Moments in Modern Economic History

The course provides an introduction to modern
economic history by looking into emblematic
moments from the past that have created the
contemporary experience. By focusing on moments of
crisis, transformation, and debate an historicized
perspective on our times comes into focus. This
course reads dispatches from and about critical
moments in modern economic history and considers
them in consort with illustrative artworks. In
this class we will look at pre-industrial Florence
and Prague, England at the time of the Corn Laws
and the triangular trade, fin de siècle Paris the
experience of modernization, the long 20th Century
(WWI & the end of laissez faire, the end of
Bretton Woods, the end of the cold war), and both
sides of the Northern Pacific in our current
moment of crisis.