Debt

From personal finance and consumer spending to ballooning national expenditures on warfare and social welfare, debt is fundamental to the dynamics of global capitalism. The contributors to this volume explore the concept of indebtedness in its various senses and from a wide range of perspectives. They observe that many views of ethics, citizenship, and governance are based on a conception of debts owed by one individual to others; that artistic and literary creativity involves the artist's dialogue with the works of the past; and that the specter of catastrophic climate change has underscored the debt those living in the present owe to future generations.

Peter Y. Paik is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He is author of From Utopia to Apocalypse: Science Fiction and the Politics of Catastrophe and editor (with Marcus Bullock) of Aftermaths: Exile, Migration, and Diaspora Reconsidered.

Merry Wiesner-Hanks is Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her books include The Renaissance and Reformation: A History in Documents, The Marvelous Hairy Girls: The Gonzales Sisters and Their Worlds, and Religious Transformations in the Early Modern World: A Brief Study with Documents.