Fall Semester 2008

September 15: Introductory Meeting
Robinson Basement Seminar Room

September 22: Reading Session 1: Adam Smith
Robinson Basement Seminar Room

Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Robert Heilbroner, ed., The Essential Adam Smith). Part I, Sec. I, Chapters I-V, 65-77; Part I, Sec. III, Chapters I-III, 78-88; Part III, Chapter III, 105-109; Part IV, Chapter I, 119-123.

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.

Emma Rothschild, Economic Sentiments: Adam Smith, Condorcet, and the Enlightenment (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 2001), 7-51.

Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (New York, Anchor Books, 1999), 3-34.

October 6: Reading Session 2: Karl Marx
Robinson Basement Seminar Room
Karl Marx, Capital, Vol I, Part I, Chapter 1; Part VIII.

David Harvey, The Limits to Capital (Oxford: B.Blackwell, 1982), 1-35, 39-60, 75-97, 156-203.

Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe (Princeton, N.J., Princeton Univ. Press, 2000), 27-71

October 27: Daniel Carpenter, Harvard University, Government
Robinson Lower Library

"The Ambiguous Emergence of American Pharmaceutical Regulation, 1948-1961"

Commentators:
Jeremy Greene, History of Science, Harvard University
Chris Miller, Harvard University

November 10: Kenneth Mack, Harvard Law School
Robinson Lower Library

"Markets, Courtrooms and Race: The Creation of the Black Lawyer in post-World War I America"

Background Reading:

Darlene Clark Hine, "Black Lawyers and the Twentieth-Century Struggle for Constitutional Change," in John Hope Franklin and Genna Rae McNeil, eds, African Americans and The Living Constitution, pages 33-56.

Mark Tushnet, Making Civil Rights Law: Thurgood Marshall and The Supreme Court, 1936-1961, pages 6-19.

Michael Klarman, From Jim Crow to Civil Rights, pages 162-67.

Daniel Wickberg, "What is the History of Sensibilities? On Cultural Histories, Old and New," American Historical Review, Vol. 112, No. 3
(June 2007), pages 661-84.

Commentators:

Andrew Jewett, History Department, Harvard University
Siodhbhra Parkin, Harvard University

November 24: Diego Lopez-Medina, Universidad de los Andes, Colombia, Law
Robinson Lower Library

"The Legal Ideology of Early State Capitalism in Colombia, 1900-1930"

Background Reading:

Robert Sidney Smith, "The Wealth of Nations in Spain and Hispanic America, 1780-1830" in The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 65, No. 2, pp. 104-125.

Peter Evans and James E. Rauch, "Bureaucracy and Growth: A Cross-National Analysis of the Effects of 'Weberian' State Structures on Economic Growth" in the American Sociological Review, Vol. 64, No. 5 (Oct., 1999), pp. 748-765.

Commentators:

Morton Horwitz, Harvard Law School
Katie Palms, Harvard Law School

December 8: Robert Brenner, UCLA, Department of History
Robinson Lower Library

"What is Good For Goldman Sachs is Good For America: The Origins of the Current Crisis"

Background Reading:

Robert Brenner, The Economics of Global Turbulence, preface and afterward.

Robert Brenner, "New Boom or New Bubble? The Trajectory of the US Economy," New Left Review 25 Jan-Feb 2004.

Robert Brenner, "Towards the Precipice - Robert Brenner on the crisis in the US Economy," London Review of Books, Vol 25, Feb 6 2003

Commentators:

Scott Kurashige, History Department, University of Michigan
Ufuk Topkara, Harvard University

Spring Semester 2009

February 9, 2009: Peter Hudson, Department of African-American Studies, SUNY Buffalo

Lower Library, Robinson Hall

"Empire, Capital and The Credit Frontier: Winfield, Kansas, 1876 -- Santo Domingo, D.R., 1913"

Background Reading:

Cyrus Veeser, "Inventing Dollar Diplomacy: The Gilded Age Origins of the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine," Diplomatic History 27: 3 (June 2003)

Mary Speck. "Prosperity, Progress, and Wealth: Cuban Enterprise during the Early Republic, 1902-1927," Cuban Studies 36, 2005, pp. 50-86

David Scott, "Colonial Governmentality," Social Text 43 (Autumn, 1995), pp. 191-220

Commentators:
Vincent Brown, History Department, Harvard University
Kathryn Boodry, History Department, Harvard University

March 2, 2009: Uday Mehta, Amherst College, Department of Political Science

Basement seminar room, Robinson Hall

"Indian Constitutionalism: The Social and the Political Vision"

Background Reading:

David Scott, "Colonial Governmentality," Social Text 43 (Autumn, 1995), pp. 191-220

Michel Foucault, "Govenrmentality," in Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon and Peter Miller (eds) The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991, pp. 87-104.

Karl Marx, "On the Jewish Question," in R. Tucker, ed.The Marx-Engels Reader, New York: W.W. Norton, 1978, pp. 26-49.

Commentators:

Kerry Rittitch, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto
Sanjay Pinto, Department of Sociology and Social Policy, Harvard University

April 6, 2009: Amy Dru Stanley, Department of History, University of Chicago

Lower Library, Robinson Hall

"The Badges of Woman's Slavery: Abolition and Inviolate Rights"

Background Reading:

Ira Berlin, "Who Freed the Slaves? Emancipation and Its Meaning,"
in David W. Blight and Brooks D. Simpson, eds., Union and Emancipation: Essays on Politics and Race in the Civil War Era, (Kent, Ohio, 1997), 105-21.

Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 (1883) majority and dissent

Amy Dru Stanley, From Bondage to Contract, chapter 6 "The
Purchase of Women"

Carole Pateman, The Sexual Contract, chapter 5, "Wives,
Slaves, and Wage Slaves"

Akhil Amar, "Remember the Thirteenth," Constitutional
Commentary (Summer 1993)

Commentators:

John Stauffer, History of American Civilization, Harvard University
Liang Dong, Harvard Law School