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