Advanced Seminar: Money Talks: Readings in Economic History

3 units

To date, economic history has been dominated by quantitative research. In recent years, however, there has been a turn toward more qualitative analysis. With his landmark Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty argued that Economics ought to return to its origins in political and moral philosophy. Similarly, on this side of the Atlantic, a new generation of historians has begun to revisit the history of capitalism with methods that combine both numbers and narrative. In this advanced seminar, students will read both contemporary and seminal works in the field of economic history as well as writings from a wide variety of social scientists and humanistic scholars who study the economy. The aim of this course is to think critically about the historical construction of both economics as a discipline and the economy as a field of inquiry.