Cap-con 2017: Before the City/Beyond the City: Capitalism in the Countryside

Date: 

Thursday, October 19, 2017, 1:00pm to 5:30pm

Location: 

Harvard Law School, Lewis 214A

flyerBefore the City/Beyond the City:
Capitalism in the Countryside
October 19-20, 2017
Harvard Law School, Lewis 214A

KEYNOTE: Thursday, October 19 at 6:00PM
Claudio Saunt, University of Georgia

PLENARY PANEL: Friday, October 20 at 3:30PM
Walter Johnson, Harvard University
Tania Li, University of Toronto
Sarah Phillips, Boston University
Sven Beckert, Harvard University

Conference Schedule

October 19, 2017

Panel I: Rural Labor and Race, 1:00 - 3:00PM 

Adrian De Leon, University of Toronto, "Vagrant Accounts: Racial Transplantations and the Financial Production of Sakada in Hawai'i, 1882-1914"
Commentator: Justin Jackson

Jermaine Thibodeaux, University of Texas, "The Strange Career of Sucrose: Sugar, Convict Labor, and the Growth of the Texas Prison Empire, 1871-1913"
Commentator: Elizabeth Hinton, Harvard University

Bernard Moore, University of London, "Like Weeds in the Garden: Scientific Agriculture, Predator Extermination, and Labour Transformations in Apartheid Southern Namibia" 
Commentator: Christopher Conz, Tufts University

Panel II: Moral Economy, 3:30 - 5:30PM 

Cristina Espinoza, University of Arizona, "Spatial Legacies in the Borderlands: U.S. Colonization of Northwestern Mexico, 1883-1930s"
Commentator: Micol Seigel, Indiana University, Bloomington

Matthew Wormer, Stanford University, "An Object of Great Utility: Liberal Political Economy and the East Indies Opium Trade, 1828-1839"
Commentator: Mou Banerjee, Harvard University 

Alyssa Penick, University of Michigan, "The Power of the Parish" 
Commentator: Christine Desan, Harvard Law School

Keynote Presentation, 6:00 - 7:00PM
Claudio Saunt, University of Georgia

October 20, 2017

Panel III: Dispossession and Repossession, 10:00AM - 12:00PM

Emilie Connolly, New York University, "How the West Was Financed: Indian Trust Funds and the Midwest's Transportation Revolution"
Commentator: Claudio Saunt, University of Georgia

Basma Fahoum, Stanford University, "Tobacco in Palestine"
Commentator: Samuel Dolbee, Brandeis University

María Cristina Hernández, Universidad de los Andes, "The Dark Side of Colombian Coffee: Manuel Quintin Lame and the Struggle for Land in the Twentieth Century"
Commentator: Charles Maier, Harvard University

Panel IV: Reimagining Capitalism from the Countryside, 1:00 - 3:00PM

Danielle Dumaine, University of Connecticut, "'Harmonious, Enlightened People': Capitalism and Communal Projects in the 1960s United States"
Commentator: Lisa McGirr, Harvard University

Amanda Gibson, College of William and Mary, "'Used to Pay a Debt': African American Borrowing and Lending in Antebellum Virginia" 
Commentator: Mycah Conner, Harvard University

Zhaojin Zeng, University of Texas, "Transitioning Out of the Countryside: Ordnance Bureaucracy and the Making of Chinese Economic Apparatus, 1937-1949"
Commentator: Victor Seow, Harvard University

Closing Plenary Panel, 3:30 - 4:30 PM
Walter Johnson, Harvard University
Tania Li, University of Toronto
Sarah Phillips, Boston University
Sven Beckert, Harvard University

The CFP for "Before the City/Beyond the City: Capitalism in the Countryside" can be found here. This conference is open to the public. Please contact capcon@fas.harvard.edu with any questions.

Conference Organizers
Aaron Bekemeyer
Joan Chaker
Balraj Gill
Samantha Payne
Rachel Steely

Faculty Sponsors
Sven Beckert, Laird Bell Professor of History
Christine Desan, Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law

 

See also: History Events