Description:

Please join the Global Theory Workshop as they host Prof. Alex Zakaras, associate professor at the University of Vermont.

Abstract: The ideal of the free market has shaped American politics for almost two centuries. It has informed not just elite opinion but also popular ideology and national myth. This lecture explores the origins and popularization of free market ideas in the United States. It focuses on the Jacksonian Era (1820-1850), during which the free market became a populist rallying cry directed against big government, big banks, and economic inequality. 

Alex Zakaras is an associate professor at the University of Vermont. Professor Zakaras specializes in political philosophy and the history of political thought. His interests include the philosophy of democracy and democratic citizenship, individualism in American political thought, and the political ideas of the nineteenth century. His book, Individuality and Mass Democracy: Mill, Emerson, and the Burdens of Citizenship, was published by Oxford University Press in 2009. He is also co-editor of J.S. Mill's Political Thought: A Bicentennial Reassessment, published by Cambridge University Press in 2007.