Destin Jenkins

Destin Jenkins joins the FAS as Associate Professor of History and of Black Studies. His research focuses on the political economy of American capitalism, the inequality of life chances, and the determined efforts of Black people to thrive and survive. He is the author of The Bonds of Inequality: Debt and the Making of the American City (University of Chicago Press, 2021) and co-editor of Histories of Racial Capitalism (Columbia University Press, 2021). His articles have appeared in the American Historical Review, Journal of Urban History, The Washington Post, The Nation, The New York Times, and elsewhere.

He is working on two projects. The first is a history of debt in America from its emergence as a post-colonial nation through the war on crime (forthcoming, W.W. Norton). The second project weaves together two intersecting stories: the rise of Black political power and the political economy and emotions of crime in the wake of the civil rights revolution.

Before arriving at Yale, he was the Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of History at the University of Chicago, and he earned tenure at Stanford University.