2013 Summer Institute Participants

Please join us in welcoming the 2013 NEH Summer Institute students. Twenty-five students from US universities will be at Duke and the Center for the History of Political Economy from June 2 through June 22 to attend lectures on the history of economics. This will be the fourth year in a row that the Center has hosted a Summer Institute. For more on the Institute, please visit the Institute's home page on the Center's website.

 
  

Chris Barker completed his undergraduate degree in Philosophy at the University of Toronto, and his graduate work in Political Science at Claremont Graduate University.  Raised in the Toronto suburbs, he has held positions in political science at Harvard University and Boston College, and has one more year left of a fellowship in constitutional history at Ohio University.  His interest in the Duke Summer Insitute is simple:  he seeks to dispel the Carlyle-myth that political economy is the dismal science, and to complete a chapter on Millian economics for his book manuscript on JS Mill's political philosophy.  More specifically, he wants to explore Mill's defense of free market fairness in terms of Mill's vision of capitalists and workers associating together under the terms of limited liability legislation ("limited liability liberty" in the manuscript).  He is hoping that some friendly, knowledgeable members of the Institute will help him in this task.  In his spare time, he enjoys racquet sports, 16th/17th c. reproductive engravings, and satire. 
 
  

Venus Bivar is currently an assistant professor in the history department at Washington University in St. Louis. She came there by way of a ridiculously happy two years at Berkeley where she used a postdoc to teach herself economics, eat avocados, and hike in the hills. She regularly teaches a course titled "The Wheels of Commerce: From the Industrial Revolution to Global Capitalism," in which she attempts, with varying degrees of success, to combine modern economic history, a history of economics as a discipline, and an intellectual history of modern economic thought. With the Institute, she is hoping to figure out how to turn this hobbling three-legged beast of a class into an elegant and seamless trinity. When neither teaching nor hiking the (admittedly less impressive) hills of Missouri, she is writing a book that examines the political economy of industrialised farming in 20th century France. 
 
  Jill Bradbury is an associate professor of English at Gallaudet University. She grew up in San Diego, received bachelor's degrees in economics and English from UC Irvine, and her MA/PhD in English from Brown University.  She worked for three years at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, Rochester institute of Technology, before escaping to the warmer climes of Washington, D.C. Her research focuses on representations of economic ideas in eighteenth-century Anglo-Irish literature, but she has always wanted to write about the philosophical frameworks structuring non-mainstream modern economic thought.  She is working (slowly) on an MA in economics from George Mason University, when not chasing after her two- and four-year-olds.

 
 
  

Gene Callahan was a software engineer and a partner in an equity trading firm before making a career shift into academia.  He earned a master's degree at the London School of Economics and a PhD at Cardiff University.  He is the author of Oakeshott on Rome and America and a lecturer in economics at Purchase College. 
 

Marc Clauson was born in Huntington, WV, received his B.S. in physics and M.A. in political science from Marshall University, as well as a J.D. from West Virginia Univ., specializing in Law and Economics and Public Law.  He has also done Ph.D. work in Economics at West Virginia Univ. and Ph. D. work at the Univ. of Kentucky in European Intellectual History and Philosophy.  Ph.D in European History and Polity from University of the Orange Free State.  Published 2 books on hermeneutics and history and on theology of legal philosophy.  Two books underway on theological and philosophical anthropology in early modern history and on the use of special revelation in early modern political and legal thought.  Read and won award for 2 recent papers on Aquinas' intergration of natural law and special revelation in his Summa Theologia and on Friedrich Hayek's thought in relation to Christian theology.  At Cedarville Univ. since 2002.  Area of instruction includes history of ideas, historical theology and church history, political and economic thought and teaching in the university Honors program.  Married with 4 daughters, avid runner, collector of books, train watcher, and lover of thunderstorms. 
 
 David Cloutier is originally from Chicago, and received a BA (chemistry, religion) from Carleton College, and a PhD (religion) from Duke University.  He is associate professor of theology at Mount St. Mary's University, where he teaches courses in moral theology, sexual ethics, and Catholic social teaching.  He is currently on sabbatical, funded by a grant from the Louisville Institute, writing a book on the moral vice of luxury.  His interest in the Institute is to deepen his self-taught economics knowledge, and particularly to understand how economists can help him understand what a contemporary critique of luxury might look like.  He enjoys running, music, singing in choirs, and baseball.  And he will tell everyone that Elmo's Diner on Ninth Street still has the best pancakes he's ever tasted.

 
 Jennifer Cohen is an assistant professor in the economics department at Whitman College in Walla Walla, WA.  She arrived in the Wallas by way of a BS in geography and sociology from Florida State University, an MA in political science/global political economy from the University of Arizona, and a PhD in economics from the University of Massachusetts.  She completed fieldwork in Johannesburg, South Africa, while affliated with the University of the Witwatersand.  While in South Africa, she discovered an enduring love for climbing rocks and sauvignon blanc.  Current teaching includes political economy of women, macro, global political economy, and in the near future, history of economic thought.

