From Political Economy to Economics through Nineteenth-Century Literature

Elaine Hadley is Professor of English and Gender Studies at the University of Chicago, USA.Audrey Jaffe is Professor of English at the University of Toronto, Canada.Sarah Winter is Professor of English and Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, USA.

“This fascinating and useful volume of essays marks a new stage in the study of political economy from the standpoint of Victorian studies. … this volume is a welcome opening in Victorian studies to some non-British and even radical approaches to economic history. … Though unified by their engagement with nineteenth-century political economy, the essays in this volume splinter out in many directions, each engaging with a new set of contemporary theorists and problems.” (Eleanor Courtemanche, Victorian Studies, Vol. 64 (3), 2022)

• Chapter 1: Introduction Reclaiming the Social, Elaine Hadley, Audrey Jaffe, and Sarah Winter.- Chapter 2: Human Capital Becker the Obscure: Human Capital Theory, Victorian Liberalisms, and the Future of Higher Education, Elaine Hadley.- Chapter 3: Exploitation On the Use and Abuse of the Nineteenth Century: Towards a Genealogy of Exploitation, Zachary Samalin.- Chapter 4: Slavery Forgetting Cairnes: The Slave Power and the Political Economy of Racism, Gordon Bigelow.- Chapter 5: Expansion Expansion in the Fossil Economy and Craik’s John Halifax, Gentleman, Ayşe Çelikkol.- Chapter 6: Sustainability Sustainability & Its Discontents: The View from the Nineteenth Century, Deanna K. Kreisel.- Chapter 7: Rent “When a House is So Much More”: Character, Tenancy, and Property in Victorian Fiction,Audrey Jaffe Chapter 8: Corporation The Zero-Sum Game of Corporate Personhood, Clare Eby.- Chapter 9: Choice Narrating Choice in Later Nineteenth-Century Novels and Neoclassical Economics, Amanpal Garcha.- Chapter 10: Global Inequality Documenting Globalization in Rural India: The Conflation of the “Freedom of the Market” with The “Freedom of the Person” in The New York Times, Mukti Lakhi Mangharam.- Chapter 11: Equity Henry Mayhew and Thomas Piketty on Equity and Inequality, Sarah Winter.