Destin Jenkins

Destin Jenkins is an associate professor of History and Black Studies at Yale University. His research focuses on the political economy of capitalism, the inequality of life chances, and the efforts of Black people to thrive and survive even when that created conflicts within “the Black community.”

 

His first book, The Bonds of Inequality: Debt and the Making of the American City (University of Chicago Press, 2021), was widely reviewed and won the Ellis W. Hawley Prize and James A. Rawley Prize from the Organization of American Historians (2022), the 2022 Kenneth Jackson Award for Best Book in North American Urban History, and was a finalist for the Hagley Prize in Business History (2023), and the 2022 best new book in African American History and Culture from the Association for the Study of African American Life and History.

 

He is also co-editor of Histories of Racial Capitalism (Columbia University Press, 2021). His articles have appeared in the American Historical Review, the Journal of Urban History, the Washington Post, The Nation, the New York Times, and elsewhere.  

 

Jenkins is currently working on two books. The first excavates pivotal episodes in the politicization of debt in America from its emergence as a post-colonial nation through the concurrent end of the Cold War and war on crime. This book will appear with 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.

 

Beyond these book projects, he is co-convener of the Endeavors Seminar Series (2025-26) in the Department of Black Studies. Jenkins will soon launch two major initiatives, the Debt Lab and the Research Program on Black Political Economy.

 

Jenkins received his BA from Columbia University and his Ph.D. in Modern U.S. History from Stanford University. He has held fellowships at Harvard University, The New School and Stanford University, and his work has been generously supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

 

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

 

Professor Jenkins welcomes inquiries from prospective graduate and undergraduate students interested in the history of capitalism, racial inequality, and urban democracy.