PROFILE

PhD, Princeton University
Carolyn Biltoft was trained in the world/global intellectual history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Princeton, 2010.) Methodologically, her work fuses the tools of intellectual history, media history and theory, cultural studies and critical theory. She is broadly interested in how the changing material and immaterial infrastructures of globalisation emerged, developed and altered finance, politics and cultural local and globally. Her first book, A Violent Peace: Truth, Media and Power at the League of Nations (University of Chicago Press, 2021)  demonstrates how the League of Nations constituted a global stage for the production and contestation of a wide range of truth claims in an era of mass media, propaganda and totalitarian political projects. Her other work has also focused on the concepts of modern myths and the question of belief and disblief in an era of disinformation.  Her current book project is entitled, The Trouble with Avatars: Henri Bergson’s Digital Premonitions, and focuses on how the French philosopher Henri Bergson anticipated some of the humanistic dilemmas of the digital age. 

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Books

• "A Violent Peace: Media, Truth and Power at the League of Nations", (University of Chicago Press, 2021).

Peer Review Articles

• “Decoding the Balance Sheet: Gifts, Goodwill and the Liquidation of the League of Nations,” Capitalism: A Journal of History and Economics vol. 1 no. 2, 2020,
• “The Anatomy of Credulity and Incredulity: a Hermeneutics of Misinformation” The Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review, January 2020, Volume 1, Issue 2
• “Sundry Worlds within the World: De-Centered Histories and Institutional Archives,” Journal of World History, Volume 30, no 4, 2020, 729-760.
• “Pivotes Informacionales y Giros Linguisitos: Filosofías geopolíticas del lenguaje en la Liga de las Naciones” Ayer (Accepted, Forthcoming, March, 2021)
• “Keynesian Meta-Geography and its Afterlives,” Critical Historical Studies (Forthcoming,C.N Biltoft April, 2021)

Review Essays/Essays

• “Microcosms and Macrocosms: Capitalism and the Latent Metaphysics of Scope and Scale,” Capitalism: A Journal of History and Economics, vol 3 no 1, 2021, pp tbd.
• “Reading Roland Barthes in the Misinformation Age,” Los Angeles Review of Books (LARB), March 21, 2021.
• “Profit, Penury, and the Impieties of Inequality? A Retrospective on Martin Luther’s ‘On Trade and Usury’ for Our Times.” Capitalism: A Journal of History and Economics, vol 2 no 1, 2021, 1-6.
• "Against Scholarly Enclosures: Reconsidering the Art and Economics of Review." Capitalism: A Journal of History and Economics, vol. 1 no. 1, 2019, 231-240.
• “The Endless Accumulation (and Decay) of History (in Financial Times),” History and Theory (Forthcoming, Spring 2022).

Book Chapters

• “On a Certain Blindness in Economic Theory: Keynes’ Giraffes and the Ordinary Textuality of Economic Ideas.” In Sophus Reinert and Robert Fredona, eds. New Perspectives on the History of Political Economy (London: Palgrave, 2018), 309–47.
• “The League of Nations and Alternative Economic Perspectives.” In Jayati Ghosh, Rainer Kattel & Erik Reinert, eds. Elgar Handbook of Alternative Theories of Economic Development, (Cheltenham, U.K: Edgar Elgar Publishing LTD, 2016), 270-280.
• “The Meek Shall not Inherit the Earth: Nationalist Economies, Ethnic Minorities, and the League of Nations 1919-1939.” In Christoph Kreutzmueller, Michael Wildt and Moshe Zimmerman, Eds. National Economies: Volks-Wirtschaft, Racism and Economy in Europe Between the Wars, (Newcastle, U.K: Cambridge Scholars, 2015) 2015, 138-154.
• “Reversing the Curse of Babel? International Language Movements and Inter-war Chasms.” in Patrick Manning (ed.) World History: Global and Local Interactions (Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2005), 179–194.
• “Inter-War Years” in William H. McNeill et al (ed) Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History volume III (Great Barrington MA: Berkshire Publishing Group, 2005), 1018-1022.

Published articles

• "The Anatomy of Credulity and Incredulity: a Hermeneutics of Misinformation" (2020) 
• “Pivotes Informacionales y Giros Linguisitos: Filosofías geopolíticas del lenguaje en la Liga de las Naciones” Ayer (Accepted, forthcoming, Fall, 2020) 
• "Keynesian Meta-geography and its Afterlives,” Provsionally accepted
• "Against Scholarly Enclosures: Reconsidering the Art and Economics of Review." Capitalism: A Journal of History and Economics, vol. 1 no. 1, 2019, 231-240.
• “Sundry Worlds within the World: De-Centered Histories and Institutional Archives,” Journal of World History, Volume 30, no 4, 2020.
• “The League of Nations and Alternative Economic Perspectives.” In Jayati Ghosh, Rainer Kattel & Erik Reinert, eds. Elgar Handbook of Alternative Theories of Economic Development, Edgar Elgar Publishing LTD (Cheltenham, U.K), Forthcoming January, 2016.
• “The Meek Shall not Inherit the Earth: Nationalist Economies, Ethnic Minorities, and the League of Nations 1919-1939.” In Christoph Kreutzmueller, Michael Wildt and Moshe Zimmerman, Eds. National Economies: Volks-Wirtschaft, Racism and Economy in Europe Between the Wars, Cambridge Scholars, (Newcastle, U.K), August 2015.
• “On a Certain Blindness in Economic Theory: the Firm, the State and the Macro-Micro Divide, 1926-1937.” In Sophus Reinert and Robert Fredona, eds. The Legitimacy of Power: New Perspectives on the History of Political Economy, forthcoming, TBA.
• “Reversing the Curse of Babel? International Language Movements and Inter-war Chasms.” in Patrick Manning (ed.) World History: Global and Local Interactions (Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2005), pp. 179–194.
• “Inter-War Years” in William H. McNeill et al (ed) Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History volume III (Great Barrington MA: Berkshire Publishing Group, 2005) pp. 1018-1022

Book Reviews

• Patricia Clavin (2013) Securing the World Economy: The Reinvention of the League of Nations, 1920-1946. Journal of Modern History, Forthcoming
• Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost (2006) and Paul Krugman, Development, Geography and Economic Theory, (combined review) Global Atlanta, January 1, 2013
• F. Ugboaja Ohaegbulam (2002) West African Responses to European Imperialism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.  Itinerario 28: 2 (2004) pp. 174-175