History 380: Topic in Comparative History: Drink in History

Drinks - from water to wine, beer to distillates, coffee, tea, and sodas - are consumed daily. They are all linked to histories of commodities, trade, enslavement, Indigeneity, gender, and immigration. This course explores these many inter-woven linkages and is therefore interdisciplinary in its analysis of the past through the lens of liquid culture. We will direct particular attention to the knowledge and skills involved in producing and consuming the beverages listed above. Centering drink as an entry-point of study overturns colonial expectations of power dynamics and cross-cultural interactions. We will thus pay particular attention to African and Indigenous knowledge systems, skilled labor, the importance of water (and access to water), as well as to Walla Walla's own local and indigenous relationships to water and that "blood of the gods," vino.