The Economic Humanities and the History of Financial Advice

Abstract

This article charts the emerging interdisciplinary field of the Economic Humanities, and highlights a recent research project on the history of US financial advice writing as an example of what this field might look like in practice. We begin by arguing that the Economic Humanities distinguishes itself from the New Economic Criticism that flourished in the 1990s by virtue of a broadened methodological scope, made possible by greater interaction with various economically oriented branches of the social sciences. We then discuss our History of Financial Advice project as one example of what the Economic Humanities might do, highlighting three especially significant moments in the development of this genre of US writing: the decades around the turn of the twentieth century, either side of the Wall Street Crash of 1929, and the era following the emergence of a canonical body of financial theory in the early 1970s. Finally, in a brief conclusion we point to key areas in which the Economic Humanities has potential to do important critical work in the coming years.

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