Undergraduate Academics
Economics
At Sarah Lawrence College, economics is not taught as a set of techniques for working in a static field but, rather, as an evolving discipline. In the liberal-arts tradition, Sarah Lawrence students approach the study of economics by addressing issues in historical, political, and cultural context. Students analyze and evaluate multiple schools of thought as they relate to actual situations—exploring, from an economic perspective, topics such as globalization, growth and social policy, inequality, capitalism, and the environment. Students who have focused on economics have gone on to become union organizers, join the Peace Corps, intern with United Nations agencies, enter law school, and enter graduate programs in public policy and international development.
Economics 2026-2027 Courses
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First-Year Studies—Year | 10 credits
ECON 1103
We live in the world of monopoly capitalism—a market economy dominated by big rent-seeking corporations with immense political and economic power domestically and internationally. What economic methods and theories are suited for understanding the historical development, current turbulence, and future tendencies of monopoly capitalism? We will engage in a series of critical conversations about various schools of economics and their logics of economic policy-making, in order to gain a well-rounded and holistic understanding of the business of global monopoly capitalism and its economic, social, and political ills. How did the financial market get so big? Why do artificial intelligence and manufacturing robots have to replace human work? How will global monopoly capitalism evolve socially, economically, and politically? And many other questions. Students will encounter not only the so-called “standard” economics and business thinking, but also a plurality of classical political economists such as Smith; Ricardo and Mill and their descendants; feminist economists; critical management scholars; the old and new institutionalists; the Marxian and Keynesian challengers; contemporary behavioral economists; and so on. Biweekly in fall, students will alternate between individual conferences with the instructor and small-group activities. Biweekly in spring, students will meet with the instructor for individual conferences.
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First-Year Studies—Year | 10 credits
ECON 1020
The 2024 Presidential Election result will have far-reaching implications for economic, social, and environmental policies. It will also be significant in terms of the future of American democracy and social wellbeing. In this course, we will situate current economic and political challenges in a theoretical and historical context by drawing on insights from difference schools of thought in economics as well as other disciplines such as law, politics, sociology, and history. Some of the key questions to be addressed are as follows: How can the central debates in political economy help us understand some of the unprecedented challenges we face, such as new gilded age style wealth concentration and power, economic insecurity, and the climate crisis? Why is the study of history a central methodological priority for many economists and why not so for others? Why do people distinguish between “regulation” and laissez-faire and is this a false dichotomy? What is the history of industrial and social policy in the United States and other countries? How do we understand the relationship between political and corporate power and the “rule of law” with regard to market outcomes? What is Project 2025 and how can we understand its theoretical basis and implications? These and others will be some of the questions that we will be tackling throughout the course of the year, thereby ensuring that students develop a solid foundation to the fundamental debates in economic theory and policy and understand the key role of methodology in the study of political economy. Finally, the goal is to ensure that students develop the ability to critically engage scholarly work in economics. In fall until mid-semester, students will meet weekly with the instructor for individual conferences; thereafter through spring, individual conferences will be biweekly.
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Sophomore and Above, Seminar—Fall | 5 credits
ECON 3514
Note: Some background in high school or college economics recommended but not required.
