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Listen "Narratives of Business History: Fact, Fiction, and the Archive,"
Episode Synopsis
Narratives of Business History: Fact, Fiction, and the Archive
Organizers: Marina Moskowitz and Andrew Popp
The recent publication of Hernan Diaz’ Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Trust—a four-voice narrative about the life of a New York City financier—brings a long tradition of novels about business back into the spotlight. While Trust can sit easily on a bookshelf of business fiction alongside Theodore Dreiser’s The Financier, Frank Norris’ The Pit, Sinclair Lewis’ Babbitt, and Philip Roth’s American Pastoral, among others, it also raises questions that are at the heart of writing of history. What sources do we as historians “trust”? What are the roles of memoir, biography, and other personal narratives in our assessment of past business practices? How do business professionals, firms, and ultimately, historians, shape the archives that are at the core of our research? And how do we separate fact from fiction? (Or conversely, is there a place for fiction in our teaching, our research, and our writing?)
In this discussion-based workshop, we aim to explore these questions in an open-ended conversation. Participants certainly do not have to have read Trust (or other business fictions) to attend, but just be willing to exchange ideas about how we craft business history; what the benefits and pitfalls might be of drawing on other genres, whether as source material, teaching tools, or models of writing; and how we can be creative in constructing both our archives and the narratives we draw from them?
Organizers: Marina Moskowitz and Andrew Popp
The recent publication of Hernan Diaz’ Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Trust—a four-voice narrative about the life of a New York City financier—brings a long tradition of novels about business back into the spotlight. While Trust can sit easily on a bookshelf of business fiction alongside Theodore Dreiser’s The Financier, Frank Norris’ The Pit, Sinclair Lewis’ Babbitt, and Philip Roth’s American Pastoral, among others, it also raises questions that are at the heart of writing of history. What sources do we as historians “trust”? What are the roles of memoir, biography, and other personal narratives in our assessment of past business practices? How do business professionals, firms, and ultimately, historians, shape the archives that are at the core of our research? And how do we separate fact from fiction? (Or conversely, is there a place for fiction in our teaching, our research, and our writing?)
In this discussion-based workshop, we aim to explore these questions in an open-ended conversation. Participants certainly do not have to have read Trust (or other business fictions) to attend, but just be willing to exchange ideas about how we craft business history; what the benefits and pitfalls might be of drawing on other genres, whether as source material, teaching tools, or models of writing; and how we can be creative in constructing both our archives and the narratives we draw from them?
In God we trust