The Question of the Gift is the first collection of new interdisciplinary essays on the gift. Bringing together scholars from a variety of fields, including anthropology, literary criticism, economics, philosophy and classics, it provides new paradigms and poses new questions concerning the theory and practice of gift exchange. In addressing these questions, contributors not only challenge the conventions of their fields, but also combine ideas and methods from both the social sciences and humanities to forge innovative ways of confronting this universal phenomenon.

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).