CALENDAR OF EVENTS

FALL 2007: Sep. 17 | Oct. 1 | Oct. 15 | Oct. 29 | Nov. 5 | Nov. 26 | Dec. 10
SPRING 2008: Feb. 11 | Feb. 25 | Mar. 10 | Mar. 31 | Apr. 7 | Apr. 14 | Apr. 28

Except where noted, all meetings take place between 4:00 and 6:00 p.m. in the Robinson Lower Library, First Floor, Robinson Hall, Harvard University

Fall Semester 2007

September 17: Introductory Meeting

October 1: First Reading Session: Thinking About Capitalism I

• Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (Robert Heilbroner, ed., The Essential Adam Smith). Book I: Introduction, 159-161; Chapter 1, 161-168; Chapter 7, 186-194; Chapter 8, 194-208; Chapter 10, 210-219; Book 2: Chapter 3, 234-243; Book 4: Chapter 2, 264-265; Book 5: Chapter 1, 290; 293-297; 302-307.
• Karl Marx, German Ideology, part 1 and Grundrisse (selection), in Robert C. Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader, pp. 146-200 and 222-293
• Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, pp. 59-164.

October 15: Bethany Moreton (University of Georgia, History Department)

"Wal-Mart and the Soul of Neoliberalism"

Commentators:

Kim Phillips-Fein (New York University, Gallatin School)

Meghan Morris (Harvard Law School)

Required Reading:

• Joan Comaroff and John L. Comaroff, "Millenial Capitalism: First Thoughts on a Second Coming," Public Culture 12, no. 20 (Spring 2000), pp. 291-343.
• Leslie Sklair, "Social Movements for Global Capitalism: The Transnational Capitalist Class in Action," Review of International Political Economy 4, no. 3 (Autumn 1997): 514-538.
• E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, pp. 375-400.

October 29: Second Reading Session: Thinking About Capitalism II

• E.P. Thompson, “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century,” Past and Present, 50: 76-136 (1971). (available on JSTOR)
• Fernand Braudel, Afterthoughts on Material Civilization and Capitalism
• Morton Horwitz, The Transformation of American Law, 1780-1860 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977), pp. xi-xviii, 1-4, 30-62, 160-170, 173-188, 201-210.
• Douglass North and Barry Weingast, “Constitutions and Commitment: The Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice in Seventeenth Century England,” Journal of Economic History, 49: 803-832. (available on JSTOR)
• Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, Introduction and Chapter 1.
• Kenneth Pomerantz, The Great Divergence, Introduction, Chapters 1 and 6.

November 5: Terry Bouton (University of Maryland, Baltimore County) and Woody Holton (University of Richmond)

"Foreign Founding Fathers: Rethinking American State-Creation as a Story About a Developing Nation and International Capital." (Bouton)

"Debtors, Demagogues, and the Constitution: A Reappraisal." (Holton)

Required Readings:

Charles Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (Chapter 11).

William Manning, "Some Proposals For Making Restitution to the Original Creditors of Government and To Help the Continent to a Medium of Trade," in Michael Merrill and Sean Wilentz, eds., The Key of Liberty: The Life and Democratic Writings of William Manning, "A Laborer," 1747-1814.

E. James Ferguson, The Power of the Purse (Chapter 12)

Optional Readings:

Beard, Economic Interpretation (Preface, Chapters 2, 5, and 6, and Conclusion)

Jackson T. Main, "Charles A. Beard and the Constitution: A Critical Review of Forrest McDonald's We The People," (with rebuttal by Forrest McDonald), The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., Vol. 17, No. 1 (Jan. 1960), pp. 86-102.

Gordon Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (Chapters 13 and 14)--optional

November 26: Noam Maggor (Harvard University, History of American Civilization)

"Gilded Age Tax Reform and Boston's Politics of Property, 1865-1885"

Commentators:

Robert D. Johnston (University of Illinois-Chicago)

William Rankin (Harvard University)

December 10: Alexandra Harmon (Washington University, History Department)

"American Indian Economic History and Academic Tribalism"

Commentators: James Livesey (Sussex University) and Lauren Coyle (Harvard Law School)

Required Reading:

Patricia Albers, "Labor and Exchange in American Indian History," in A Companion to American Indian History, ed. Philip J. Deloria and Neal Salisbury (Blackwell, 2002, 2004), pp. 269-286.

Colleen O'Neill, "Rethinking Modernity and the Discourse of Development in American

Indian History, an Introduction," pp. 1-24, and "Conclusion" by Hosmer and O'Neill, pp. 330-334, in Native Pathways: American Indian Culture and Economic Development in the Twentieth Century, ed. Brian Hosmer and Colleen O'Neill (University Press of Colorado, 2004).

Spring Semester 2008

February 11: Christine Desan (Harvard Law School)

“The Practice of Value: Money, Credit and the Coming of Capitalism.”

PLEASE NOTE: This talk will take place in the Basement Seminar Room of Robinson Hall, not our normal location.

Commentators:

Michael Merrill (Empire State College) and Nithya Raman (MIT)

February 25: Julia Ott (New School)

"The Free and Open People's Market": New York Stock Exchange Public Relations, 1913-1929

Commentators:

Chris Capozzola (MIT)

Jason Jackson (MIT)

March 10: David Ludden (New York University)

"Topographies of Globalization"

Commentator:

Maya Jasanoff (Harvard University) and Shekhar Krishnan (MIT)

NOTE: This session is co-sponsored by the South Asia Initiative

March 31: Kathryn Boodry (Harvard University)

"United in Credit: Atlantic Financial Relationships and the Plantation South, 1800-1860"

Commentators:

Seth Rockman (Brown University)

Caitlin Rosenthal (Harvard University)

April 7: Christof Dejung (University of Zurich)

"Business Networks in the Global Commodity Trade in the 19th and 20th Century: History of the Swiss Merchant House Volkart Brothers"

Commentators:

Rachel Tamar Van (Columbia University)

John Wong (Harvard University)

April 14: Zephyr Frank (Stanford University)

"Property and Power in Rio de Janeiro: 1840s-1880s"

Commentators:

Aldo Musacchio (Harvard Business School)
Di Yin Yu (Harvard University)

April 28: New Research in the Political Economy of Modern Capitalism

Meghan Morris: "Ethical Consumerism Meets Enviro-Capitalism: The 'Moral Economy' of Fair Trade Chocolate Production"

Di Yin Lu: "Plunder and Profit: The Sacking of the Yuan Ming Yuan and the International Art Market"

Shekhar Krishnan: "Bombay Cotton: Share Mania in the Colonial City"

Caitlin Rosenthal: "Accounting for Labor: Information and the Factory in America, 1800-1850"

Jason Jackson: "State-Society Relations and Industrial Upgrading during India's Institutional Reforms: Contextualizing the Dynamics through History"

Please Note: This session will run from 4 PM to 7 PM.