Bourgeois Rhetoric: “Interest and Meaning in the Age of the Industrial Revolution”

Speaker: Deirdre McCloskey, Ph.D. Title: “Bourgeois Rhetoric: Interest and Meaning in the Age of the Industrial Revolution.” Deirdre N. McCloskey is a world-famous economist, historian and rhetorician. The author of 15 books and more than 350 scholarly papers, she has written on economic history, econometrics, literary criticism, philosophy of science, law and economics, gender studies, theology, economic pedagogy, the teaching of writing, and many other subjects gathered around two themes: what really happened in history, and how do we know? A prominent member of the “Chicago School” of economics, she is also known as wide-ranging social commentator and progressive libertarian voice. She is currently working on a six-volume defense of capitalism, “The Bourgeois Era,” directed at people who think it needs a defense. Volumes 1, “The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce,” was published in 2006 by the University of Chicago Press, which will bring out volume 2, “Bour geois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World” in October, 2010. Volume 3, “The Bourgeois Revaluation: How Innovation Became Ethical, 1600-1848,” is available in draft on her web site. In this lecture, she will be speaking about Volume 4, “Bourgeois Rhetoric: Interest and Meaning in the Age of the Industrial Revolution.” Website: http://www.deirdremccloskey.com/.

Fri., March 12, 3 p.m., 2010

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