The Exchange

As the new academic year begins, we offer a round-up of workshops, forums, and discussion groups in business and economic history; please check each website for more detailed information; some groups may  not have posted Fall 2010 information. In addition to their value for those able to participate directly, these groups often maintain mailing lists and sometimes make speakers' papers freely available. Business History Seminar , HBS Business History Unit Seminars , LSE Business History @ Erasmus Seminars Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society (Hagley) Research Seminars Columbia University Seminar in Economic History Harvard Economic History Workshop History and Economics Seminar , Harvard University Institute for Economic and Business History Research , Stockholm Northwestern Workshop in Economic History PEAES Fellows Colloquium , Library Company of Philadelphia Penn Economic History Forum Von Gremp Workshop in Economic and Entrepreneurial History...

The Library Company of Philadelphia's Program in Early American Economy and Society ( PEAES ), in collaboration with the Visual Culture Program , will hold a conference on "Representations of Economy: Lithography in America from 1820 to 1860."   The conference will meet in Philadelphia on October 15, 2010.  It is free and open to all those interested, but registration is required.  As the organizers explain: Interior view of L. J. Levy & Co.’s Dry Goods Store, Philadelphia, c. 1857 (Free Library of Philadelphia) Most Americans living in the four decades after 1820 witnessed rapid and deep changes in their economic conditions. . . .The great variety of changes wrought in America during this era was captured in print by an array of artists, draftsmen, printers, and distributors in the new profession of lithography. They created hundreds of graphic works, printed ephemera, and stunning hand-colored plates that conveyed the nature of economic changes. Lithogra...

The Harvard-Newcomen Postdoctoral Fellowship in Business History is awarded for twelve months' residence, study, and research at Harvard Business School, July 1, 2011-June 30, 2012. The fellowship is open to scholars who, within the last ten years, have received a Ph.D. in history, economics, or a related discipline. The fellowship has two purposes: The first is to enable scholars to engage in research that will benefit from the resources of Harvard Business School and the larger Boston scholarly community. About two-thirds of the fellow's time will be available for research of his or her own choosing. A travel fund and a book fund will be provided. The second purpose is to provide an opportunity for the fellow to participate in the activities of Harvard Business School. Approximately one-third of the fellow's time will be devoted to school activities, including attendance of the Business History Seminar, and working with faculty teaching the business history courses offere...

McIntyre Hall The School of Business and Leadership at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington, announces two openings for full-time, tenure-track positions open to candidates with a Ph.D. in business history. 1. Assistant or Associate Professor of Management (for complete posting and instructions). The person hired will teach undergraduate courses in management, primarily introductory management as well as elective courses in areas such as human resource management, international business, European or Asian business, research methods, leadership, or strategy.  Qualifications include Ph.D. (ABD considered) in management and a commitment to undergraduate teaching and liberal arts education. Will consider Ph.D. in appropriate related disciplines, such as psychology, economics, political science, sociology, education, communication, and history.  2. Assistant or Associate Professor of Marketing (for complete posting and instructions). The person hired wi...

The German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C., has issued calls for papers for two upcoming conferences of interest to business and economic historians: I. "Economic Crime and the State in the Twentieth Century: A German-American Comparison," to be held at the GHI on April 14-16, 2011; the convenor is Mario Daniels. The call for papers: In view of the widely reported cases of corruption and fraud in companies such as Volkswagen, Siemens, and Enron, as well as the public outrage that followed in the wake of these scandals, it is surprising to note that relatively little historical research on economic crime in the twentieth century has been conducted to date. Although neighboring disciplines such as law, economics, political science, and sociology offer attractive approaches to the phenomenon of economic crime, they reflect little on the continuous changes in how illegal and immoral behavior has been defined and understood in the business world since the lat...

The Business History Group in Harvard Business School’s Entrepreneurial Management Unit and Baker Library Historical Collections announce a new online resource — Latin American Business History: Resources and Research . Laura Linard from Historical Collections explains: The Business History Group has made the globalization of research and teaching of business history a high priority and has a strong interest in facilitating research on Latin American business history, especially within the Southern Cone of the continent, initially Chile and Argentina. . . . Included in this Web resource are excerpts from oral histories with twenty-one leading business practitioners from Argentina and Chile, conducted by HBS Research Fellow Dr. Andrea Lluch.  . . .  These interviews are a valuable resource for research on the business history of Argentina and Chile since the 1960s. The interview transcripts are available only for academic and scholarly research upon request from Baker Library ...

Kim Phillips-Fein's recent book, Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan (Norton, 2009, and out in paperback in January 2010), was recently mentioned by NYT op-ed columnist Frank Rich , who wrote: "[Tea Party financial backers] are the latest incarnation of what the historian Kim Phillips-Fein labeled 'Invisible Hands' in her prescient 2009 book of that title: those corporate players who have financed the far right ever since the du Pont brothers spawned the American Liberty League in 1934 to bring down F.D.R." Phillips-Fein , who teaches history at New York University, has written and spoken about her research widely in the last year.  Her own pieces can be found on The Huffington Post ( "Fighting the New Deal All Over Again" and "'Invisible Hands': The Dangerous Power of Business" ), and video presentations on BookTV ,  Progressive Book Club , and HNN (2009 OAH paper). Phillips...