Giving Capitalism a History: From Abstraction to Contingency

A talk by Destin Jenkins, PhD Candidate, Stanford University on February 19, 2015 at 12:00 p.m. in Lane History Corner, room 302. Lunch will be provided. This event is open to Stanford Students.

Destin Jenkins is a PhD candidate in Stanford’s History Department. His research explores the history of American capitalism, with special emphasis on race, urban space, and African Americans. Destin’s dissertation is tentatively titled, “Bonded Metropolis: Race, Wealth, and the Search for Capital in Postwar San Francisco.” This project uses the municipal bond market to understand how cities financed redevelopment projects, the relationship between race and credit, and the relegation of African Americans to spaces of inequality. Blending political economy with social history, his work traces the constitutive trajectories of capitalism and the city, race and wealth.