Love and Labor on Television: Representing Neoliberalism in Undercover Boss

Who: Luke Winslow, Lecturer, Management
When: October 2, 2012  5:00 - 6:00 PM
Where: UTC 4.102

According to Dr. Luke Winslow, a lecturer in the Department of Management, reality television is an increasingly important site for the construction and reaffirmation of social, political, and economic thought.  In his presentation, Winslow will extend this line of research by exploring representations of labor in the popular CBS reality television program Undercover Boss.  In Undercover Boss, the CEOs of several major American corporations go undercover to work alongside their lowliest employees.  In the process, the bosses are introduced to the unsung heroes whose skill, sacrifice, and self-reliance are integral to the company’s success.  Winslow identifies several techniques that transform Undercover Boss workers into ideal neoliberal labor and the bosses into an idealized representation of the American Dream.  Ultimately, he positions Undercover Boss within a larger rationale of neoliberal thought to show how these representations assuage potentially devastating class division in the wake of the Great Recession.

Dr. Luke Winslow is a Lecturer in the Department of Management at the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin and a Communication Coach for the MBA+ Leadership Program in the McCombs School of Business. His teaching and research focus on business communication, intercultural communication, persuasion, and interpersonal communication. Dr. Winslow has worked with several companies on a wide range of topics related to communication competence including presentation skills, group communication, and acculturation to American business practices. Dr. Winslow has written extensively about the rhetorical representations of race, gender, and class in popular culture, including book chapters and journal articles in such outlets at Critical Studies in Media Communication, Communication Studies, and Western Journal of Communication.

For more information contact Morgan Lundy