This one-day conference explores the increasing influence of financial markets on human behavior and identity. How do the increasing prominence of financial markets in the economy, media, and politics, reshape the ways people respond to their social world? How do individuals imagine chance, fate, or happenstance when it gets re-conceptualized as risk and juxtaposed with reward? What histories make possible the rise of financial markets to social power? In asking such questions, this conference aims to gain purchase on the nature of contemporary social life. More pointedly, however, the conference seeks to put historians and literary scholars in conversation with social scientists. Such conversations are needed to bridge disciplinary and generational divides about how social change affects individuals on structural, emotional, and imaginative levels.
Speakers include: Gerald Davis (Ross Business School,UM,), Jonathan Freedman (English, UM), Greta Krippner (Sociology, UM), Jonathan Levy (History, Princeton), Michael Zakim (History, Tel Aviv). Respondents include Nan Zhang Da (English, UM), Mikell Hyman (Sociology, UM), Jay Cook (History, UM), Jason Puksar (UWisconsin, Milwaukee.)
For more information about the schedule and presenters, visit http://approachestofinance.tumblr.com/ If interested in attending, please RSVP to hymik@umich.edu
