Since 2009, Hagley Perspectives on Business and Culture has been a steady source of innovative scholarship in business history. Now on its tenth volume (and counting), the Penn Press series, published in conjunction with the Hagley Museum and Library, has taken a wide-open approach to the field. Focused on “the influence enterprises and technologies have on the cultural practices of American society, as well as the influence culture has on technology and business,” the series has showcased new paradigms, shined light on understudied business sectors, and built bridges to complementary subfields. The authors collected in these volumes constitute a who’s who in the business history world, especially junior scholars who have since expanded their “Hagley Perspective” volume essays into full monographs. This roundtable will convene many of the co-editors of the individual volumes, along with series editor Roger Horowitz, to discuss the work behind Hagley Perspectives. How did the series get its start? How are individual themes selected? How are volumes edited? How do the books differ from the conferences on which they’re based? What can edited volumes do that monographs can’t do? What kinds of challenges do they pose? Historians are generally accustomed to working independently as researchers, yet edited volumes are fundamentally collaborative projects. They hinge on the efforts of contributors, volume editors, series editors – and the publisher. In the case of Hagley Perspectives, the series also rests on the crucial support of the staff at the Hagley Center. By exploring the work behind this now long-running series, the roundtable thus offers a chance to explore the broader question of what collaborative scholarship and publishing looks like in business history. In addition, it offers a chance to survey how the field has evolved since the early 2000s.
Participants’ contact information
Roger Horowitz, Director, Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society, Hagley Museum and Library (Session Chair)
Series Editor
rhorowitz@hagley.org
Hartmut Berghoff, Professor, Institut für Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
Co-editor, Green Capitalism?: Business and the Environment in the Twentieth Century
berghoff@uni-goettingen.de
Lisa Jacobson, Associate Professor, Department of History, University of California Santa Barbara
Co-editor, Capitalism’s Hidden Worlds
jacobson@history.ucsb.edu
Richard R. John, Professor, Columbia Journalism School and Department of History, Columbia University
Co-editor, Capital Gains: Business and Politics in Twentieth-Century America
rrj2115@columbia.edu
Kenneth James Lipartito, Professor, Department of History, Florida International University
Co-editor, Capitalism’s Hidden Worlds and Surveillance Capitalism in America
lipark@fiu.edu
Josh Lauer, Professor, Department of Communication, University of New Hampshire
Co-editor, Surveillance Capitalism in America
josh.lauer@unh.edu
Richard K. Popp, Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Co-editor, Commercial Intimacy: Affinity and the Marketplace
popp@uwm.edu
Wendy A. Woloson, Professor, Department of History, Rutgers University-Camden
Co-editor, Commercial Intimacy: Affinity and the Marketplace
wendy.woloson@camden.rutgers.edu