Or, How I Stopped Hating Finance and Learned to Love the Business Major[1]

Settling in to my first semester as a TA this fall, I was stoked. Yes, stoked. Unbelievably enthusiastic about my teaching assignment: Early American Maritime Culture. I thought about all the port cities we would study, the trade routes we would map, and maybe for good measure we’d throw in an impressment or two. This first-time TA was assigned to a course in her field. Huzzah!

But a week into the semester I received an email stating, “We write to inform you that your teaching assignment has been changed to The History of Finance.”[2]

Away flew my dreams of Jack Tars in the streets and liberty on the waterfront. In their place stood . . . finance. Lecture started in fifteen minutes. After a hasty exchange of introductions with the professor (in which I blurted something to the effect of “Hi, I think I’m your new TA. I have no idea what I’m doing!”), I sat down with my fellow TAs and approximately 80 other students for a lecture on the Dutch Golden Age of Finance.[3]

The first few weeks were terrifying. I spent hours pouring over books about the Dutch “tulip mania,” and the effects of the Glorious Revolution on English fiscal and governmental policies, and countless dictionary entries on stocks, bonds, and dividends—struggling to figure out how the heck these things work now, let alone three hundred years ago.[4] But like any new endeavor, we all eventually settle into a routine. Since section with my students began in September, I have started to realize that this whole history-of-finance gig might actually turn out okay.[5]

For one thing, I get to learn alongside my students. Every Monday and Wednesday we attend lecture to hear stories about bills of exchange, bubbles, banks, and billionaires. We’ve learned how speculation has affected financial systems as far back as people have found ways to promote what others covet (be it tulips, South Sea shares, railroads, or real estate). We’ve been introduced to the role of finance in global development and how panics in one location can have ripple effects the world over (in case you were wondering, the Panic of 1873 was a real doozy). We’ve seen how institutions like the Consolidated Association of the Planters of Louisiana issued slave mortgages that fueled the growth of the Southern cotton economy, while decades later the Freedman’s Bank aimed to lift newly freed and marginalized African Americans out of financial destitution. When my students and I meet for section, it’s often the first time any of us have read the assigned material, so we’re venturing into unfamiliar terrain together. Teasing out the arguments in secondary sources, and gazing with fresh eyes upon the primary.[6]

I have also learned that the Business or Economics major is not a History major.[7] It is a continuous game of tug of war from where I sit at the head of the table, calmly beckoning my students to join me in the past. “Come on!” I urge. “You’ll like it back here. Leveraging, margin calls, and data exist here, too—I promise!” My students tug forward to the future, seeking the roots of the next market swing. “What’s the point of learning history,” they imply, “when history will just repeat itself?” With my students eager to know what happens next, and not always interested in what came before, I often feel like a broken record saying over and over, “But what do our sources have to say about this? How would that [insert financial phenomenon here] have affected the lives of individuals living in the [insert century here]?” Context, people. Context!

As I write this, I’m coming off a post-section high in which for the first time I’ve managed to get my students to speak to the perils of presentism in historical texts. We read the first four chapters of John Kenneth Galbraith’s The Great Crash, originally published in 1954, only twenty-five years after the onset of the Great Depression. It has been reprinted multiple times, typically following yet another boom and bust on Wall Street. When I asked my students, “Are there moments in this text where Galbraith’s own opinions inform his analysis?” One student raised her hand and pointed to a passage in which Galbraith’s ever-present snark towards the Federal Reserve leaped off the page. She eloquently stated how Galbraith, as someone who had lived through the catastrophic economic climate of the 1930s, struggled to separate his personal biases—whether consciously or not—from the historical facts of the event. I nearly leaped out of my chair with glee. My students had a light bulb moment and I was there to see it! For the first time since September, when I believed I’d be teaching Early American Maritime Culture, I was jazzed about teaching.

And this leads me to some thoughts for graduate students questioning the merit (or arbitrariness) of teaching assignments, or wondering whether they could ever teach outside of their field. Over the past year, I have heard more experienced TAs advise that we shouldn’t worry about our teaching assignments because, as PhD students, “we’ll always be smarter than our students.” That, I find, to be an absolutely bogus teaching technique (particularly at places like Columbia where students are exceptionally bright, and in situations like mine, where students actually do know more about how finance works than me).[8]

I will say, however, that as PhD students we are equipped to do many things better than our students, regardless of whether we are well versed in a particular subject or a novice.[9] The skills we use every day in our research and writing—critiquing books, analyzing arguments, engaging with primary and secondary sources, using proper citation methods, and explaining these concepts in public—are transferrable. And, I’ll add, you use the same techniques whether you’re discussing 1720 or 1929.[10] We understand that the syllabus, lectures, and course readings are related in some way. We read efficiently for the relevant information. We know how to direct discussion and know how to gauge whether the discussion is going well or falling flat. We understand the elements of writing a research paper and how to conduct research through databases, archives, and other sources. In short, as much as we are striving to be “experts” in our fields, we are also preparing to be teachers and mentors. Doing so requires that we step outside of our comfort zones and take the time to learn with our students, while guiding them in the methods of our chosen profession.

I can also say with excitement that in addition to teaching, this course has had a significant impact on my own research. As a historian of port cities and urban development in the early republic, studying the history of finance has introduced me to entirely new ways of thinking about land use, property, and architectural design. Now the maps, land plats, deeds, and drawings used and generated by the individuals I study have fiscal legs to stand on. These pieces of paper that denote aesthetics, dimensions, and building materials have a monetary foundation that I might not have considered had I not been asked to teach this class.[11]

We are currently in the throes of fall semester, and I’m sure reading over this post in the next few weeks my feelings towards my students and towards the History of Finance will fluctuate just as rapidly as the markets we’re studying. But I will say that teaching outside of my comfort zone has been a much more positive experience than a negative one. I can only hope that my students will go forth into the business world armed with the tools to not only produce thoughtful, well-written work, but also the ability to assess the particular factors that differentiate their contemporary fiscal decisions from those that came before, regardless of whether the financial phenomenon are similar. And aren’t these the sorts of things we strive for in whatever we teach, whether inside or outside of our fields? Students who think about the present through their understanding of the past? Perhaps if I ever do get to teach Early American Maritime Culture, I’ll throw in some bank notes and bubbles for good measure.