Call for Papers -- Capitalism in Action conference at Harvard -- deadline Nov. 1

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Third Graduate Student Conference on the History of American Capitalism:

“Capitalism in Action”


Harvard University | Cambridge, MA | March 4th-6th, 2011

Sponsored by the David Howe Fund for Business and Economic History at
Harvard University.

Keynote Speaker: Jackson Lears

Discussions of American capitalism often uncritically rely on loaded but
abstract terms, from “markets” to “capital.” This conference aims to bring
together emerging scholars who are interested in interrogating the
nitty-gritty details of how capitalist systems have been imagined,
constructed, maintained, altered, and challenged by an array of different
historical actors in the United States and across the globe. What does “the
economy” look like once we shift our focus from intangible market models
towards the concrete workings of capitalist society and culture? In this
conference, we hope to expand our understanding of American history by
analyzing many different moments of “capitalism in action.”

We welcome papers by fellow graduate students from many different fields,
such as cultural, social or business histories of capitalism. We encourage
papers on a range of diverse topics. Possible paper subjects could include
anything from mortgage-backed derivatives, land speculation and the
geography of garbage to corporate personhood, consumer branding and the
political economy of baseball. We welcome the submission of panels as well.

Interested graduate students should email a C.V. and a 750-word abstract of
their paper (description, significance, sources, current status) to
histcap@fas.harvard.edu.

The submission deadline is Nov 1st, 2010. Those selected to present will be
notified by Nov 19th and receive a stipend towards travel costs.

The conference website (www.fas.harvard.edu/polecon) is currently under
construction, but for the websites of previous conferences, please see
www.fas.harvard.edu/~polecon/conference/ and www.fas.harvard.edu/~histcap/.
For questions or additional details, please email histcap@fas.harvard.edu.

Faculty supervisor: Professor Sven Beckert

Organizers: Nikolas Bowie, Eli Cook, Joshua Specht, Jeremy Zallen