 
 
 Michael Creswell, born near Chicago. I received my BA in political science from Indiana University Northwest, while my MA in international relations and PhD in history are from the University of Chicago.  Currently, I teach Cold War history at Florida State University, where I'm an associate professor.  I applied to the Institute because learning about the history of political economy from top-notch scholars was too promising of an opportunity to pass up.  I enjoy learning new things, and this experience will have the added benefit of teaching me things that will also help my career.  In my limited spare time, I collect vintage posters.

 
Brandon Dupont is an Associate Professor of Economics at Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA.  He received his PhD in economics from the University of Kansas in 2005 and was previously a Visiting Assistant Professor at Wellesley College.  He teaches microeconomics, American economic history, history of economic thought, and political economy.  His current research is on the financial crisis of the 1890's, a topic on which he has published a number of papers.  He has also done joint work on the history of American travel in Europe from 1820 to 2000.  His previous research in labor economics dealt with the reasons for female underrepresentation in the information technology workforce.  In what little spare time he has, Brandon enjoys hiking in the beautiful Pacific Northwest and sampling as much coffee as he can!

 
 
 Joshua Foster is a PhD candidate in economics at the University of Arkansas.  I joined the economics department at Arkansas in 2009, after receiving my undergraduate degree from Bentley University.  I am passionate about teaching, and I hope attending this institute will allow me to bring a broader narrative of economics into the classroom.  On sunny weekends I prefer to be running, golfing, or cooking up something amazing.

 
Keoka Grayson:  My fields of interest are Economic History and Health.  My dissertation focused on the impact of income inequality on welfare as measured by infant mortality and still births during the Great Depression.  I am a graduate of Xavier University of Louisiana, the only historically black and Catholic university in the country.  There I earned a B.S. in Economics and minored in African American Studies.  I went on to earn a master's degree in Applied Mathematics from the University of New Orleans.  I joined the HWS faculty in 2012 earning a PhD in Economics from the University of Arizona in the summer of 2012.  I am extremely excited about this program.  When different disciplines get together, the conversations can be so much deeper.

 

Kevin Guilfoy is associate professor of Philosophy at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI.  He graduated from the University of Vermont in 1990 and earned his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Washington in 1997.  Before going to Carroll, he was an assistant professor of philosophy at Murray State University in Kentucky and the University of Akron in Ohio.  His dissertation and most of his research is in 12th century logic, mostly Peter Abelard.  He designed and directed the Philophy Politics and Economics program at Carroll.  He teaches interdisciplinary classes in PPE and hopes to learn how to do this better.  He also hopes that the Institute will give him a firmer grounding in contemporary economics (everything since the 14th century) that will inform and guide his research in medieval political economy.


 

 
 
 John Harris is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Texas Christian University.  He received his PhD in philosophy from the University of Colorado, and his BA in government and philosophy from New Mexico State University.  He teaches courses in the philosophy of law, political philosophy, and ethics.  At present his research is focused on rationality and cognitive biases, and during the summer I plan to explore how these issues arise in the history of political economy.  Otherwise, I try to get out on my bike as often as possible, but that's not nearly as often as I would like.

 
 
 Ronald Mawby:  I am neither economist nor historian; my doctorate is in psychology from Clark University in Massachusetts.  I teach undergraduates in a non-disciplinary liberal arts 'great books' program at a small public HBCU in Kentucky.  From the Institute I hope to learn more about the context of the Scottish Enlightenment, learn something of Institutional economics and gain some clarity about the grounds for opinions about the proper role of the government in the economy.  I also hope to be bumped out of my intellectual grooves, and be surprised.

 
Christina McRorie is a doctoral student in the Theology, Ethics, and Culture program in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia.  She has a BA in History and Religion from Pepperdine University, an MAR in Christian Ethics from Yale University's Divinity School, and spent a few years before returning to graduate studies providing financial empowerment services in low income neighborhoods in Boston, Mass.  Her research interests focus on how Christian theological ethics can constructively address the moral dimensions of global capitalism and consumer society. Christina is originally from Anchorage, Alaska, and enjoys deep sea fishing with family every summer.

 

Alan Meese is the Ball Professor of Law at William and Mary.  He earned his A.B. in Ancient Greek and Economics from the College of William and Mary and a J.D. from the University of Chicago in 1989, where he was an Olin Fellow in Law and Economics.  After law school Meese clerked for Judge Frank Easterbrook on the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court of the US.  He was admitted to the Virginia Bar and practiced law at Skadden, Arps, Slate Meagher and Flom in Washington, D.C. before joining the William and Mary faculty in 1995.  Meese teaches Antitrust, Economic Analysis of Law, and Corporations and has also taught Contracts, Torts, Constitutional Law and a Seminar on the Federalist Papers.  His research examines the economic premises that have informed antitrust doctrine and often critiques that doctrine in light of revised economic understandings, particularly transaction cost economics.
 
