Julia Ott
Associate Professor of History
Email
ottj@newschool.edu
Office Location
G - 80 Fifth Avenue
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The past offers tools for understanding our present circumstances. And, I believe, history can guide us in navigating the future, for making the choices that are necessary to create a fair and sustainable economy that supports the well-being of all.
During my lifetime, American political culture has been distinguished by a pervasive belief that individual freedom is best guaranteed by freedom of the market. Over the course of the last forty years, the collective solutions that once nurtured the American middle class – including labor unions along with government and corporate-sponsored social provisions – drew increasing criticism for allegedly impeding the dynamic individualism of American capitalism. Government withdrew from social protection and provision. De-regulation and privatization swept across the domestic policy landscape. As a result, inequality increased. And the well-being of American households was yoked ever more tightly to increasingly unregulated financial markets. These ideas, policies, and outcomes -- often labeled “neoliberalism” by scholars -- account, in part, for both the insurgency of Bernie Sanders and the victory of Donald Trump.
I advance critical histories of capitalism with my scholarship, teaching, editoral work, publically-engaged writings, and through curatorial practice. In 2019, the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center at Parsons School of Design exhibited a site-specific installation of the Museum of Capitalism, which grew out of my teaching collaboration with the artist collective FICTILIS at Eugene Lang College. I advised the Museum of the City of New York on their New York at its Core exhibit, which won an Annual Excellence in Exhibition Award from the American Alliance of Museums in 2018. I've served as a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians and a consultant to documentary films. My writings for public audiences have been published in Public Books, The Nation, Dissent, and Public Seminar. My media appearances include BBC, NPR, C-SPAN, and PBS, while my work has been featured in outlets including The New York Times, Business World, New Dawn, Chinese National Television, Radio OpenSource, Majority Report with Sam Seder, Bloomberg, and Who Makes the Cents?
One of my favorite aspects of academic life is lending my support to other scholars and writers. I am fortunate to do as an advisor to MA and PhD candidates (in history, politics, sociology, and economics), a member of the Editorial Board of Dissent, a co-editor of the book series Studies in the History of U.S. Capitalism published by Columbia University Press, and a founding co-editor of the journal Capitalism: A Journal of History and Economics, published by University of Pennsylvania Press.
Over the years, my work has received funding support from (among others) New America, the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton, NJ), the Russell Sage Foundation (New York, NY), and the Robert L. Heilbroner Center for Capitalism Studies at the New School for Social Research, which I co-founded with Dean Will Milberg, professor of economics, in 2014.
Degrees Held
BA, Princeton University, 1997
PhD, Yale University, 2007
Recent Publications
Book
Wealth Over Work: The Origins of Venture Capital, The Return of Inequality, and the Decline of Innovation (manuscript-in-progress)
When Wall Street Met Main Street: The Quest for an Investors’ Democracy (Harvard University Press, 2011): winner of the Vincent DeSantis Prize for the Best Book on the Gilded Age and Progressive Era
Selected Other Writings
“Tax Preference as White Privilege in the United States, 1921-1965,” Capitalism: A Journal of History and Economics vol 1, no. 1 (Fall 2019)
“What Was The Great Bull Market?: Value, Valuation, and Financial History” in ed. Sven Beckert and Christine Desan, The New History of American Capitalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018)
“Words Can’t Do the Work For Us," Dissent (January 22, 2018)
“Clinton Democrats Are Wrong. It’s Not Wall Street that Needs to Be Unleashed – It’s Government,” Washington Post (October 31, 2017)
“How Tax Policy Created the 1%,” Dissent (April 18, 2017)
“Occupied Wall Street Journal,” Museum of the City of New York, November 2016
“Capitalism Studies: A Manifesto,” Public Seminar, April 17, 2014
“Slaves: The Capital That Made Capital,” Public Seminar, April 9, 2014
"Solving the ‘Debt Question’,” New Labor Forum vol. 22 no. 1 (Spring 2013), co-authored with Louis Hyman
“‘The Free and Open People’s Market’: Political Ideology and Retail Brokerage at the New York Stock Exchange, 1913-1933,” Journal of American History vol. 96 no. 1 (June 2009): 44-71.
Research Interests
History of capitalism, 20th century American history, financial history, labor history, neoliberalism, conservatism, consumer culture, women's and gender history, race and capitalism, art history and material culture
Awards And Honors
New Arizona Fellow, New America, 2019-2020
Member, Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton, NJ, 2019-2020
Faculty Research Grant, Provost's Office, The New School, 2019-2020
Civic Liberal Arts Grant, Eugene Lang College for the Liberal Arts at the New School, 2018
Faculty Opportunity Award, Eugene Lang College for the Liberal Arts, The New School, 2017
Visiting Scholar, Institute for Public Knowledge, New York University, 2014-2016
Grant Recipient, National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute on American Material Culture, Bard Graduate Center, July 2013
Vincent DeSantis Prize for the Best Book on the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, 2013
Russell Sage Foundation Visiting Scholar, New York City, 2009-2010
Interdisciplinary Seminar Grant, Tobin Project, 2009-2010
Current Courses
Independent Senior Project
Independent Senior Project (Spring 2021)
Independent Study
Independent Study (Spring 2021)
Internship (Spring 2021)
Wealth & Power in US History