Economic Narratives was an amazing course. Seemingly aimless and meandering at first, it took me a couple of sessions to realise how much I was learning despite the relaxed atmosphere. Paul C. and Paul K. were both excellent at encouraging and indulging students’ contributions, side interests and tangents before somehow tying them back in with the themes of the course. The group task was hands-down the best groupwork I’ve ever had and somehow managed to reach that elusive state in which the product of the whole is somehow greater than the sum of its parts; with each group member throwing their expertise into the mix to create a broadly ranging analysis of the shifting importance of fashion and clothing in the financial market, something I knew very little about but still found myself able to contribute to. Despite my sleep-deprivation (as in all my intensives), this class was just plainly fun.
While the intensive itself didn’t necessarily provide any new information regarding my final project, it did raise a side issue that I find myself continually interested in: How the narratives we tell and are told shape the society we live in. Societal status quo is very much justified by narratives and even objective-seeming constants are ultimately rooted in stories. I’m not quite sure yet if and how I can tie this in with my current project idea, but I’d love to let these themes surface either in my creative or theoretical component of my dissertation.
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