Podcast
The Cultural Life of Money and Finance project runs a podcast, including our conversations with researchers and practitioners on our key questions. The podcast can be followed on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and a number of other platforms; it is also available on Anchor.
Episode 1: Creative responses to financialisation, with Invisible Flock
This episode presents a conversation between Rachel, Mark and Matthew, and Catherine Baxendale, Executive Producer of Invisible Flock. Invisible Flock are an award-winning arts studio based in the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, and have been our artistic partners in the Cultural Life of Money and Finance project. We discuss some of the themes that have emerged in our collaboration - how money and finance shape relationships between humans, and between humans and the natural world; how finance helps shape our experience of time; the role of the digital in shaping financial experience; and how artistic activity and innovation can help reimagine the place of money and finance in our lives and societies. Follow Invisible Flock on Twitter @invisibleflock.
Episode 2: Icelandic cultural responses to the 2008 crash, with Alaric Hall
In this episode, Matthew is joined by Alaric Hall, Associate Professor in the School of English at the University of Leeds, and author of Útrásarvíkingar: The Literature of the Icelandic Financial Crisis (2008–2014). We discuss the particular forms of financialisation in Iceland prior to the crash, and the ways in which literature and culture responded to the crisis - and what we might learn from that cultural responses to the events of 2008.
Alaric's book can be ordered or downloaded as a free PDF at Punctum Books.
Episode 3: Christianity and financialised capitalism, with Kathryn Tanner
In this episode, Rachel is joined by Kathryn Tanner, Frederick Marquand Professor of Divinity and Professor of Religious Studies at Yale University, and author of Christianity and the New Spirit of Capitalism (Yale, 2019). We discuss how finance-dominated capitalism establishes particular models of subjectivity, and the role that religious traditions and institutions can play in broadening understanding of human potential in the context of the contemporary economy.
Kathryn Tanner's book is available at Yale Books.
Episode 4: Dante and contemporary financialisation, with Mark Davis and Matthew Treherne
In this episode, Mark and Matthew discuss Dante's response to developments in finance in late medieval Italy, exploring how the issues associated with avarice, usury and banking connect with twenty-first-century concerns about credit and debt, green finance, and the effects of economic growth.
The conversation was first recorded as part of the Leeds Dante Podcast series, "Conversations on Dante", in October 2020.
Episode 5: The Theological Power of Money, with Devin Singh
In this episode, Rachel is joined by Devin Singh, Associate Professor of Religion at Dartmouth about his 2018 book entitled Divine Currency: The Theological Power of Money in the West. The issues discussed in the conversation include the connections between moneylending and warfare; why we talk about punishment as 'paying a debt'; theology and coinage, including why and why not people might put a sacred image on a coin; links between religious innovation and economic innovation; minting of coins as assertions of sovereignty; and the cultural history and contemporary relevance of the idea of 'dirty' money.
Devin Singh's book is available at De Gruyter.
Episode 6: Kat Baxter on how "Money Talks" in numismatics and museum collections
In this episode, Matthew is joined by Kat Baxter, Curator of Archaeology and Numismatics at Leeds Museums and Galleries . They discuss Kat's work on a forthcoming exhibition, scheduled for February 2022 in Leeds City Museum, called Money Talks. They discuss the insights that can be gained when a collection of money-related objects are brought to the centre of attention in this way, and Kat discusses some of the key objects in the exhibition - from coin hoards to money-related toys.
Episode 7: Leigh Claire La Berge on Financial Fiction Writing
In this episode, Mark is joined by Leigh Claire La Berge, Assistant Professor of English at Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York, about opportunities for arts and humanities to engage with money and finance through ideas of performativity and language, in particular how they have been utilised in social studies of finance. They also explore themes of temporality and invisibility, and how these are captured in the financial fiction writing of the 1980s and TV serials of the mid-2000s. Their conversation also touches on the importance of how money and finance are narrated, and the deeper political questions these narratives lay down; and why the arts and humanities might best serve projects for a better financial system by empowering literary studies of finance.
In this episode, Matthew is joined by Kathryn Brown, Senior Lecturer in Art History and Visual Culture at Loughborough University. They discuss how the development of art markets in the twentieth century displayed particular forms of financialisation; what art markets can reveal about financial practices; and how financial and aesthetic considerations can coincide in the experience of viewing art. Kathryn is the author of Matisse: A Critical Life (Reaktion, 2021), as well of articles on art markets and finance.
Episode 9: Avarice and Money in Late Renaissance France with Jonathan Patterson
In this episode, Matthew is joined by Jonathan Patterson (University of Oxford), to discuss Jonathan's work on avarice in late Renaissance France. Jonathan explains how avarice was connected with notions of social class and gender, and relates to the physical presence of money. He also discusses how attitudes to money emerged in the context of humanism and religion, across multiple contexts.
Jonathan is the author of Representing Avarice in Late Renaissance France (Oxford University Press, 2015).
Episode 10: Katy Shaw on the credit crunch in contemporary culture
In this episode, Mark is joined by Katy Shaw, Professor of Contemporary Writings at Northumbria University in the UK, and they discuss her work on the credit crunch in contemporary culture. The podcast covers the idea that the entire financial system is a form of fiction; tackles the important issue of the public’s financial literacy; explores the gendered regime of finance; and makes a passionate case for the arts and humanities to work more closely with economics and social sciences to explore fully the cultural life of money and finance.
Episode 11: Money and the informal economy in Italy, with Isabella Clough Marinaro
In this episode, Matthew is joined by Isabella Clough Marinaro (John Cabot University), to discuss her work on money in the informal economy in Italy, especially in Rome. Isabella discusses issues relating to the importance of cash in the informal economy, the functions of formal and informal credit, the way in which financial practices in the informal economy affect experiences of time and temporality, and the relationship between money and shame.
Isabella Clough Marinaro is Associate Professor of Italian Studies at John Cabot University in Rome.
Episode 12: Money in Transition
This podcast was created by a team of undergraduate students who have been working with the Cultural Life of Money and Finance project this academic year. The podcast presents findings from their research on the theme of "Money in Transition", which has included interviews with other students and research in the University's coin collections. Appearing in the podcast are Alex Dalton, Ewan Hazlewood and Blythe Manson. Also contributing to the project were Max Nowers and Violet Robinson.