Jake Sirota

I am a PhD student in the Divinity School at the University of Chicago, where I work at the intersection of religion, literature, finance, and colonial history.

My dissertation traces the development of financial logics in the early novel, examining how the formal and rhetorical structures of eighteenth-century fiction were shaped by—and in turn helped to shape—the theological and philosophical categories through which credit, risk, and accumulation were understood. A central thread of this project concerns the processes of racialization bound up with colonial enterprise: how financial abstraction and racial taxonomy were mutually constituted, and how literary form registered, contested, and sometimes quietly reproduced that entanglement.

I am broadly interested in the history of economic thought, theories of the novel, early modern religion, and the long history of capitalism and its discontents.

CV
Education
2022– PhD, Divinity School, University of Chicago
Dissertation: Financial Logics and the Early Novel
Research Interests
Religion and literature · History of finance and capitalism · The early novel · Colonial and postcolonial theory · Theories of racialization · Early modern theology and philosophy

A full CV is available upon request.

Teaching

I have served as a teaching and course assistant at the University of Chicago. Syllabi and materials available upon request.

Introduction to the Study of Religion
University of Chicago · Course Assistant
Religion and Literature
University of Chicago · Course Assistant

[Replace with your actual courses and roles.]

Contact

You can reach me at jssirota @ uchicago.edu.

Swift Hall · 1025 East 58th Street · Chicago, IL 60637