The Crash of 1929 An AMERICAN EXPERIENCE Seminar

Date: Thursday, April 7, 2011 Time: 7:00-8:30 p.m. (EST) Registration Deadline: March 31, 2011

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The Twenties were an era of easy credit, concentrated Wall Street power, and exuberant economic optimism. It seemed that prosperity would never end, until it did on October 29, 1929, when the Great Crash initiated the opening act of the Great Depression. Built around the AMERICAN EXPERIENCE documentary film The Crash of 1929, this seminar will explore the ways in which the Crash resembled and departed from America's historic cycles of boom-and-bust. How did financial institutions, regulatory orthodoxy, and patterns of economic development contribute to the collapse? What role did non-rational behavior play in the crisis? What was the relationship between the Crash and evolving ideas about the appropriate role of the state in the economy? Leader: Edward J. Balleisen, Associate Professor of History, Duke University; National Humanities Center Fellow

Click here to register for this seminar.