Re Masini's good question, the idea about economics in history of science may be more than challenging. It may be simply useless, or just wrong (as Alcouffe indicates). But I do think the idea is worth exploring, to see how to keep teaching deeply significant subjects in a culture or an institution where the driving forces no longer value them. It's not at all the same as defending jobs in an obsolete technology. To put it (too) simply, it's a struggle to preserve critical reason in disciplines fast going mindless, so automatic, programmed, and thoughtless that all that's finally there to do, new computers can do. 
It may not be possible to preserve the history of economic thought in most economic departments. It seems obvious to me that where you have it, you have to fight to preserve it, as much of it as possible. But as I now advise young historians who want to work in business history, economic history, demographic history, the history of technology, or capitalism, or socialism, or political economy, etc., i.e., not in post-modern imaginaries, you cannot expect any real sympathy or effective help from the people who now hold the money and run the budgets in U.S. universities. And friends of mine in France and Italy tell me it is the same there, as I am reading here at SHOE.
This means that while any defensive fight is underway, it may make most sense to get entrepreneurial, look for where you might find allies and students, while you stay in an economics department, or if you finally give up on it. And there's no single way to do it, because universities are all different (like markets). But wherever in a university or an academic system you find well-funded programs with at least some people doubtful of the "value added" by the local economics department, you may well build bridges with them, for new programs, a fatter line in the budget, an inter-departmental program, even a new department. One possibility, at least in the USA, is in programs of "social studies," and for graduate students in "schools of public policy." But nothing institutional now lasts very long. If economists in your institution or system are deaf and blind to reasons for studying the history of economic thought, it makes sense to me to look for colleagues elsewhere in the system who will understand the value of what you are doing, so that with them you could make something new, and get some money to support it because you can show its critical value. This often happens in academia, originally (maybe) because of intellectual, scholarly changes in disciplines, but also effectively because of enterprise and politics. Departments continually split, die, reappear in new forms, or die for good, though elements of them flourish. Consider the origins of "molecular and cellular biology." Look at what is happening to Classics now, or even Modern Languages and Literature. Why are there, besides History departments, any separate departments of the history of science? 
Here too (re Alcouffe's point), as all on this list who work in the USA know hugely better than I, teaching positions in economics now number vastly more than those in the history of science (never mind the tiny numbers who might do the history of economics there). Online at the HU departmental websites, I count 53 in Economics, 20 in the History of Science. My guess is, at large across the country, it's much worse. Deciding what to do may depend ultimately on whether you think you can do more good trying to teach economists the history of their subject, or trying to teach others how to think historically and critically about economics. And this, I suppose, would depend much on your local circumstances.



-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
Sent: Saturday, February 26, 2011 3:01 AM
To: Womack, John
Subject: [Fwd: [SHOE] FW: [SHOE] application for an assistant professor position-Milan (Italy)]

Dear John,
I must confess your idea is challenging. The problem with it is that the
reform just passed puts also the didactic in the hands of Departments.
This means that following your suggestion may imply to organize "Schools"
in history of sciences, which I am afraid would not match the demand by
students...
Do you have examples of this kind of Departments in the States; and how do
they manage to "survive"?
Thanks a lot for any further suggestion.
fabio

-------------------------- Messaggio originale ---------------------------
Oggetto: [SHOE] FW: [SHOE] application for an assistant professor
position-Milan (Italy)
Da:      "Womack, John" <[log in to unmask]>
Data:    Ven, 25 Febbraio 2011 5:28 pm
A:       [log in to unmask]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

I think the best revenge may be to join or create a department or program
of the history of sciences, to work alongside historians of chemistry,
biology, physics, etc., who now try to understand historically why very
smart "scientists" in the past so often got matters in their disciplines
so stupidly, disastrously wrong.


-- 
Fabio Masini
Department of Public Institutions, Economics and Society
Faculty of Political Science - University of Rome 3
Via G. Chiabrera, 199 - 00145 Rome