Feminist economics arose as a critique of the androcentric and Eurocentric assumptions underlying mainstream, neoclassical economics. But over the past 30 years, feminist economics has developed into a coherent economic perspective that acknowledges and investigates power differentials in both the home and the market on the basis of race/ethnicity, gender, class, sexual orientation, nation, and disability status. Feminist economics takes seriously the crucial economic impact of caring labor, both paid and unpaid, in the home and the broader community. And it proposes alternate measures of economic success that emphasize bodily integrity, human agency, sustainability, and human rights. We will begin this course with a brief exploration of the historical context for the development of feminist economics; i.e., the rise of feminist movements in both the developed world and the Global South. We will then examine the differences between feminist and mainstream neoclassical economics by examining questions such as: What do we mean by “the economy”? Do transactions and activities have to be monetized to be “economic”? How is caring labor, both paid and unpaid, conceptualized in economics and how does the performance of this labor impact one's status in both the labor market and the household? The answers to these and similar questions will help us to reconceptualize economics to take account of all of the labor necessary to reproduce both individuals and social/economic structures. Finally, we will apply this reconceptualized, feminist vision of economics to questions of economic policy. We will examine a number of case studies including: a) the persistence of occupational segregation and wage differentials by gender and race and policies to mitigate these inequalities; b) the impact of domestic violence and other forms of non-market coercion on economic outcomes; c) the impact of reproductive control (or the lack thereof) on the economic trajectories of both individuals and societies; d) the (re)conceptualization and measurement of economic development and growth. In addition to class participation, requirements for the seminar will include frequent short papers on the readings, leading class discussions (in pairs), and participation in group presentations. In lieu of a traditional conference project, students may choose a service-learning project and an accompanying placement journal. Possible service-learning placement sites include a domestic violence shelter, a local LGBT support and advocacy organization, a reproductive rights group, and an organization advocating for the rights of domestic workers.
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Intermediate, Seminar—Fall | 5 credits
ECON 3255
Prerequisite: at least one college-level economics course
Modern capitalist institutions are dynamic, complex, and unstable economic, political, and cultural systems that are constantly evolving. In this course, students will learn a new behavioral approach to microeconomics and how it can be applied to understanding today’s economic, financial, political, and environmental challenges and crises. We will depart from traditional microeconomics, which revolves around finding and analyzing a theoretically perfectly efficient steady state, but treats all unexpected economic disturbances and turbulence as anomalies caused by external shocks. Instead, we will target real-world, complex, open-ended situations in which interactions among heterogeneous people and social groups create internal shocks that can destabilize economic, business, and financial systems and drive them towards different pathways, including post-capitalist possibilities.
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Open, Small Lecture—Year | 10 credits
ECON 2528
Note: Satisfies basic economic requirements for those interested in applying to the Combined 3-2 Plan in Engineering with Columbia University. Closed to students who have taken Legal Foundations to Business History: Corporate Governance, Democracy, and Economic Transformation (ECON 3528).
This course on business history will situate business in its social and political contexts. At the core of the course is the argument that the economy is embedded in the political society and is thus subject to historical change. The study of business cannot be separated from politics and political struggle, which determine how society is legally constructed in any given moment in history. Thus, what is of often called “private enterprise” sits on a contextually determined set of power relations which shape and are in turn shaped by current legal institutions. Challenging the idea, common to conventional discourse, that economies can be more or less regulated, this course will focus on the politics of business regulation, which in some contexts has produced socially progressive outcomes and in others regressive ones. Regulation is ubiquitous and subject to variation given changed circumstances due say to an economic crisis, new technologies, global competition, socio-political pressures etc. In this course, the nature and politics of business regulation will be studied in different national and historical contexts, involving countries in the Global South (e.g. Mauritius, Chile, Brazil, the Indian state of Kerala, South Africa etc.) and the Global North (e.g. United States, Sweden, Germany, etc.). It will address a wide range of topics that include: (a) slavery, cotton, banking, and property rights in early American industrialization; (b) legal struggles between corporations and society over constitutional rights (e.g. what brought about the landmark Supreme Court case, Citizens United v. FEC (2010)?); (c) corporations and colonialism (e.g. the British East India Company, the Virginia Company, etc.); (d) business regulation during the post-Civil War Reconstruction Period; (e) late industrialization and social well being; (f) using the United States and Sweden as case studies, the construction of welfare states and workers’ attempts to secure social and economic rights; and (g) the history of the relationship between business associations and anti-democratic politics, including the links between Silicon Valley technolibertarians and digital capitalism (i.e. artificial intelligence and crypto currencies). At a theoretical level, the study of business history will be grounded in debates in microeconomics, theories of business investment and pricing, and the relationship between law, politics, history, and economics. This course will be of interest to students who wish to understand contemporary social and political challenges in a theoretically and historically informed way.
