The Great Mirror of Folly:Finance, Culture, and the Bubbles of 1720

An Interdisciplinary SymposiumYale University

April 17-19, 2008

Sponsored by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library and the International Center for Finance at the Yale School of Management

On April 17-19, 2008, European and North American scholars from a wide variety of disciplines will con-verge on Yale University to explore the financial and cultural history of the first great international stock market crash.

The starting point for this conference is an extraordinary Dutch volume owned by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library: The Great Mirror of Folly (or, in the original Dutch, Het Groote Tafereel der Dwaasheid). Early versions of this folio were published in Amsterdam within months of the 1720 crashes that had rocked the stock markets of England, France, and the Dutch Provinces and affected investors throughout Europe. The folio deals in part with such well known events as the Mississippi and South Sea Bubbles. It is divided evenly between texts and images and includes plays, poems, songs, and pro-spectuses for new equity issues, as well as satirical and allegorical prints, maps, and decks of playing cards.

Not only is the book worth studying as a historical document, it is also notable for examples of the kind of textual and visual language we still use whenever a new “bubble” appears, starting with the metaphor of the bubble in relation to stock trading and the image of the unlucky investor falling to his death.

The symposium will be divided between plenary presentations and breakout sessions.

Robert J. Shiller will give the opening keynote address. Professor Shiller is the Stanley B. Resor Profes-sor of Economics, Department of Economics and Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University, and Professor of Finance and Fellow at the International Center for Finance, Yale School of Management. He is the author of Irrational Exuberance and of The New Financial Order: Risk in the 21st Century.

For more informationConference website: http://icf.som.yale.edu/GREAT_MIRROR/index.shtmlTabitha Wilde, Director of Media Relations, Yale School of Management(tabitha.wilde@yale.edu 203-432-6010)Rebecca Martz, Public Relations Coordinator, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library(rebecca.martz@yale.edu 203-432-2969)

Other confirmed speakers

Daylian Cain, Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior, Yale School of Management

Frans De Bruyn, Professor of English, University of Ottawa

Kuniko Forrer, Associate Researcher, Institute of Culture and History, University of Amsterdam

Gillian Forrester, Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings, Yale Center for British Art

Anne Goldgar, Reader in Early Modern European History, King’s College London

Julie Hochstrasser, Associate Professor of Art History, University of Iowa

William N. Goetzmann, Edwin J Beinecke Professor of Finance & Management Studies & Director, International Center for Finance, Yale School of Management

Eleanor Hughes, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Yale Center for British Art

Margaret C. Jacob, Professor of History, UCLA

Joost Jonker, University Lecturer, History, Art History, and Socio-Economic History, University of Utrecht

Catherine Labio, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and French, Yale University

David McNeil, Associate Professor of English, Dalhousie University

Larry Neal, Professor Emeritus of Economics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Jeroen Salman, Lecturer, Comparative Literature, University of Utrecht

Benjamin Schmidt, Associate Professor of History, University of Washington

Darius Spieth, Assistant Professor of Art History, Louisiana State University

Thea Vignau-Wilberg, Curator Emeritus of Dutch and Flemish Prints and Drawings, Staatliche Graphische

Sammlung, Munich

Joachim Voth, ICREA Research Professor, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona

Eugene White, Professor of Economics, Rutgers University

Mariët Westermann, Vice Chancellor for NYU Abu Dhabi and Director, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University

Other events will include a theatrical medley featuring the American première of Pieter Langendijk’s play, Arlequyn, Actionist (Arlequin, Stocktrader), written in 1720 and included in The Great Mirror of Folly. The performance will be directed by Jeffrey Leichman (Yale graduate student, Department of French). Translations are by Nienke Christine Venderbosch (Yale graduate student, Department of English).

The symposium is sponsored by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library and the International Center for Finance. It is organized by William N. Goetzmann, Director of the International Center for Finance; Catherine Labio, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and French; K. Geert Rouwen-horst, Professor of Finance and Deputy Director of the International Center for Finance; and Timothy Young, Associate Curator, Modern Books and Manuscripts, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

For more informationConference website: http://icf.som.yale.edu/GREAT_MIRROR/index.shtmlTabitha Wilde, Director of Media Relations, Yale School of Management(tabitha.wilde@yale.edu 203-432-6010)Rebecca Martz, Public Relations Coordinator, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library(rebecca.martz@yale.edu 203-432-2969)