Economics 195
Syllabus: Spring 2012
Office: Social Sciences 07D; Phone (and voice mail):
660-1838; E-mail: erw@duke.edu
This seminar will examine the life and
work of one of the most
important figures of the twentieth century, John Maynard Keynes.
The context of the development of Keynes's
thought in late Victorian Cambridge,
and the influence of Moore and the Apostles, and Alfred Marshall, sets the
stage
for an examination of Keynes's emerging role as government advisor,
journalist, teacher, and economist. The seminar will study, in addition to his
economic writings, his connections to the Bloomsbury Group and his
non-economic writings, both political and biographical. The emergent focus
will be Keynes's influential General Theory of Employment, Interest, and
Money,
its intellectual background, and its
consequences.
Each
student should purchase the single volume paperback abridgement (of his three
volume biography of Keynes) by Lord Robert Skidelsky titled John Maynard Keynes 1883-1946: Economist,
Statesman, Philosopher. There are additional readings from Keynes’s
book Essays
in Persuasion (paperback), which is also
available at the Duke bookstore. Students might also wish to purchase Skidelsky’s 2009
paperback (or Kindle) book Keynes: The
Return of the Master. Other readings will be linked
at the Course Materials section on the course’s Blackboard site.
The
class will meet once a week, with a break after 75 minutes. Each class will be
organized as a discussion about the weekly reading. Before the break the class
will discuss the Skidelsky reading, while after the break the class will
discuss the other reading for that week. Each class member will prepare a one to two page “response paper” each week to that week’s
reading (to be turned in at the end of each class). Those papers will be the
basis for the class discussion each week. It is not
“ok” to miss class. For the midterm exercise (due in the last class before
Spring Break) all students (who are roughly the ages of the
(great-)grandchildren Keynes never had) will write a paper of 10-15 pages
examining/assessing/appraising/responding to Keynes’s 1930 essay “The Economic
Possibilities for our Grandchildren” (also contained in Essays in Persuasion). As a final
semester exercise (due at the time of the Registrar scheduled Final
Examination), students will write a 10-15 page paper in the form of a review
essay on Skidelsky’s 2009 book Keynes:
The Return of the Master. Grades will be calculated on: Response papers,
25%; Midterm paper, 25%; Final paper, 25%; Participation in discussion, 25%.
`
TENTATIVE
COURSE OUTLINE
Number
n is "For the nth week ...". Required
chapters for reading and discussion each week, in the Skidelsky biography, are
noted in square brackets as [X-Y]. Essays or other material are noted in curly
brackets as {X-Y}
1. BBC video on
Keynes, titled “Spend and Prosper” [1]
3. Eton and
Cambridge [4-5]; {Marshall
in The New Palgrave Online through Duke
Library}
5. From
Cambridge to the Treasury via Bloomsbury [9-11]; {Keynes’ “Recent Events in
India” in Economic Journal 1909 via JSTOR;Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own (Chapter 1)}
6. Keynes in the War Government [12-14]; {Keynes’ “War and the
Financial System, August, 1914” in Quarterly
Journal of Economics, September 1915 in JSTOR; Bertrand Russell’s “Why
Men Fight” }
7. The Peace
Treaty [15-16]; {1.1-1.3}
8. Keynes in
the Post War period [17-20];{2.1,2.2}
9. Monetary Reform, Gold, and the Liberal Party [21-24]; {3.1, 3.5}
10. The Slump and the Treatise [25-27]; {2.4}
11. The General
Theory [28-30] {4.3,4.4}
12. Keynes and World War II [31-35]
13. Constructing the Post War World
[36-40]
14. A Life’s Conclusion
[41-epilogue]
Note:
I will try to hold to this schedule, but reserve the option to move topics
around a bit as time and interests dictate.
Last Revised December 28, 2011