The Question of the Gift

Mark Osteen is Professor of English and Director of Film Studies at Loyola College, Baltimore. He is the author of American Magic and Dread: Don DeLillo's Dialogue with Culture (2000), and The Economy of Ulysses: Making Both Ends Meet (1995), the editor of the Viking Critical Edition of Don DeLillo's White Noise, and co-editor, with Martha Woodmansee, of The New Economic Criticism (Routledge, 1999).

Introduction: Questions of the Gift Mark Osteen Part I: Redefining Reciprocity 1. A Free Gift Makes No Friends James Laidlaw 2. Unbalanced Reciprocity: Asymmetrical Gift-Giving and Social Hierarchy in Rural China Yunxiang Yan 3. Unpacking the Gift: Illiquid Goods and Empathetic Dialogue Lee Anne Fennell Part II: Kinship, Generosity and Gratitude: Ethical Foundations 4. The Patriarchal Narratives of Genesis and the Ethos of Gift Exchange Charles H. Hinnant 5. The Ethics of Generosity and Friendship: Aristotle's Gift to Nietzsche? Martha Kendral Woodruff 6. Adam Smith and the Debt of Gratitude Eun Kyung Min Part III: The Gift and Artistic Commerce 7. Catullus and the Gift of Sentiment in Republican Rome Jacqui Sadashige 8. Gabriele D'Annunzio: The Art of Squandering Nicoletta Pireddu 9. Conrad's Guilt-Edged Securities: 'Karain: A Memory' via Simmel and Benjamin Anthony P. Fothergill 10. Formed by Homages: H. D., Robert Duncan, and the Spirit of the Gift Stephen Collis Part IV: Posing New Questions 11. Gift or Commodity? Mark Osteen 12. The Ghost of the Gift: The Unlikelihood of Economics Antonio Callari 13. Give the Ghost a Chance! A Comrade's Shadowy Addendum Jack Amariglio 14. The Pleasures and Pains of the Gift Andrew Cowell