Deirdre McCloskey American economist Date of Birth: 11.09.1942 Country: USA

1. Deirdre McCloskey
2. Early Life and Education
3. Academic Career
4. Contributions to Scholarship
5. Advocacy and Honors

Deirdre McCloskey

Deirdre McCloskey is an American economist and distinguished professor of economics at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Prior to joining UIC, she taught for five years at Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands.

Early Life and Education

Born on September 11, 1942, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, McCloskey was initially named Donald McCloskey after her father, Robert McCloskey, a professor of public administration at Harvard University. Her mother was Helen Stueland, a poet. In 1995, at the age of 53, McCloskey underwent gender reassignment surgery.

McCloskey received her degrees in economics from Harvard University. Her dissertation on the British iron and steel industry won the David A. Wells Prize for the "best dissertation" in 1973.

Academic Career

McCloskey began her teaching career as a graduate student at the University of Chicago in 1968. She spent 12 years there, teaching courses in price theory and economic history. In 1979, she shifted her focus to rhetoric, feminism, and the history and philosophy of economics and other social sciences.

At the University of Iowa, where McCloskey was a professor of economics and history from 1980 to 1999, she published "The Rhetoric of Economics" (1985) and co-founded the field of "Rhetoric of the Human Sciences." She published a book by that name in 1987.

Contributions to Scholarship

As an economist and historian, McCloskey's work has often intersected the two fields and expanded into broader topics such as literary and social theory. Her most ambitious project is the six-volume "The Bourgeois Era." The first volume, "The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce," was published in 2006 to critical acclaim. The second volume, "Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World," appeared in 2010. McCloskey is currently working on the third volume, "Bourgeois Towns: How Capitalism Became Ethical, 1600-1848."

Advocacy and Honors

McCloskey is an outspoken advocate for the rights of LGBT individuals. She has authored over 360 articles on topics such as economic theory, economic history, philosophy, rhetoric, feminism, and law. Since 2007, she has received two honorary doctorates.