Professor James Hartley is using the "Great Books" of Western civilization to draw nonmajors into the study of economics. Photo by Fred LeBlanc.

Shakespeare, Austen, Aristotle, Swift, Aquinas, Coleridge, and Defoe are not typically spoken of in the same breath as economic growth and development, international trade, interest rates, banking, marginal analysis, present value, or opportunity cost—unless, that is, you are a student in economics professor James Hartley's class The Great Books and Economics.

An exemplar of the viability of the liberal arts and cross-discipline fertilization, the class features in-class lectures on introductory economic theory, while all the reading material is drawn from the “Great Books” of Western civilization, and one class day a week is devoted to their discussion. Hartley, who notes that he did not read many of the “Great Books” until he was in graduate school, developed the course two years ago as a means of attracting nonmajors to the study of economics and because reading this literature is “a worthy endeavor in and of itself, enabling students to see how disciplines relate to one another and to become grounded in general knowledge,” he says.

Hartley describes himself as an “economist to the core,” who is “completely sold” on idea that reading important works of literature is an essential part of becoming an educated person. Whether using Robert Frost's “Stopping in the Woods on a Snowy Evening” to illustrate opportunity cost or discussing life-cycle hypothesis and investment in relation to Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Hartley says he has seen the “net positive effect” of teaching the class using the “Great Books.”

According to an article that Hartley has written on his The Great Books and Economics class for the spring 2001 edition of the Journal of Economic Education, there is a history of utilizing literature to “motivate concepts in economics.” M. Watts and R. F. Smith (1989) noted that using literature to encourage economic discussions is both interesting and reaches students who might otherwise find the study of economics “boring and distasteful.” English major Christen Mucher '03 is a perfect example of just such a student.

Mucher says that her “real love” is literature, but she was interested in learning some of the basics about economics. “Professor Hartley says that we would probably never read a textbook after an economics class was over, but we might reread some of these books,” she says. “He is hopeful that some of the things that we have covered would come to mind. I agree. I would never reread an economics textbook. I probably wouldn't have even taken the class if there had been a textbook.” The literature clearly made learning about economics palatable for Mucher. “I'd still be in the dark about a lot of these important economic concepts without this class. Having the books, characters, and plots to discuss made it so much more interesting than a plain economics class.”

Watts and Smith were not the first to explore the connections between literature and economics. In his book Shakespeare's Economics, H. W. Farnam (1931) “uses the Bard to illuminate both economic theory and the state of the economy in Elizabethan England,” Hartley writes. More recently The Merchant of Venice has been used to illuminate standard readings on usury, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court has been tapped as a device to explain real wages. According to Hartley, “The Great Books and Economics course takes these ideas a step further and centers a whole course on such reading.” Although authors such as M. J. Adler and C. Van Doren, among others, have long advocated the use of the “Great Books” for educational purposes, Hartley says that he is the first to introduce these works via the introductory study of a particular subject.

What makes a work a “Great Book”? Rather than a specific list, Hartley alludes to a number of broad definitions, among them Matthew Arnold's phrase, “the best that is known and thought in the world.” Others have noted that such books must be discussable, must be read carefully and repeatedly to be understood, and must deal with basic ideas and issues. Not only do students in Hartley's class read “Great Books,” but they “acquire the habit of simply reading the books as books,” he says. Those interested in in-depth literary analysis of the “Great Books” should not choose Hartley's class, for this is not its purpose.

For the most part, the course has attracted students wishing to fulfill the social science distribution requirement. Most are in their first or second year at MHC, but there have also been juniors and seniors. “Student response to the course has been very positive,” says Hartley, and about 20 percent of “Great Books” students who took the course in previous years enrolled in another economics course the semester after taking Hartley's class.

Among the enthusiastic supporters of the course is Robin Johnson '04, who says, “This class is my favorite this semester. I thoroughly enjoy reading the books. I feel that they expand my mind. I've always considered the ‘Great Books' to be books that only adults read; I didn't see myself doing it. So either I'm an adult now, or I was wrong all along about what they are supposed to be. Either way, I find myself really enjoying reading them and talking about them.”