Wayne Sandholtz and Dr. Brandie Siegfried, Department of English

Introduction

In a Shakespeare class during my junior year, I wrote a paper called “Easier for a camel: the quasi-Christian merchants of Venice” which examined the relationships between business virtue and Christian virtue in Shakespeare’s comedy The Merchant of Venice. Even though it was written centuries ago, I felt that the play had significant things to say to our modern capitalist society in which, just as in Shakespeare’s day, traditional sources of authority are being challenged by the combination of new technology with expanding economic opportunities. I decided to apply for and was given a grant from ORCA to further explore these issues, improve my paper, and get it out into the world.

Research Outcomes

Thanks to the generous funding of ORCA, I was able to work with Professor Brandie Siegfried in the English department. A respected Shakespeare scholar who has been published in multiple prestigious journals, Professor Siegfried had the knowledge necessary to help me know where to go with my paper. After making substantial improvements, I applied at her suggestion to the International Conference for New Directions in the Humanities. It’s a relatively new conference, less than a decade old, and this was the first year the conference was being held in the United States (at UCLA). Its aim is to explore “the future of the humanities in an intellectual and social milieu that all-too-often is dominated by the logics of economy and techno-science,” in the words of Bill Cope, the director of Common Ground Publishing, which organizes the conference. My paper was accepted for publication.

During the spring of 2010, I prepared for the conference. Professor Siegfried helped me to be aware of the kind of questions attendees might ask, and gave me advice on how to keep the conversation headed in an interesting direction. The conference itself was an incredible experience—I’d never been to one before. I was one of very few undergraduate students presenting. My paper examines how the group of Christian businessmen in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice seek to garner legitimacy for their economic philosophy by selectively and innovatively associating themselves with the Bible, and how the particular flavor of Christianity they choose to espouse dovetails with the prevailing political philosophy of their day— mercantilism—to systematize a culture of economic and social exclusion. I presented to a pretty full room. Because the person slated to speak before me didn’t show up, I started early, and because my slot was right before lunch, there was no one to kick us out afterward. So I interspersed questions for discussion throughout my approximately 15 minutes’ worth of presentation material—things like “Mercantilism is now gone [something I didn’t realize was untrue when I wrote it], but is there still something in the business ethic that demands antagonism?” and “In what ways does religion still play a role in business in our world today?” I think these questions served to prime the pump, because when I opened it up at the end for question and answer, the discussion went on for 45 minutes. People had a lot to say.

Angela Lait, a marketing professional affiliated with the University of Manchester in the UK, tied in the idea of corporate social responsibility. If the Bible provided a source for businesses’ image of moral authority in the sixteenth century, perhaps today’s analog is environmentalism. Nicole Tabor, who teaches Shakespeare at Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, brought up “the Shakespearean vocabularity of communal experience:” we build community by pushing out the vermin, such as Falstaff and Shylock. Especially in light of strong antiimmigrant sentiments today in the USA and much of the rich world, this makes for a very dark reading of the play. From here we started asking, “What is the true nature of the self?” We seem to be prone to do good as individuals, but why does it seem so hard or rare for us to do so in a corporate sense? We talked about the question of socialized health care, a big topic in the news in the US at the time, which was interesting since many of the attendees came from countries that have universal health care. What is the responsibility of the individual vs. the community? Francine Rochford, an Australian at the Lewis and Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon, talked about the idea of mythic individuality in society. Arindam Chatterjee, professor of English Literature at the University of Allahabad in India, said this: “Without capitalism, there would be no fiction.” He posited that the problem of English novel heroines is capitalism, so they fight against it. Their fundamental economic question in their lives is marriage. But inheritance comes to them honestly, so it’s a fiction. He suggested that a central aim of literature is to help us learn how not to use others to gratify self, and how not to allow others to use you as a means of their gratification. He also pointed out the culture of an almost pagan superstition among many businessmen today, who have certain traditions or rituals they believe will help them make a big deal. Everyone was very gracious and seemed to be genuinely interested in the long discussion we had. I got all their email addresses because I liked so much of what they said–I hope to incorporate some of their ideas into future iterations of this paper so I can include them in the Acknowledgements. I learned a lot, and made some important and useful connections, and feel like I represented BYU well.

Future Goals

Perhaps the greatest thing the ORCA’s grant did was encourage my further scholarship. I now have plans to submit this paper for publication in BYU’s Criterion as well as other regional and Shakespeare journals such as Explorations in Renaissance Culture. I’m also in the process of extending it into an Honors Thesis. In the time since I was awarded the ORCA’s grant, I’ve read a lot more about mercantilism, goods as social markers, and the anthropology of consumption– ideas that I plan to incorporate as I strengthen and focus my argument, and which will lead to future papers. Furthermore, I hope the outcomes of my research will help me get into a strong graduate program. More importantly, I’m sure the experience has helped prepare me to perform better in grad school.