Events
Cosponsor
- The Fritz Thyssen Foundation
The decades between 1870 and 1940 saw the emergence of energetic debates about the relationship between citizens, the economy and the state. This conference brings together literary scholars, economic historians and sociologists who explore the literary, political and economic developments that stimulated heated debates about the crisis of laissez-faire capitalism, market regulation, the common good and the rise of the welfare state. The symposium focuses on the historical period during which many of today’s debates about state intervention, social legislation and market regulation took shape, and it also explores the contemporary relevance of these issues.
The event is made possible through the generous support of The Fritz Thyssen Foundation and the Heyman Center.
Program
time10:30am - 11:15am EDT
Registration, coffee and opening remarks
time11:15am - 12:45pm EDT
Organizing Markets
Chair
Bruce Robbins
Old Dominion Foundation Professor in the Humanities
Columbia University
"Stories Economists Tell: Visions of Market and State, 1870-1940"
Steven Medema
Professor of Economics
University of Colorado Denver
"An Economic Waste Land: T.S. Eliot and John Maynard Keynes"
Michael Tratner
Mary E. Garrett Alumnae Professor of English
Bryn Mawr College
"The Problem of the Semicolonial Economy"
Matthew Hart
Associate Professor of English & Comparative Literature
Columbia University
time12:45pm - 2:00pm EDT
Lunch for Speakers and Chairs
time2:00pm - 3:30pm EDT
States of Welfare
Chair
Michael Szalay
Director, Culture, Law, and Capital Center, & Chair, English Department
University of California, Irvine
"'The Real Salvation Army': Late-Victorian Insurance Salesmen in and out of Uniform"
Timothy Alborn
Professor of History
"Forms of Preparedness: E.M. Forster, Risk, and Unemployment Insurance"
Benjamin Kohlmann
Assistant Professor of English Literature
University of Freiburg
"Social Citizenship and the Emerging Welfare State in Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway"
Janice Ho
Assistant Professor of English
University of Colorado at Boulder
time3:30pm - 4:30pm EDT
Coffee break
time4:30pm - 6:30pm EDT
Ethics and the Economy
Chair
Matthew Hart
Associate Professor of English & Comparative Literature
Columbia University
"'It ought to be law': Reading Ethical Culture into American Literary Realism"
Mary Esteve
Professor of English
"Authors as Producers, Then and Now"
Michael Szalay
Director, Culture, Law, and Capital Center, & Chair, English Department
University of California, Irvine
"Novel Languages of Economic Critique: Keynes meets Nietzsche and Bergson"
Ute Tellmann
Professor in the Institute for Sociology
University of Hamburg
time9:45am - 10:00am EDT
Conference start
time10:00am - 11:30am EDT
Capital Fictions
Chair
Steven Medema
Professor of Economics
University of Colorado Denver
"From Fictitious Capital to Irrational Exuberance: Psychologizing the Economy Now and Then"
Anna Kornbluh
Assistant Professor in the Department of English
University of Illinois at Chicago
"What We Owe the Marginalists"
Christopher Nealon
Professor in the Department of English
Johns Hopkins University
"Modernism and Finance Capital"
Paul Crosthwaite
Lecturer in English Literature Department
time11:30am - 12:00pm EDT
Coffee break
Participants
- Timothy Alborn Professor of History
- Paul Crosthwaite Lecturer in English Literature Department
- Mary Esteve Professor of English
- Matthew Hart Associate Professor of English & Comparative Literature Columbia University
- Janice Ho Assistant Professor of English University of Colorado at Boulder
- Benjamin Kohlmann Assistant Professor of English Literature University of Freiburg
- Anna Kornbluh Assistant Professor in the Department of English University of Illinois at Chicago
- Steven Medema Professor of Economics University of Colorado Denver
- Christopher Nealon Professor in the Department of English Johns Hopkins University
- Bruce Robbins Old Dominion Foundation Professor in the Humanities Columbia University
- Michael Szalay Director, Culture, Law, and Capital Center, & Chair, English Department University of California, Irvine
- Michael Tratner Mary E. Garrett Alumnae Professor of English Bryn Mawr College
- Ute Tellmann Professor in the Institute for Sociology University of Hamburg