timemoney

No literary genre has been shaped so directly and so pervasively by market capitalism as the novel.  In this course, we will consider how novels comment on matters of economy, money, and finance and how, in turn, changes in the economy influence the novel.  Reading a selection of fiction from the eighteenth century to the present alongside essays on money and monetary economics from the same periods, we will examine ideas of representation, value, character, and power common to both fiction and economics. We will think about the way fiction supplements and challenges the exchange practices of the market and also about how alternative modes of exchange—personal, communal, sexual—are represented in monetary and fictional literature.

Note: no background in economics is necessary to take and enjoy this course. However, we will be doing quite a bit of reading in the history of monetary economics to supplement our readings of the novels.  Students should be open to interdisciplinary methods of research and modes of reading.