About the Conference
December 20, 2013
by Diana Greenwald | Filed in: Conferences
This one-day conference took place on May 8th, 2014 at Wolfson College, Oxford. It brings together scholars from a number of diverse disciplines to examine the relationship between creative output and economic forces in the long nineteenth century, a period that saw a radical transformation in the economic circumstances facing artists. It will feature scholars who have produced detailed qualitative studies of the impact of economic context on artistic production and those who have turned to quantitative methods to study cultural output. Speakers will include economists, historians, economic historians, art historians, and modern linguists who work on different kinds of cultural production (art, music, and literature) in diverse geographic settings.
This event aims to build on a small but growing body of work in the humanities that either actively considers the economic context in its analysis of the arts, makes use of quantitative methods drawn from the social sciences or does both things simultaneously. Examples of this kind of work include studies in English literature by Franco Moretti and William St Clair, work in musicology by Cyril Ehrlich, and in the history of art by economist David Galenson. Currently, however, there is an insufficient dialogue between humanities scholars and this growing body of innovative work with the potential to challenge widespread myths and established historiographies. This conference seeks to encourage the development and advancement of that dialogue, particularly among graduate students.
The day will be organized around three panels that juxtapose scholars from difference disciplines, but who focus either on the same type of cultural output or the same geographic setting. Each panel will feature a twenty-minute presentation from each speaker, followed by a ten-minute question and answer session from a discussant and then twenty minutes of open-floor discussion.
Genius for Sale! Abstracts & Papers >>
<< Genius for Sale! About the Speakers