©Deirdre Nansen McCloskey | COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL


About Deirdre McCloskey


Willie Shakespeare

First, meet Will Shakespeare, Deirdre's highly literate Norwich terrier (b. 12/2005) »

Emmanuel Garessus writes a colleague's account of Deirdre (Le Tempes, 11 February 2012), the focus of which is "squarely related to her unique professional story" and calls it: "Former 'Chicago Boy' Deirdre McCloskey, Transgender Economist Extraordinaire"



"Deirdre McCloskey, an acclaimed professor and former University of Chicago protégé of Milton Friedman, stunned the academic world with a sex change in 1995. But that's just one interesting part of a woman now focused on a more 'human' approach to economics.

"The tall, elegant lady with the dark, slightly veiled voice will be 70 next September. She is a scientist by training, as well as an expert in mathematics, economics and theology. She has rubbed shoulders with an impressive number of Nobel laureates, and also happens to be a prolific essayist."

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In Deirdre's words:
"I'm an economist but also teach and write on history, English, communication, philosophy, art and cultural studies. As May West might put it, "I was Snow White . . . but I drifted!" Until 1995 I was named — and was — "Donald." Raised in Boston, I've worked always in the Midwest, at the Universities of Chicago, Iowa, and now Illinois at Chicago. Married for 30 happy years, with two grown children (who alas have not spoken to me since 1995), I live on Printer's Row in Chicago with my Norwich terrier named Will Shakespeare and my Episcopal church across the street — which is why I'm always late for church!]"


To which the editorial staff adds:

A Harvard graduate — she wishes it was Radcliffe! — Deirdre was tenured in economics and history at the University of Chicago , and taught for 19 years at the University of Iowa.

She's been at UIC since 2000, as a UIC Distinguished Professor of Economics, History, English, and Communication, and adjunct in Classics and Philosophy. Of her many departments, she jokes: "I want to be in so many that I can be shopping and everyone thinks I'm in the other department!"

She has written a dozen books, edited a dozen more, and has written about three hundred articles in economics, history, philosophy, statistical theory, literary criticism, and gender studies.

Her book Crossing was a New York Times Notable Book in 1999. Her latest books, The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce (2006) and Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World (2011), are parts of a four-volume "apology" for capitalism, of which she says: "I reckon this is why God put me on the planet. She thought, '"Hmm. We need an economist who is silly enough to try to unify the scientific and the humanistic sides. Oh, yeah: Deirdre.'"

She describes herself as a "post-modern, quantitative, free-market, feminist, Episcopalian, Midwestern, gender-crossing, literary woman" — which is why, she says, she hasn't got any friends!

She has held a Guggenheim and National Humanities Fellowship, and National Science Foundation grants.