week by week
date work

Thursday,

September 3

Discussion: Housekeeping & Introductions

Discussion: Why Business History

Tuesday,

September 8

BLOG URL DUE

Thursday,

September 10

Reading:

  • Pauline Maier, “The Revolutionary Origins of the American Corporation,” William and Mary Quarterly 1993 50(1): 51-84 (JSTOR)
    Mark Egnal and Joseph Ernst, “An Economic Interpretation of the American Revolution,” William & Mary Quarterly 1972 29(1): 3-32. (JSTOR)
  • McGuire, Robert A. and Ohsfeldt, Robert L., “Economic Interests and The American Constitution: A Quantitative Rehabilitation of Charles A. Beard,” Journal of Economic History 1984 44(2): 509-519. (JSTOR)
  • Naomi R. Lamoreaux, “Banks, Kinship, and Economic Development:  The New England Case,” Journal of Economic History, 1986 46(3): 647-667 (JSTOR)

BLOG POST #1

Thursday,

September 15

LAST DAY TO DROP CLASSES WITH NO TUITION PENALTY

LAST DAY TO ADD CLASSES

Thursday,

September 17

Reading: Lords of Finance

  • Liaquat Ahamed, The Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World

BLOG POST #2 DUE

Monday,

September 21

Presentation

  • Economists Robert Samuelson and Liaquat Ahamed
    Monday, September 21, 7:30pm–8:30pm
  • The Fairfax Theatre Project at Old Town Plaza, 10427 North Street, Fairfax, VA (above Pacers)
  • Nationally respected economists Samuelson, author of The Great Inflation and Its Aftermath, and Ahamed, author of Lords of Finance, offer broad historic contexts for understanding todays pressing financial problems and for forecasting what’s still ahead.

Thursday,

September 24

Reading:

  • Alfred D. Chandler Jr., The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business
  • Richard Sylla, “Federal Policy, Banking Market Structure, and Capital Mobilization in The United States, 1863-1913,” Journal of Economic History 1969 29(4): 657-686. (JSTOR)
  • Lamoreaux, Naomi R., Raff, Daniel M. G., and Peter Temin. "Beyond Markets and Hierachies: Toward a New Synthesis of Business History," American Historical Review 108, no. 2 (2003): 404-433. (America: History & Life)

BLOG POST #3 DUE

Thursday,

October 1

Special Guest:

  • Michael O’Malley

Reading:

  • Hugh Rockoff, “The ‘Wizard of Oz’ as a Monetary Allegory,” Journal of Political Economy 1990 98(4): 739-760. (America: History & Life)
  • Michael O'Malley, “Specie and Species: Race and the Money Question in Nineteenth-Century America,” American Historical Review 1994 99(2): 369-395. (America: History & Life)
  • Nell Irvin Painter, “Thinking about the Languages of Money and Race: A Response to Michael O’Malley, ‘Specie and Species,’” American Historical Review 1994 99(2): 369-408. (America: History & Life)

BLOG POST #4 DUE

Friday,

October 2

LAST DAY TO DROP A CLASS

Thursday,

October 8

NO CLASS

Reading:

  • Douglas Brinkley, Wheels for the World: Henry Ford, His Company, and a Century of Progress (the half that reads Brinkley will read Liss)
  • Richard S. Tedlow, Giants of Enterprise: Seven Business Innovators and the Empires They Built (the half that reads Tedlow will read Drieser)
  • Viewing: Business & Culture: Business at the Movies (See list in Film Resources)

BLOG POST #5 DUE

Thursday,

October 15

Reading:

  • Philip Scranton, Endless Novelty

PAPER TOPIC DUE

BLOG POST #6 DUE

Thursday,

October 22

Reading:

  • Susan Strasser, Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the Mass Market
  • Walter A. Friedman, Birth of a Salesman: The Transformation of Selling in America

BLOG POST #7 DUE

Thursday,

October 29

Reading:

  • Regina Lee Blaszczyk, Imagining Consumers: Design and Innovation from Wedgwood to Corning
  • Shelley Nickles, “Preserving Women: Refrigerator Design as Social Process in the 1930s,” Technology & Culture, 2002 43(4): 693-727. (Project Muse)

BLOG POST #8 DUE

Thursday,

November 5

Reading:

  • Roland Marchand, Creating the Corporate Soul: The Rise of Public Relations and Corporate Imagery in American Big Business
  • Elsbeth Brown, The Corporate Eye: Photography and the Rationalization of American Commercial Culture, 1884–1929

BLOG POST #9 DUE

Thursday,

November 12

Reading:

  • Theodore Drieser, The Financier
  • David Liss, The Whiskey Rebels: A Novel

BLOG POST #10 DUE

Thursday,

November 19

Reading:

  • John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash of 1929
  • Cormac ÓGráda and Eugene N. White, “The Panics of 1854 and 1857: A View from the Immigrant Industrial Savings Bank,” Journal of Economic History 63, no. 1 (2003): 213-240. (ProQuest)
  • Scott Nelson, The Real Great Depression
  • Carlson, Mark, “Causes of Bank Suspensions in the Panic of 1893,” Explorations in Economic History 2005 42(1): 56-80. (ScienceDirect Journals)

BLOG POST #11 DUE

Thursday,

November 26

THANKSGIVING BREAK-NO CLASS

Thursday,

December 3

Reading:

  • McCusker, John J. “The Demise of Distance: The Business Press and the Origins the Origins of the Information Reformation in the Early Modern Atlantic World,” American Historical Review 110, no. 2 (2005): 295-32. (America: History & Life)
  • White, Richard, “Information, Markets, and Corruption: Transcontinental Railroads in the Gilded Age,” Journal of American History 90, no. 1 (2003): 19-43. (America: History & Life)

BLOG POST #12 DUE

Thursday,

December 10

FINAL PAPER DUE

SELF-EVALUATION DUE