Where, within different methodological and disciplinary approaches, can “the economy” be located?
For many humanists and social scientists “the economy” has long been a realm apart, inscrutable to their analysis. In the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008 and the Great Recession that followed, new work, ranging across a number of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, has sought to make the economy newly legible and alive to various forms of scholarly inquiry. Boundaries between economy and history, society, literature, politics, philosophy, law, psyche, environment, and more are being scrutinized. The ambition of this project was to set the groundwork at the University of Chicago for a cross-disciplinary, humanistic social science of economic life. Where, within different methodological and disciplinary approaches, can “the economy” be located? How and for what purposes can it be analyzed? How might various approaches inform one another? Faculty in History, Sociology, and English convened the group with the goal of creating dialogue between humanists and humanistic social scientists who use qualitative and interpretive methods, and social scientists who employ quantitative and mathematical methods.
Professor, Department of English, Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality
University of Chicago
Elaine Hadley is a scholar of nineteenth-century British culture, a period that has generously left behind a wide range of materials to examine. She has been especially committed in recent years to thinking about popular culture broadly defined (theater, journalism, cheap fiction) and political...
Associate Professor of Sociology, Director of Global Studies
University of Chicago
Kimberly Hoang is the author of Spiderweb Capitalism: How Global Elites Exploit Frontier Markets (Princeton University Press, 2022), which provides a behind-the-scenes look at how the rich and powerful use offshore shell corporations to conceal their wealth and make themselves richer....
James Westfall Thompson Professor of US History, Fundamentals, Social Thought, and the College; Associate Faculty Member, Law School; Faculty Affiliate, Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture
University of Chicago
Jonathan Levy is a historian of economic life and of the United States, with interests in the relationships among business history, political economy, legal history, and the history of ideas and culture. His most recent book, Ages of American Capitalism (Random House, 2021), traces the...
Associate Professor of History, Law, and the College; Associate Faculty Member, Law School
University of Chicago
Amy Dru Stanley is a historian of the United States, with particular interest in law, capitalism, freedom and unfreedom, human rights, the relationship between the household and economic life, and the historical experience of moral problems. Her work has appeared in scholarly books and journals,...
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Beginning with the Reagan tax cuts of the 1980s, the United States launched an unprecedented social experiment that has failed spectacularly. Inequality in the United States is now comparable to...
This event included talks and discussion with John N. Robinson III and Kim Pernell-Gallagher on the theme of American policy and finance. The talks featured material from two book projects:...
Early modern merchants in Canton who traded with Euro-America are seen as dynamic pioneers of globalization. In the twentieth century, however, the same figures were castigated as “compradors,”...
Carousel with 3 slides shown at a time. Use the Previous and Next buttons to navigate, or the slide dot buttons at the end to jump to slides.
Beginning with the Reagan tax cuts of the 1980s, the United States launched an unprecedented social experiment that has failed spectacularly. Inequality in the United States is now comparable to...
Early modern merchants in Canton who traded with Euro-America are seen as dynamic pioneers of globalization. In the twentieth century, however, the same figures were castigated as “compradors,”...
Carousel with 3 slides shown at a time. Use the Previous and Next buttons to navigate, or the slide dot buttons at the end to jump to slides.
This event included talks and discussion with John N. Robinson III and Kim Pernell-Gallagher on the theme of American policy and finance. The talks featured material from two book projects:...
