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A Guide to his Papers at the Indiana University Archives

Finding aid prepared by Adam D. Heien.

Summary Information

Repository
Indiana University Archives
1320 East Tenth Street
Herman B Wells Library E460
Bloomington, IN 47405-7000
Phone: 812-855-1127
Email: archives@indiana.edu
http://www.libraries.iub.edu/archives

Creator
Gordon, Scott, 1924-

Title
H. Scott Gordon papers, 1947-1993, (bulk 1966-1992)

Collection No.
C366

Extent
2.8 cubic feet (4 boxes)

Language
Materials are in English

Abstract
H. Scott Gordon was a Canadian-American economist who served as an economics professor at Indiana University from 1966-1988 and as an associate professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science from 1983-1988. The collection consists primarily of correspondence with students, fellow economists, and publishers, as well as some subject files related to lectures he gave and classes that he taught.

Access Restrictions

Letters of recommendation are restricted at this time and are located in Box 4. Advance notice required for access.

Biographical Note

H. Scott Gordon was a Canadian economist who taught at Indiana University from 1966 until 1988. In addition to his work at Indiana, Gordon helped found the economics department at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, which he chaired from 1948 to 1966, and taught summer courses in the history of economic theory at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario from 1970 until 1996. In addition to his normal teaching load in the Indiana University Economics Department, Gordon also chaired the department from 1970 to 1973 and had a split appointment with the History and Philosophy of Science department from 1983 to 1988.

Gordon played a role in furthering economic scholarship by acting as a peer reviewer for several economics journals, including the Journal of Law and Economics. Gordon also served as President of both the Canadian Economics Association and the Western (U.S.) Economic Association in 1976 to 1977. Additionally, in 1960, Gordon played a significant role along with other Canadian economists in forcing the resignation of Bank of Canada Governor James Coyne.

Gordon was a fairly prolific author and wrote several significant articles and texts in the course of his career, the most notable of them being Welfare, Justice, and Freedom, The History and Philosophy of Social Science, and Controlling the State: Constitutionalism from Ancient Athens to Today. Gordon also wrote the very influential article "The Economic Theory of a Common Property Resource; the Fishery" in the Journal of Political Economy in 1954, which was extensively reprinted and eventually declared a "citation classic". Gordon also received several awards and honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1965 and a Festschrift published in his honor in 1988.

Arrangement

The collection is organized into two series: Correspondence and Subject files. The Correspondence series is further organized into two subseries: General correspondence and Publication correspondence.

Scope and Content Note

The H. Scott Gordon Papers are organized into two series, Correspondence and Subject files. The Correspondence series is further organized into two subseries, General correspondence and Publication correspondence.

The Correspondence series is the larger of the two series of the collection. The series spans the years 1947-1993 and included within this series are his correspondences with publishers, students, and answers to requests to act as a referee for published journal articles. In addition to his answers, in some instances, the actual reviews written by Gordon are also included. Letters of recommendation have been pulled and transferred to Box 4. These are closed to researchers at this time.

Consisting of correspondence with students and fellow economists, the General correspondence subseries spans the years 1956-1993 and is arranged chronologically by folder heading. Of note are Gordon’s responses to requests for reviews of works, as well as Gordon’s correspondence with influential economists George Stigler and Samuel Hollander. Some of the files within this subseries contained letters of recommendation and those files have been restricted and moved to a box at the back of the collection.

The Publication correspondence subseries spans the years 1947-1988 and consists of Gordon’s correspondence with publishers about various journal articles and texts that he wrote throughout his professional career. This subseries is arranged chronologically by folder heading. Also included within this subseries are requests from fellow economists for Gordon’s article reprints.

The Subject files series spans the years 1954-1992 and is arranged alphabetically by folder heading. The series incorporates documents from some of the classes and seminars that Gordon taught as well as documents from his service on such committees as the Art Museum Committee and the Arts and Sciences Planning Committee. Also included is a copy of the manuscript for "Guarding the Guardians," an essay on constitutional democracy which Gordon wrote in the mid-1980s. The series also contains arbitration reports that Gordon wrote for some Canadian governmental organs during the 1960s.

• Indexing Terms

• The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in IUCAT, the IU Libraries' online catalog. Materials about related topics, persons or places can be found by searching the catalog using these terms.

• • Names
  • Gordon, Scott, 1924- --Archives.
  • Gordon, Scott, 1924- --Correspondence.
  • Indiana University, Bloomington --Faculty --Archives.
• • Topics
  • Economists --Indiana --Bloomington --Archives.

Administrative Information

Container List

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