Economics 49S.01: JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES
Syllabus: Fall 2008
Professor E. Roy Weintraub
Office: Social Sciences 320; Phone (and voice mail): 660-1838; E-mail: erw@duke.edu
This seminar will examine the life and
work of one of the truly
important figures of the twentieth century, John Maynard Keynes.
The context of the development of Keynes's
thought in late Victorian
and the influence of Moore and the
Apostles, sets the stage
for an examination of Keynes's emerging
role as government advisor,
journalist, teacher, and economist. The
seminar will study
his connections to the Bloomsbury Group as
well as 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.
Required reading will be the single volume
(paperback) abridgement of the 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.
As is appropriate for a First Year Seminar,
each class will be organized as a discussion about the weekly reading. Each
class member will prepare a one to two page “response paper” each week to that
week’s reading. Those papers will be the basis for the class discussion in the
first part of each week’s class. In the second part of each class two students
will lead a discussion based on their close reading of either some assigned
web-based material, or an essay or essays in Keynes’s Essays in Persuasion. As a final semester exercise, 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).
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 to be discussed in the second half of each class are noted in curly
brackets as {X-Y}
1.
BBC video on
Keynes, titled “Spend and Prosper” [1]
2.
Growing up [2-3];
{first three chapter of John Neville Keynes’s The Scope
and Method of Political Economy}
3.
Eton and Cambridge [4-5]; {Eton}
4.
Cambridge Friends [6-8]; {Lytton Strachey’s “Florence Nightingale” in Eminent Victorians}
5.
From Cambridge to the Treasury via Bloomsbury
[9-11]; {Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own (Chapter 1)}
6.
Keynes in the War Government
[12-14]; {The Arts -- Roger
Fry, Duncan Grant, and Vanessa Bell; 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
[25-26]; {2.4}
11. To The General Theory
[27-29]; {4.1,4.2}
12. The General Theory of Employment, Interest,
and Money [30]; {4.3,4.4}
13. Keynes and World War II [31-35]; {6.2}
14. Constructing the Post War World [36-40]
15. 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.
It is not “ok” to miss class. This is a seminar, and engaged
participation is very important.
Grades will be based
on (1) weekly response papers: 35%; (2) participation in general class
discussions: 35%; (3) leadership of a discussion: 10%; (4) final paper: 20%.