Introduction: Managing Knowledge and Capital in the Nineteenth Century – Karin Hoepker and Katrin Horn
Part I: Capital, Reputation, and Legal Recognition
1. Sometimes it IS worse to be talked about: Epistemic Surplus and Social Capital – Karen Adkins
2. Rumor as Speculative Practice: Reports of Slave Uprisings in the Nineteenth-Century US South – Sebastion Jobs
3. US Immigrants, Remittances, and the Courts, 1904–25 – Atiba Pertilla
Part II: Commerce, Print Culture, and the Circulation of Knowledge4. Epistemic Style and the “Knowing Unknown” of Racial Capitalism in W.E.B. Du Bois’s “Scorn” – Alexander Starre
5. Black Editorship and the Economics of Print: Pauline E. Hopkins and the Colored Press Conventions – Andrew Erlandson
6. “Interesting to Ladies”: How Foreign Correspondents Made Gossip a Profession – Selina Foltinek and Katrin Horn
Part III: Pedagogies and Practices of the Home
7. Raising Capitalist Citizens: Pecuniary Pedagogies and Belonging in the United States, 1820–1900 – Jaclyn Schultz
8. Genteel Performance, Embodied Knowledge, and the Quest for Status in US American Parlors – Carola Bebermeier
9. Speculative Knowledge: Ellen Richards and Science of the Home, 1870–1911 – Serenity Sutherland
Index

Speculative endeavors describes the connections between speculation and minoritarian subjects and practices during the rise of capitalism in the US.

Drawing on diverse historical perspectives, the volume challenges conventional historiographic narratives by spotlighting historic agents traditionally excluded from discussions of knowledge and capitalism. Through a series of meticulously researched essays on pedagogical practices, domestic manners, public court cases, and behind-the-scenes publishing habits, the book delves into the quotidian forms of knowledge on the fringes of nineteenth-century society. Each original contribution sheds light on how seemingly inconsequential narratives are part of the fabric of the period’s burgeoning market economy and financial capitalism.

Speculative endeavors is a call to reconceptualize our understanding of the past. Through its rigorous analyses of epistemic and economic practices and compelling narratives of marginalized agents, this groundbreaking collection invites readers to reconsider the intersections of power, privilege, and precarity in the turbulent times between the early republic and the Gilded Age.