WRIT 037: ECONOMICS
Spring 2022 Courses
WRIT 037 301
MW 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
Osborn
Decision Making
Fulfills the Writing Requirement
Do we need help choosing what to eat? How much to save for retirement? Whether to check the organ donor box at the DMV? Certain behavioral economists think so. This section will explore how everyone from city planners to nutritionists to the Internal Revenue Service engages, knowingly or not, in "choice architecture" that influences everyday decisions. Fusing behavioral economics, psychology, public policy, such "nudges" aim less to incentivize or discourage choices than gently encourage "better" habits for individuals and, in turn, society at large. This seminar will address questions of freedom, choice, and paternalism at the heart of Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein's bestselling book Nudge, with the broader goal of learning how we ourselves might become perceptive and influential in designed contexts we encounter each day.
WRIT 037 302
TR 1:45 PM - 3:15 PM
Arzuaga
Wall Street
Fulfills the Writing Requirement
In Wall Street's high risk and high reward world of finance capital, many take for granted the idea that increasing shareholder value is the ultimate measure of success. Yet the drive to increase shareholder value obscures the divorce of corporations' best interests from those of their employees: as stock prices soar, companies are downsized and employees are liquidated. In reading, writing and class discussions, we will explore how Wall Street produces a financially dominant but thoroughly unstable capitalism in the United States. Through an anthropological examination of Wall Street's powerful and elite, we will examine the history of shareholder value, as well as the race and gender implications of "corporate culture." How do whiteness, masculinity and the "culture of smartness" contribute to the experience of capitalism and American culture as we know it? This course will improve students' skills in research, academic and public-facing writing, and critical reasoning.