Jul 24 2008
Dr. Marie Christine Duggan
Summer 2008 included a visit to World Fellowship with the family, where my husband Dr. Alex Julca presented a paper on undocumented migration. We took a detour with the kids to Conway for the train.
2008-09 Academic Year I’m teaching the Senior Research Project, Fundamentals of Economics, and IQL on Currency Crisis in Argentina (and maybe the US!), and the History of Economic Thought (from St. Francis to Keynes at Bretton Woods).
Research in progress:
I’ve submitted for publication a paper on Spanish economists Campomanes and Jovellanos. The research involved exploring why Spanish economic thought sees the church as the enemy of the private sector, and the government as the private sector’s ally. I wound up also sorting out my own ideas about the free market utopian dream, and I came away with respect for the intellectual honesty and personal integrity of Jovellanos in particular.
In March, I took eight students to the EEA, where one student presented at the undergraduate sessions, and I presented at the URPE sessions. I compared the current US financial crisis with those experienced by developing nations in the 1990s. I presented an updated version at URPE Summer Camp 2008, and have submitted that for publication.
As I teach History of Economic Thought year after year here in New Hampshire, I’m working on understanding whose interests were advanced by the various negotiators at Bretton Woods in 1944, and how that sheds light on the motives of the players in the current debates about regulating (or not) finance. I’ll be presenting a paper on the “Keynes Bretton Woods” theme at the Eastern Economic Association in February 2009.
Every now and then I teach US Economic History, in which I work with students to explore the industrial revolution here in Cheshire County, NH in 1850 and 1870, using data from the manufacturing census at the Historical Society of Cheshire County. We are hoping to move into studying the deindustrialization of Keene in the 1970s in the next iteration of that course–and ultimately to its rebirth as a highly competitive base of export manufacturing for certain sectors.
I’m planning to attend the California Mission Studies Association in Carmel on Feb. 20/21, and I’ll present one of the three themes I’m working on. The first theme is economic crisis in California in 1810, when Spain ceased to finance her colony, and the colony turned to international trade to survive.
The second is my view that the current perspective that Franciscans destroyed Indian civilization at the missions reflects the desire of Americans to believe that Indian civilization was entirely destroyed before any English-speakers arrived. It’s understandable that our own society would like to believe that, but it leads to a one-dimensional view of missions that does not serve to increase human understanding of California’s multi-cultural past.
The third is an exploration of how the mission as an institution became subordinate to the military in the 1820s, which then is the decade of the decline of the missions, rather than the period of peak economic success, as it has been typically viewed . This involves exploring the breakup of mission landholdings into ranchos for soldiers, who became de facto (if not de jure) settlers once their paychecks fell by 75% after 1810. It’s a bit tricky to get concrete evidence of a de facto process.
You sound busy. Keep up the good work! (and keep bloggin’)
Larry
You are doing such interesting things, your students are lucky to have you!