practices .

"One of America's foremost scholars of work, class, and education at the top of his game."-Catherine Prendergast, University of Illinois, Champaign/Urbana

Arguing against the perception that the capitalist marketplace permits no alternatives, the author shows that a kind of economic "common sense" conditions how people organize their everyday lives and understand their powers as social agents within markets that are far from monolithic and uniform.

This work examines how consumer culture places less emphasis on ideological representations and resistances to ideology than on the educative powers of mass culture and the way that social position is determined through the politics of consumer culture.

Shares with a number of recent studies an interest in the historical development of English in the United States, in how it became a central discipline in the humanities, and in what the ideological affiliations of literature and literary study might be.