News
// November 2025
Workshop Report 'On the Concept of Imagination'
A report on our second project workshop on the concept of 'imagination', written by Karsten Klein (Saarbrücken), was published in KULT_online No. 72 on November 27, 2025.
You can read it here.
// November 2025
Project Workshop No. 3, 5-6 November 2025, JLU Giessen
The third workshop in the series is dedicated to the concept of the 'scene'. The identification of social settings, concrete social stages or ('founding') scenes, in which the social imaginary reveals itself in the form of economic dynamics, unites literature and sociology in the historical-imaginary constellation of the 19th century.
Programme
// July 2025
Now online: Episode 1 – Podcast 'I Doubt It'
You can listen to the first episode of our podcast 'I Doubt It', here. The episode is titled 'On the Concept of Speculation'.
// May 2025
Joint Panel: “Money Talks: Futures for the Economic Humanities”, 28-29 May 2025
The University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Our panel in Edinburgh panel discussed the concept of 'doubt' in relation to the meaning of money within various cultural, social, and political contexts, since the humanities and social sciences can learn about money from the ways it is doubted. It was outlined that this doubt does not automatically arise from monetary crises, but rather from imagination. Therefore, doubt about money can serve to question it beyond the immediate context of a crisis, enabling the exploration of alternative monetary systems and processes. In addition to classic 'scenes' of doubt concerning money (inflation and counterfeit money), contemporary 'scenes' (cryptocurrencies and CBDCs) were scrutinized. The panel also examined literary representations of the productivity of doubt in the context of economic transactions in the works of Gustave Flaubert and Edith Wharton, relating to questions about the value of money, of literature and of style. Furthermore, the 1900 Paris World's Fair was discussed as an early example of a female-coded and feminist 'scene of economic knowledge', where doubts about hegemonic economic knowledge were articulated and performed.
Contributions to the Panel:
- Prof Dr Andreas Langenohl: "What Can We Learn About Money from the Ways it is Doubted?"
- Prof Dr Kirsten von Hagen: "Money, Doubt and the Stories They Tell –The Case of Flaubert and Edith Wharton"
- Marie-Theres Stickel: "‘Le salut social est à ce prix’: Daniel-Lesueur’s Female-Coded Doubt in Economic Knowledge at the 1900 Paris Universal Exposition"
Photos: M. Stickel
// May 2025
Project Workshop No. 2, 14-15 May 2025, JLU Giessen
The second workshop is dedicated to the concept of 'imagination'/the 'imaginary' as one of the three central transdisciplinary concepts of the project. The question of economic knowledge and its (im)possibility is a central epistemic project in the social imaginary of the 19th century. The literature as well as the nascent sociology have addressed this, refining the monetary as a core component of the social imaginary.
Programme
// March 2025
Workshop Report 'On the Concept of Speculation'
A report on our first project workshop on the concept of 'speculation', written by Karsten Klein (Saarbrücken), was published on H-Soz-Kult on March 26, 2025.
You can read it here.
// December 2024
Project Workshop No. 1, 11-12 December 2024, JLU Giessen
The first workshop is dedicated to the concept of 'speculation' as one of the three central transdisciplinary concepts of the project. Speculation accompanies the emergence of economic/monetary knowledge from the long 19th century to the present day and occurs in different configurations in moments of doubt.
Programme
// September 2024
Joint Panel: Congress of the European Society of Comparative Literature (ESCL), ‘Le jeu: Gambling, Gaming and Play in Literature’, 2-6 September 2024
Sorbonne Université, Paris
Our panel in Paris traced the manifold connections between economics, literature and sociology on the topic of 'play' from a sociological-literary perspective. In particular, it focused on speculation, gambling and game-theoretical approaches as 'playful' basic elements of a modern, aleatoric economic culture. The contributions to the panel complement the project's research on forms of economic knowledge, epistemic practices and aesthetic imaginaries. They engage in a dialogue between literary and sociological perspectives on the economic, shedding light on how both disciplines use the notion of play and speculation to adopt a critical and reflexive stance towards the economy.
Contributions to the Panel:
- Prof. Dr. Kirsten von Hagen: “The Fabric of Dreams: Texture, Fashion, Gambling and Speculation on Social Advancement in Texts by Flaubert and Maupassant”
- Prof. Dr. Andreas Langenohl: “The Production of Uncertainty as Precondition for Speculation: Game Theory in Economics, Strategic Studies, Sociology, and Decentralized Finance”
- Felix Hempe: “Scenes of Speculation: The L’Année Sociologique and the Durkheimians”
- Marie-Theres Stickel: “The literary system: An institutionalised form of speculative literary economic gambling? On Adrienne Monnier’s Gazette des Amis des Livres”
[Publication of the papers in preparation.]
Photos: M. Stickel
// January 2024
New publication: Book chapter „Literatur und Soziologie als Genres der Reflexion monetären Wissens“ ("Literature and Sociology as Genres of Reflecting Monetary Knowledge")
We are pleased to announce a new contribution to the project: the chapter "Literatur und Soziologie als Genres der Reflexion monetären Wissens" ("Literature and Sociology as Genres of Reflecting Monetary Knowledge") by Prof. Dr. Kirsten von Hagen and Prof. Dr. Andreas Langenohl has just been published in the literary-sociological anthology 'Die drei Kulturen' reloaded (eds. Christine Magerski and Christian Steuerwald).
In the 19th century, the economy, and in particular the monetary economy (including credit and finance), which was growing in popularity and political importance, became a field of social relations that was increasingly visible as an epistemic problem. The chapter examines the ways in which the question of economic knowledge and its (im)possibility was intensively discussed in literature and sociology during this period.
Learn more