Imagining Money

I've been casually following the course Imagining Money on the Amimetobios podcast. It consists of 13 themed weeks:

WEEK 1: THE VALUE OF MONEY

WEEK 2: MONEY AS CRYPTO-ALLEGORY

WEEK 3: UNNATURAL VALUES: INTEREST AND GIFT-GIVING

WEEK 4: UNNATURAL VALUES: INTEREST AND GIFT-GIVING II

WEEK 5: THE INVISIBLE HAND

WEEK 6: DEFOE, ROXANA

WEEK 7: COMMODITIES, FICTIONAL VALUES AND GAMBLING

WEEK 8: MARKETS, GAMBLING, MONEY AS MAGUFFIN

WEEK 9: COMMODITY FETISHISM

WEEK 10: FINANCE AS LIFE

WEEK 11: MONEY AS MAGUFFIN II: HYPERBOLIC DISCOUNTING

WEEK 12: THE PSYCHIC LIFE OF MONEY 

WEEK 13: NEW MONEY AND OLD CONCEITS 

Since the announcement of the course I planned on following it carefully, reading all of the texts, and making my own observations on my readings. I hope to begin doing that now. Anyone following this blog is more than welcome to follow along and post their own comments. The readings for week 1 are as follows:

Week 1) The Value of Money

Introduction.  Exeter Riddles 9 and 95;

Aristotle, PoliticsI, 8-10

handouts by Philip Larkin, Kay Ryan,  and George Herbert (“Avarice”)

Ambrose Bierce (Devil’s Dictionarydefinitions of money and wealth)

Yasunari Kawabata, “At the Pawnshop” (Latte)

Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book XI, 85-145, (Golding Translation)

Milton, Paradise Lost, I, 674-751, VIII, 1-178

There are links to many of these texts on the amimetobios page under the appropriate course week.

https://amimetobios.podbean.com/e/imagining-money-literature-and-economics-1-16-19/

Month in Review: January

I usually don’t write journal entries for each month, but I started this year off on a roll and want to record my progress. The most exciting news of the month is an essay I wrote on Shelley and Orpheus that will be published in the journal Jesus: The Imagination later this year. The essay is accompanied by a drawing also narrowly finished this month. 

I have done a significant amount of reading. I finished Anand Giridharadas’s “Winners Take All,” Timothy Snyder’s “The Road to Unfreedom,” and Jill Lapore’s “These Truth’s.” All three books were revelatory, but These Truths in particular. Lapore writes of the whole of American history with passion and urgency. I need to re-read it.

Originally I had planned to write an essay on Shelley called Thinking in Images, but having unexpectedly been requested to write the Shelley and Orpheus essay, I’ve decided it best to set Shelley aside for a moment and instead focus on my next writing project, an essay on Economics and Utopia. As chance would have it, one of my favorite podcasters, "amimetobios," just started a series of lectures on Money and Literature, titled Imagining Money. (Link: https://amimetobios.podbean.com) I’m following this class as a guide (supplemented with some of my own reading). I'm also following the work of independent on the road scholar, Colin Drumm. Colin has put together a course syllabus on Patreon dealing with economics with an emphasis on literature (Link: https://www.patreon.com/posts/monetary-reading-20881558).

For February I plan to read Mark Blyth’s Austerity. I started reading Richard White's history of the Reconstruction and Gilded Age, The Republic for Which it Stands, but am finding it very dry. I may set it aside for Rick Perlstein’s history of Nixon and Regan, “The Invisible Bridge.” I also hope to finish drafting at least 15 more pages of the graphic novel (which will put me up to 30, ie half-way through the first chapter). I think that will keep me more than busy enough for next month.