 David Menefee-Libey has taught at Pomona College since 1989.  He earned a BA from St. Olaf College and a PhD from the University of Chicago, both in political science.  He has also worked for the Community Renewal Society in Chicago, at the Brookings Institution, and for the RAND Corporation.  He teaches about American politics, American political thought, and public policy analysis.  He has supervised hundredes of undergraduate research projects, and he's written quite a bit about both campaigns and elections, and the politics of elementary and secondary education policy.  In the seminar, he is especially interested in the origins and development of contemporary notions that economic collective action through markets is private and somehow "natural," that political collective action through government and policy is unnatural and distortive, and that the separate spheres of economics and politics are in opposition to one another.  He's currently writing high school and college-level curricula and a book about the interdependence of governments and corporations, and more broadly about the interdependence of the public and private sectors in the US.
Matthew David Mitchell earned a doctorate in history from the University of Pennsylvania in 2012.  He is now a postdoctoral fellow at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.  His research interests center on the joint-stock companies of early modern England, especially the Royal African Company and its involvement in the transatlantic slave trade.
 
 James Morrison:  As an undergraduate, I studied history at the University of Chicago and Cambridge University.  I received a PhD in political science and an MA in history from Stanford University in 2008.  After graduating, I took up a position in political science at Middlebury College.  This past year, I was on leave at Princeton University.  I am particularly interested in international political economy and the history of political and economic ideas.  My current book project analyzes the influence of three seminal theorists--John Locke, Adam Smith, and JM Keynes--on pivotal shifts in Britain's foreign economic policy across the last several centuries.  Over and above scholarly pursuits, I enjoy spending time with my wife and three daughters. 

 
Mo Moulton is a historian of modern Britain.  She is a lecturer and interim director of studies in History and Literature at Harvard University.  Her first book, Ireland and the Irish in Interwar England, is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press.  Her new project will be a study of co-operatives in late 19th and early 20th century Britain and Ireland.

 
 		 John Murray: I am JR Hyde Professor of Political Economy at Rhodes College.  My PhD is in economics, from Ohio State, and my BA from Oberlin is also in economics.  My field is economic history, that is, the study of history from an economic perspective.  My most recent book is The Charleston Orphan House (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2013).  I will be teaching new courses next year in our great books curriculum and in the history of economic thought, and I expect the Summer Institute will help greatly with both assignments. 
 
 Helen Scharber, assistant professor of economics at Hampshire College, holds a BA in economics from Knox College, an MA in environmental politics from Keele University, and an MA and PhD in economics from the University of Massachusetts.  Her research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of political economy, environmental justice and health.  She is also a staff economist for the Center for Popular Economics, where she teaches workshops designed to demystify the economy for activists. 
 

Scott Scheall is a jack of a few trades and truly master of none.  He is an instructor in the Science, Technology, and Society department at Arizona State University and received a PhD in philosophy from the same institution.  His research interests lie at the intersection of public policy and the history and philosophy of economic thought. He will spend the upcoming academic year as a research fellow at the HOPE Center investigating the role of ignorance in F.A. Hayek's theory of the trade cycle and its relation to Hayek's later methodological writings as well as the role of economics in the development of the mathematician Karl Menger's argument for Methodological tolerance.  That said, by far the most interesting thing about Scott is that he owns the Greatest Dog in the World, an eight-year old Coonhound mix named Larry, who enjoys eating, sleeping, going to the dog park, and vigorous scratches behind the ear.
  Solomon Stein is a Mercatus Center PhD fellow at George Mason University, where I work on the history of the Austrian School of Economics, economic methodology, and the economics of online societies.  I received my BS in Economics from Towson University where I was fascinated by the ideas of market process and public choice economics and from there went on to George Mason to develop those interests further.  My current work is on understanding the intellectual foundations of Austrian economics' distinctiveness, as well as the role of culture and institutions in shaping economic outcomes in virtual worlds.  I look forward to connecting more both with the ideas of the history of political economy and the community interested in those ideas.

 
Richard Weiner grew up in Massachusetts, received a BA in History from the University of Massachusetts, and a PhD in History from UC Irvine.  Currently he is an associate professor and Chair, Dept. of History, Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne.  He is also Book Review Editor for Enterprise and Society.  Over the years, he has done a lot of reading, writing, and teaching on the history of economy and economic ideas in Mexico and Latin America.  He is particularly interested in Alexander von Humboldt's writings on Latin America.  At the Institute he hopes to deepen his knowledge of the history of economic thought.