Annie McClanahan's dissertation in English, Salto Mortale: Narrative, Speculation, and the Chance of the Future, uses economics to support cultural analysis. The title references Marx's salto mortale or "fatal leap," which describes the risk between a commodity's potential and actual value in the marketplace. McClanahan combines her literary training with historic and current market theory in order to theorize the relationship between narrative form and the future. Central to her argument are the pivotal changes that have occurred across the world since 1989, and notions of history developed during the Cold War and since 9/11. She attributes the rampant concern today to predict the future—especially in speculative finance and political ideology—to the acceleration of capitalism. The purpose of her project, however, is not to analyze economic trends, but to consider how narrative patterns shape social content. In contemporary novels and films, for example, she identifies structural devices (like foreshadowing) that enrich the way the future can be conceived.