Faculty Lectures 2008-2009
Through the Alumni College Faculty Lectures program, alumni living in the Twin Cities area, or who happen to be in town, are invited on campus to hear Macalester faculty lecture on a range of current issues.
Thursday, April 23, 2009 - Chris Wells (Environmental Studies)
Cars, Houses, and Sustainability
7 p.m. in the Ruth Stricker Dayton Campus Center, John B. Davis Lecture Hall
What if Americans drive cars more frequently and greater distances than anyone else on the planet not because of some great cultural "love affair" with the automobile, but because of decisions we have made about how to organize the places we live, shop, and work? How do the possibilities of building sustainable communities through the symbolic power of green consumerism compare to more structural decisions that builders and renovators make about less visible concerns like how much insulation is in a house's walls, or how much water each flush of a toilet consumes?
In this talk, Professor Chris Wells, Environmental Studies, will discuss some of the intersections between his academic research on America's car culture and his involvement in Macalester's new EcoHouse, and reflect broadly on the relationships between cars, houses, and sustainability.
About Professor Chris Wells
Professor Chris Wells specializes in U.S. environmental history, with additional interests in the history of technology, cultural history, and urban history. He is currently working on a book titled Car Country: Automobiles, Roads, and the Origins of Car-Dependent Landscapes in the United States, which explores the environmental ramifications of the decisions before 1960 that reoriented the nation's landscape around automobiles. He's also fascinated by contemporary movements-such as green architecture, the New Urbanism, and Smart Growth-that are trying to remake the world in a more sustainable fashion, and helped establish Macalester's new EcoHouse. His courses at Macalester include American Environmental History, Consumer Nation: American Consumer Culture in the 20th Century, U.S. Urban Environmental History, Imperial Nature: The United States and the Global Environment, and Car Country: The Automobile and the American Environment.
January 29, 2009 – J. Peter Ferderer (Economics)
Is the economy heading for a depression?
A Minskian Perpective
Listen to the recording:
What a difference a year makes. Between 2002 and 2007 world per capita income (inflation adjusted) grew by more than three percent annually — the most-rapid growth for any five-year period on record. However, signs of weakness began to surface during the second half of 2007 as the U.S. housing market deteriorated and banks began to reassess their lending practices. The crisis deepened throughout 2008 and the financial system nearly collapsed in September when Lehman Brothers, a large investment bank, failed and credit markets froze up.
The U.S. economy entered a recession in December 2007, contractionary forces quickly spread to the rest of the world and, according to many forecasters, there is little end in sight.
What are the causes of the economic turmoil? What are the prospects for the future? In this presentation, Ferderer considers the work of the late Hyman Minsky to shed light on the current economic crisis. Minsky, who died in 1996, spent much of his career arguing that financial systems are inherently unstable and an important source of macroeconomic fluctuations. Minsky toiled in relative obscurity as the efficient markets hypothesis came to dominate economic thinking during the last quarter of the 20th century, but his theories have been discussed widely in recent months in the The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The New Yorker and other publications.
About Professor Peter Ferderer
Professor Peter Ferderer has taught economics at Macalester since 1996 and is president of the Minnesota Economic Association. His research focuses on international trade, macroeconomics as well as economic history and the effect of uncertainty on the economy. The courses he teaches include Theory of International Finance, International Finance in Historical Perspective, and Behavioral and Experimental Economics.