The Political Development of American Debt Relief

You’re invited to join Chloe Nicol Thurston, Associate Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University, for an American Politics Speaker Series discussion sponsored by the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation and the Center for American Political Studies.

Registration is encouraged but not required. This event series will not be recorded.

This event is open to Harvard ID holders only. Lunch will be served.

Abstract

Americans have a long history with debt. They also have a long history of mobilizing for debt relief. Throughout the nineteenth century, indebted citizens demanded government protection from their financial burdens, challenging readings of the Constitution that exalted property rights at the expense of the vulnerable. Their appeals shaped the country’s periodic experiments with state debt relief and federal bankruptcy law, constituting a pre-industrial safety net. Yet, the twentieth century saw the erosion of debtor politics and the eventual retrenchment of bankruptcy protections.

The Political Development of American Debt Relief traces how geographic, sectoral, and racial politics shaped debtor activism over time, enhancing our understanding of state-building, constitutionalism, and social policy.

About the Speaker

Political scientist Chloe Thurston’s research is at the intersection of American political development and political economy and has focused on the development of social and economic policies, interest groups and social movements, institutional change, and historical analysis. Prior to coming to Northwestern in 2014, she was a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University. She has been a Northwestern Public Voices Fellow and a Hewlett Teaching Fellow. In 2019–20, she was a member of the School of Social Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J.

Thurston is the author of At the Boundaries of Home Ownership: Credit, Discrimination, and the American State (Cambridge University Press, 2018), which received the 2020 J. David Greenstone Award from the American Political Science Association’s Politics and History Section, and co-author (with Emily Zackin) of The Political Development of American Debt Relief (University of Chicago Press, 2024). Her research has been published in Perspectives on Politics, the Journal of Public Policy, Studies in American Political Development, and Politics, Groups, and Identities. Her op-eds have appeared in Ms. Magazine, Slate, and in the Washington Post.

About the Series

The American Politics Speaker Series (APSS) aims to bring together scholars who are doing research on these and other important questions. Hosted jointly with the Center for American Political Studies and chaired by Professors Benjamin Schneer and Justin de Benedictis-Kessner, each session will highlight a scholar whose research is at the forefront of the study of American politics.

Event Details