Slavery, Freedom, and the Complicated Logics of American Capitalism

The History of Capitalism Workshop is delighted to open its 2026–27 academic year with a lecture by Professor Justene Hill Edwards, who will present:

“Slavery, Freedom, and the Complicated Logics of American Capitalism”

Professor Justene Hill Edwards is Professor of History at the University of Virginia. She is the author of Savings and Trust: The Rise and Betrayal of the Freedman’s Bank (Norton, 2024) and Unfree Markets: The Slaves’ Economy and the Rise of Capitalism in South Carolina (Columbia University Press, 2021). She received her PhD from Princeton University.

The lecture will be followed by comments from Stanford Professor Kathryn Olivarius, a historian of the nineteenth-century United States whose research examines slavery, capitalism, and medicine.

Please join us for what promises to be a stimulating conversation about slavery, freedom, and the making of American capitalism.