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Open, Seminar—Year | 10 credits
ECON 3041
This seminar will explore the history of the US labor movement from its beginnings in the colonial society of the 1600s to the “globalized” cities of the 2020s. Beginning with the involuntary labor arrangements that structured the continent’s economy from the 1600s to the Civil War, we will focus on the international workers' movement against slavery: abolitionism. The abolitionist struggle will take us from the first rebellions of involuntary workers to the Civil War and the Reconstruction era. From there, we will consider the strikes, uprisings, and organizations of the late 19th- and 20th-century industrial labor movement, beginning with the Great Upheaval of 1877 and ending with the postindustrial urban uprisings of 1967. We will consider the peak of “big labor” during the mid-20th century, alongside the peak in Cold War-era US imperialism that structured the economy during that time. In spring, we will begin by thoroughly considering the major structural shifts in the US economy that began in the 1970s, generally referred to as a combination of “globalization” and “neoliberalism.” These shifts degraded job quality and worker power, relegating the working class to service positions in the “global city” structure. In responding to these shifts, we will consider numerous autonomous unions and “worker centers” that have had 38 economic scholars sprung up to address the new issues of this new economy in the past 20 years. We will also focus on broader 21st-century people’s struggles—such as the anti-globalization movement, Occupy Wall Street, and Black Lives Matter—and how these movements relate to the ongoing workers’ movement. Requirements for the course include discussion posts, short papers, and a group presentation. For the course’s major project, students will have two options. The first is to write two connected final essays, one for each semester. The second is to engage in a yearlong research project, which can be focused on service learning and field placements with local worker centers and unions, if students choose. Students will meet with the instructor biweekly for individual conferences, depending on the student’s needs and the progress of their conference projects. Required texts may include: Strike! by Jeremy Brecher, The Many-Headed Hydra by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, An African American and Latinx History of the United States by Paul Ortiz, The Global City by Saskia Sassen, New Labor in New York by Ruth Milkman and Ed Ott, and Labor Law for the Rank and Filer by Staughton Lynd and Daniel Gross.
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Sophomore and Above, Seminar—Spring | 5 credits
ECON 3482
In this course, we will explore the economic, political, and cultural factors that have contributed to the rise of authoritarianism in the United States and abroad. We will begin with a detailed examination of the current economic context; i.e., the crisis of neoliberal, globalized capitalism and its impact on various strata of the United States population. Next, we will examine several political economic perspectives on the rise of authoritarianism, including works by such theorists as Hobsbawm, Poulantzas, Gramsci, Paxton, and Gessen. We will examine Ehrenreich and Foer’s theories of the “professional managerial class” and recent reporting on techno-radicals to explore the class interests and adversaries of the current U.S. regime. We will discuss the contributions of patriarchal ideologies and institutions to the reproduction of hierarchical, gendered practices within homes and public institutions. We will examine the contributions of discriminatory immigration law and the histories of institutionalized racism to current immigration policies. Finally, using the works of, among others, McAlevey and Nakagawa, we will discuss ways to defend democratic communities and resist authoritarianism. Requirements will include frequent, short papers on the readings and co-leading class discussions. In lieu of individual conference papers, students will be asked to form small groups to investigate, write, and present on the rise of authoritarianism in another country or the history of an authoritarian movement (such as the KKK) within the United States. Possibilities may also exist for service-learning placements.
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Intermediate, Seminar—Spring | 5 credits
ECON 3761
Prerequisite: at least one college-level economics course
When Keynes published The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money in 1936, he proposed a new, non-laissez-faire, realistic macroeconomic framework to stabilize the economy, control inflation, and promote full employment. However, since the 1970s, macroeconomics has experienced “decades of intellectual regress” and the current “post-real macroeconomics” says things that are “inconsistent with the facts.” In this course, we will depart from this “post-real macroeconomics.” We will learn a post-Keynesian approach that takes structural inequality, risk, uncertainty, and human irrationality seriously. We will learn how the post-Keynesian approach is better suited for understanding real economic tendencies and financial troubles under the current stage of monopoly capitalism, such as uncontrollable inflation, wage stagnation, financialization, economic polarization, growing indebtedness, and so on.
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