Transcript

Learning outcomes

• Explain the ways in which critical, cultural and literary history and theory contributes to our understanding of three central economic concepts – money, credit, markets.
• Evaluate the differences between a number of central critical traditions and theoretical approaches (eg the history of money as credit versus the history of money as a commodity).
• Describe the origins and the purpose of the contemporary financial market and the ways in which it functions.
• Identify and discuss the ways in which a range of literary and visual texts offer us a critical insight into these histories and give them a social and political relevance.
• Critically reflect on the ways in which the visual appearance of money signals it as a source of authority and locates it within a specific place and time.
• Evaluate the implications of an historical approach to money that reads it as process of dematerialisation (from barter to gold to paper).
• Develop an understanding of the formation of money in contemporary society and why this is a history of credit and how it has been made sense of through a recurring visual and linguistic imagery (eg the bubble and the balloon).
• Understand the history and function of the stock exchange and the way in which it has moved from a physical location to a set of highly complex mathematical operations.
• Reflect upon your own relationship and access to the idea of the financial market and your knowledge of it.
• Examine how the financial crisis was given a narrative in the mainstream press and what this suggested for the need to change the conditions in which it had occurred.

Syllabus

Week 1

• An introduction to the disciplinary debates regarding the function and histories of money.
• An exploration of money’s representations in art, literature and popular culture.

Week 2

• An introduction to stocks, shares, investment and the national debt.
• An exploration of how investment cultures have changed and the role that technology and financial advice have played in them.

Week 3

• An analysis of the causes and forms of financial crisis.
• An exploration of four case studies - the South Sea Bubble, the Railway Mania, the Wall Street Crash and the Global Financial Crisis of 2008.