Course Handbook - Faculty of History - University of Cambridge
Course Handbook - Faculty of History - University of Cambridge
Course Handbook - Faculty of History - University of Cambridge
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technological and financial innovations as focal points <strong>of</strong> asset-price bubbles. By bringing<br />
new capital into markets, asset-price bubbles serve first to foster and then, by their collapse,<br />
to resolve what economists describe as the ‘lemons problem.’ Those who cannot tell good<br />
wine from bad will overpay for the latter but reject the former as commanding too high a<br />
price. Yet this is also how untested ideas attract financing. In Weeks 4, 5 and 6, students will<br />
learn about the development <strong>of</strong> international capital markets and their role in financing both<br />
state and private ventures. Students will decide for themselves what both behavioral finance<br />
and closely historicized studies <strong>of</strong> market microstructure can <strong>of</strong>fer historians <strong>of</strong> financial<br />
capitalism. Students will learn why modern financial and economic historians consider<br />
interpretations <strong>of</strong> asset-price bubbles pivotal to theoretical debates about rational and<br />
efficient markets. In the second half <strong>of</strong> the course, we will apply these models to three<br />
nineteenth and twentieth-century financial bubbles. Students will then develop their own<br />
research projects in which they interrogate the market realities behind a financial bubble <strong>of</strong><br />
their choosing.<br />
General Reading<br />
• Eichengreen, Barry. Globalizing Capital: A <strong>History</strong> <strong>of</strong> the International Monetary<br />
System (Princeton <strong>University</strong> Press, 2008).<br />
• Kindleberger, Charles. Manias, Panics and Crashes: A <strong>History</strong> <strong>of</strong> Financial Crisis.<br />
(John Wiley & Sons, 2000).<br />
• Michie, Ranald. The Global Securities Market (Oxford <strong>University</strong> Press, 2008)<br />
• Vogel, Harold. Financial Market Bubbles and Crashes (<strong>Cambridge</strong> <strong>University</strong> Press,<br />
2009).<br />
6) Language and society (a course taught by the MPhil in Early Modern <strong>History</strong>)<br />
Dr P Withington<br />
This course invites students to think about what words meant in early-modern Europe – not<br />
merely to social and intellectual elites (though they are certainly part <strong>of</strong> the mix) but also<br />
ordinary men and women. In so doing it encourages reflection about the implications <strong>of</strong><br />
these meanings – and their changes and continuities over time – for social attitudes,<br />
relationships, and practices. These aims reflect not only the impact <strong>of</strong> the infamous<br />
‘linguistic turn’ on early modern studies, but also that some <strong>of</strong> the most interesting recent<br />
work on language and meaning has been done at the intersection between literary,<br />
intellectual, and social history. To this end students will discuss the way historians have<br />
approached language and discourse over the past forty years and consider the cultural<br />
movements that transformed European vernaculars from the later fifteenth century. They<br />
will be introduced to the kinds <strong>of</strong> evidence available to historians and the possibilities <strong>of</strong><br />
interpretation. They will also think about particular words and vocabularies that have<br />
attracted especial historical attention. In the final week they will research a word <strong>of</strong> their<br />
own choice. The focus will be on English, though there will be opportunities for students to<br />
consider words in other vernaculars if they so wish. There will be a moderate amount <strong>of</strong><br />
preparation for each class, and students will be expected to give a short presentation over the<br />
course <strong>of</strong> the term. Assessment will be by an essay on one aspect <strong>of</strong> the course (title agreed<br />
with the tutor) and by evidence <strong>of</strong> satisfactory participation.<br />
Classes are likely to cover:<br />
• Approaches to language and society<br />
• Humanism and vernacularization<br />
• Sources and interpretation<br />
• Economic vocabularies<br />
• Political language<br />
• Language and social identity<br />
• Personal research<br />
Some Suggestions for Introductory Reading<br />
Robert M. Burns, ed., Historiography. Critical Concepts in Historical Studies (New York,<br />
2005), Part One.<br />
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