"A Bluesy Road-Novel with a Lot of Economic Theory and Analysis"

I would have never thought to do this, or had the courage to do it if somehow it did occur to me:

Microeconomics using "The Grapes of Wrath", INET: Stephen Ziliak, Trustee and Professor of Economics at Roosevelt University-Chicago and a member of the INET Curriculum Committee Task Force, teaches introductory microeconomics using The Grapes of Wrath (1939). Here is the syllabus. 

The Grapes of Wrath was published by its author, John Steinbeck, in 1939, during the worst economic crisis in American and world history. Set in and written during the Great Depression, The Grapes of Wrath is a bluesy road-novel with a lot of social and economic theory and analysis. It follows a family of homeless and landless tenant farmers from Oklahoma—the Joads—who’ve been forced on account of foreclosure to leave the farm and land which they labored and lived on for several generations.

Forced by a large bank and absentee owners to leave their home, the Midwestern farmers with little education and no income join other displaced workers on the road to California, in search of jobs, food, and housing—a piece of the American Dream.

Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel was for many years censored and banned by governments and school boards made uncomfortable by the novel’s detailed portrayal of economic inequality, hardship, and oppression.

We asked Stephen Ziliak to share his experience teaching The Grapes of Wrath, which he has used since 1996 to form the basis of his intro economics course.

Q: Why, Professor Ziliak, way back in 1996, did you begin to teach to introductory economics students The Grapes of Wrath?

A: I guess my first response is that I eschewed in my own research the one-voiced, monological approach of conventional neoclassical economics. Trained as an economic historian, I’m an amateur poet who had also worked as a welfare and food stamp caseworker in the county welfare department, going door-to-door in the poorest neighborhoods of Indianapolis. When I became an Assistant Professor of Economics, in 1996, I was searching for a teaching method that would open up the conversation to a wider, more realistic set of issues. It only seemed fair to me: given that I myself had philosophical objections to the conventional approach to teaching utilitarian economics, it hardly seemed right to force-feed my students. Plus, many of my students came from working class families but they’d never experienced a recession. I wanted them to know that growth and bubbles do not last forever.

Q: Why teach The Grapes of Wrath and not some other novel?

A: Good question. First and foremost, it’s an incredibly moving novel that—I openly admit—continues to make me laugh and cry. Now laughing and crying are not necessary for good pedagogy. But it seems to me that if a fact-based story about economic history can make a grown man and professor of economics cry, it must have something important to say. The visible hand of class conflict needs to be aired and this novel does it.

Q: You said fact-based. What do you mean—it’s a novel, it’s fiction, yes?

A: Yes, but it’s historical fiction—meaning that Steinbeck, like Hugo, Zola, and others before him, was deliberately depicting real and felt experiences. There are exaggerations and omissions of fact, true—as economic historians and English professors know full well. But in fact, Steinbeck himself spent a year or more working and studying inside of the same temporary labor camps that the fictional Joad family experienced in California.

Q: How do students react? Can you share some insights from the teacher perspective?

A: Really well, eventually. Some are defensive at first, being trained to believe that stories are for novelists and theory for scientists. Still others have been so deeply entrenched with what I call the banking approach to learning—regurgitating facts and equations—they’re afraid of dialogue and a plurality of voices and interpretation. But students tell me it’s one of those life-changing courses.

Q: What about the “quants”? Do quants survive the course?

A: Again, it’s not for everyone. But yes, absolutely. An example is a student who studied with me at Roosevelt University. He came to Roosevelt as a freshman from Puerto Rico on a violin scholarship. He was preparing for a career in violin at our conservatory and, at the same time, he had a passion for advanced mathematics. On a lark he enrolled in my Grapes of Wrath course. Half-way through the term he told me that something was happening to him. The evolution of the protagonist, Tom Joad, from self-interested ex-con to benevolent labor leader, he found fascinating. He thought that he might have to switch from violin and math to economics. I told him no, if he really wanted to switch he could study math and economics—he wouldn’t have to give up the math. By the time he was a junior (a third year student) he landed a job with the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. At graduation he was promoted to Associate Research Economist. Now he’s a master’s student in economics and statistics at Duke University but he is not at all bamboozled by the utility maximization-only school.

Q: Do you supplement the novel with other literature or media?

A: Yeah. For example, a particularly fun day of class is when we play music by Woody Guthrie, Bruce Springsteen, and Rage Against the Machine—who’ve recorded songs about Tom Joad. Springsteen himself recorded an entire CD on the central themes.

From the syllabus linked above:

In 1776 three astonishing works of genius were given to the world. One was the Declaration of Independence. A second was Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. For many students these two great works of 1776 require little or no introduction. The third work does. Yet some say it is the most important and influential of all. I am speaking of The Wealth of Nations, a lengthy and learned book written by a humble professor of philosophy living in Scotland. Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations supplied an intellectual justification for a free and commercial society. It gave new life to a field of inquiry called "economics" and it continues to challenge and to shape the values of economists, presidents, and ministers of finance all over the world.

Smith’s book is central to the economic conversation, true, but it is not the end-all, be-all of economic truth. It would not be wrong to think of our course as a conversation about "How the economists Adam Smith, Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, Joan Robinson, Milton Friedman, and others have responded to Mercantilism, Romanticism, and the rise and fall of Communism and Fascism."

Mostly, however, the course is an introduction to microeconomic ways of thinking. Our course introduces a new grammar, if you will – an economic grammar of scarcity, competition, relative price, opportunity cost, supply and demand, efficiency, and equilibrium, to name a few. At minimum our course will help you to become an informed voter and a sophisticated reader of The Wall Street Journal. It will certainly invite you to engage in a lifetime of learning.

But microeconomics cannot be learned just by reading The Wall Street Journal or Atlas Shrugged, nor by listening to Green Day or Rage Against the Machine. These will help you care about economics. But to learn how to speak economics you’ll have to solve homework problems, read the books, and participate in class.

Still, the economic conversation is shaped by many different texts and experiences, from novels to music and media. It’s important for economists to learn how to speak to the humanistic sides of the conversation, and, likewise, it’s crucial that humanists speak intelligently about economic theory and facts, and not be bamboozed. To this end and others, we’ll read and analyze the most famous protest novel in American literature, John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. Set in and written during the Great Depression, The Grapes of Wrath is a bluesy road-novel with a lot of economic theory and analysis. It follows homeless and landless tenant farmers from Oklahoma, who’ve been pushed off of foreclosed farms. Forced by large and foreign banks to leave their rented shacks and lean-tos, the Midwestern farmers with little education and no income join other displaced on the road to California, in search of jobs, food, and housing—a piece of the American Dream.

We’ll read this highly relevant novel using in part the lens of economic theory and facts, and likewise we’ll critically analyze economic theory and facts, using concepts and insights we discover in The Grapes of Wrath. Attached to the back of this syllabus is an example of a homework assignment from a previous semester, indicating how we’ll put Steinbeck’s Depression-era novel together with supply and demand.

Finally, throughout the semester, we’ll occasionally read and discuss parts of Tim Harford’s popular book, The Undercover Economist, which supplies many useful, real-world applications of the microeconomic way of thinking. Harford’s book is a great help, especially to those who do not naturally think of price and incentive when analyzing the human condition. ...

Required Texts: Microeconomics, by David Colander, 7th edition...; The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck; The Undercover Economist, by Tim Harford. ...