Seybold Co-Edits Publication The Routledge Companion to Literature & Economics
Elmira, NY (10/31/2018) — In early October The Routledge Companion to Literature & Economics went on sale in the US and UK. The volume is co-edited by Dr. Matt Seybold, assistant professor of American literature & Mark Twain Studies at Elmira College, and Dr. Michelle Chihara, assistant professor of English at Whittier College. Routledge contracted with Seybold and Chihara to produce, as the publisher puts it, "the first authoritative guide tying together the seemingly disparate areas of literature and economics." The Companion features 38 essays from an international roster of scholars on subjects from "Literature & Energy" to "Hamilton, Credit, & American Enterprise" to "Women's Writing & The Mainstreaming of Political Economy."
In their introduction, Seybold & Chihara write that "Contemporary econo-literary criticism is, paradoxically, energetically engaged with the history of economic thought and methods of economic analysis and openly hostile towards economics' prevailing disciplinary hegemony and its perceived program of institutional and cultural imperialism." They contend that "serious engagement with economics does not imply acceptance of its legitimacy, but economics needs scholars from outside its compromised walls" because, as Dr. Brook Thomas puts it, "economics plays too important a role in society for its study to be confined to economics departments."
In addition to co-editing the volume and co-authoring its Introduction, Seybold contributes a chapter on "Keynes & Keynesianism." Next term, Seybold and Dr. Corey McCall, associate professor of philosophy at Elmira College, will be team-teaching a course on rhetorical economics which challenges students to treat canonical works of economic theory and history as rhetorical and ideological.
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Dr. Matt Seybold, assistant professor of American literature & Mark Twain Studies at Elmira College, co-edited "The Routledge Companion to Literature & Economics" with Dr. Michelle Chihara, assistant professor of English at Whittier College.
