Welcome Gabrielle Shiner

I would like to welcome Gabrielle Shiner to Austrian Economics and Literature.

It occurs to me that none of us cobloggers have introduced ourselves properly to our readers.

So let me begin. I was introduced to free market economics by my Intro. to Philosophy professor, Ronald Nash. Because of him I devoured everything I could at the library on economics. As is often the case, this led me to Ayn Rand, whose fiction convinced me that fiction was a great way to convey ideas -- a realization that eventually led me to drop out of a Master's program in molecular biology to pursue a Master's in English/Creative Writing at the Univ. of Southern Mississippi. I went to UT-Dallas for my Ph.D. in the Humanities, where I met Alexander Argyros, who became the chair of my dissertation committee, and Frederick Turner, whose works and continuing friendship have influenced me in countless ways. Turner (re)introduced me to Hayek in a "Game Theory and the Humanities" class, and it was through Turner that I entered into the spontaneous order work I have since done at The Fund for the Study of Spontaneous Orders conferences, particularly my work on The Spontaneous Orders of the Arts. I have also written on the moral order in relation to Hayek's ideas on the brain as a spontaneous order, and I will have works coming out on Hayek's The Sensory Order and network theory and on the city as a spontaneous order in future issues of Advances in Austrian Economics.

I started this blog because I bagan to see that there was a lot of work that could be done in this area. Little did I know that it would be as popular as it has been -- something for which I no doubt have to thank the Ludwig von Mises Institute for posting us on their blogroll. I know that coblogger Allen Mendenhall has done quite a bit to promote us as well, so I would like to publicly thank him as well. My ignorance of those others who have talked about us does not reflect how thankful I am for that word-of-mouth. I am thankful too for those who disagree with us publicly (you know who you are!), as conflict only helps us grow stronger (though that's more Nietzschean than Austrian economics).

I hope the rest of the cobloggers here will also share (no pressure!) something about themselves with us.