Working Groups

History of Capitalism Dissertation Workshop Group

A student led, inter-disciplinary workshop group for dissertation writers in history, economics, sociology and political science and others whose research deals with the history of capitalism and political economy. You can join the email list for the  capitalism dissertation group here.

Tuesday March 5th

Rudi Batzell, "Caught Between the 'Corporate Aristocrat' and the 'Chinese Slave': Free Labor, Capitalism, and the Antislavery Origins of Chinese Labor Exclusion in 1870s California" 
 
Liat Spiro, "Making the Land the Sea: Liquidity and the British Example in Friedrich List’s Political Economy"
 
Tuesday March 19th
 
Marion Menzin, "Prospectus: The 'First' Consumer Revolution: Tropical Commodity Dependency in the First 100 Years of New England Settlement"
 
Eli Cook, "An Asylum of Numbers: The Rise of Moral Statistics in Jacksonian America" 
 
Tuesday April 2nd 
 
Miguel Artola, "Bankers, Industrialists and Managers: The Social Profil of the Spanish Corporate Elite, 1930-1940" 
 
Nadav Orian Peer, "Recent Transformations in the Global Monetary Architecture"
 
Tuesday April 16th 
 
James Bergman, "Controlling the Spaces of Data: The Works Progress Administration, the Oklahoma Climatic Research Center, and the Beginnings of a 'New Climatology'" 
 
Ariel Ron, "From Movement to Lobby: Agricultural Reform andn the Transformation of Antebellum Politics" 
 
Tuesday April 30th 
 
Kathryn Boodry, "Making Money: Cotton, Slavery and Finance Across the Atlantic, 1815-1837" 
 
Shuan Nichols, TBA 
 
Tuesday May 7th 
 
Chambi Chachage, "Globalization and the Making of East African Asian Entrepreneurship Networks" 
 
Summer Shafer, "Prospectus: The Political Economy of Natural Disasters"
 

History of Capitalism Reading Group

From classic works of political economy to recent historiography, the Capitalism reading group provides a setting in which graduates interested in the history of capitalism, political economy, economic thought, and social history can tackle and discuss a program of reading defined by the group's participants each term. From first-years to post-docs, all are welcome and encouraged to join the discussions. You can join the email list for the capitalism reading group here. 

For more information, and if you'd like to participate, please contact Rudi Batzell: rbatzell [at] fas.harvard.edu

Spring 2013 Reading Schedule 
 
February 12
David Harvey, Spaces of Capital: Towards a Critical Geography 
 
February 26th 
John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society 
 
March 12th 
Georg Simmel, "The Metropolis and Mental Life" and selections of The Philosophy of Money 
 
March 26th 
Charles Maier, Recasting Bourgeois Europe 
 
April 9th 
Giovanni Arrighi, The Long Twentieth Century 
 
April 23rd 
David Graeber, Debt: The First 5000 Years