Marisol Quaye
Came to daytime sleep through labour history rather than sleep science, which is why half this course is about clocks.
- Role
- Convenor
- Affiliation
- Slop University School of Invented Disciplines
- marisol.quaye@slop.university
- Contact
- Email for anything about the course as a whole — structure, assessment, extensions. For feedback on a specific piece of work, the Nap Lab is faster and better.
I am a labour historian by training, and I arrived at this subject from the wrong end. I was reading nineteenth-century factory rules for a project about timekeeping, noticed how much of the disciplinary language was about attention and wakefulness, and could not find anyone who had written about what happened to the afternoon sleep those rules were displacing. The answer turned out to need a sleep scientist, an anthropologist and a public health researcher, which is roughly what this course is.
What I teach here is weeks 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11 and 12 — the historical and institutional spine. The claim I am most attached to, and the one I would like you to attack hardest, is that permission to rest during the day tracks social position rather than physiological need. I think the evidence for it is strong. I also think I am the wrong person to notice if it is weaker than I believe, so week 7’s lab is deliberately built to let a room of students find the holes.
What to come to me about#
Course structure, assessment briefs, extensions, and anything where you are not sure who to ask. If I am the wrong person I will say so and tell you who is.
If you are in the first category of student this course attracts — the one that signed up because the title was funny — you are genuinely welcome, and I would ask only that you decide by about week 5 whether you are staying. That is the week the course turns, and it is much harder to catch up on the argument than on the reading.
Consultation#
After each Nap Lab, in the same room, for as long as anyone is still asking things. This is usually the most useful half hour of my week. If that time does not work for you, email me and we will find another — several of you are shift workers, which this course of all courses should manage to accommodate.