Cultural History of Coffee and Cocoa

Course goals

In this course, you learn and develop the following skills:

• Critical thinking. You learn to make connections between the role that coffee and chocolate have played in different periods and regions of world history.
• Critical thinking. You become familiar with the key insights of food history as an approach within the practice of history and the relationship between identity and food. 
• Research skills. You practise your research skills by doing a well-organised research project in line with your interests and learning lines.
• Collaboration. Through discussion assignments and hands-on “practicals”, you gain experience in interdisciplinary collaboration.

Content

It is impossible to imagine our food culture today without coffee and chocolate. Many of us crave the early-morning caffeine injection of coffee to get us through the day, while we struggle to resist the lure of chocolate, be it a dessert or snack, an Easter bunny or a chocolate letter.

In this interdisciplinary course, we explore how coffee and chocolate - originally consumed mainly in Africa, the Middle East, and South America - have gained such prominence in our modern (Western) consumer society. We trace the transformation of chocolate as a bitter Aztec drink (xocōlātl) that dramatically changed the taste of Europeans into a manageable bar that could be given to soldiers as field rations. We examine the relationship between coffee and identity formation in the coffee houses of the Enlightenment and the hipster culture characterised by latte art. We also look at the colonial context and examine the forms of inequality associated with the cultivation of these products. Finally, we plunge into the emergence of fair trade labels and other frameworks for social and sustainable development. In short, this course offers a bird's eye view through the highly complex but ever-addictive history of coffee and chocolate.

Depending on the number of students, the course consists of seminars and/or lectures. In this, we combine discussions of interdisciplinary literature with hands-on sessions in which we make, taste, listen, and learn. The material to be read covers case studies from early modern to modern times, theoretical literature on identity formation, and food history as an approach within the practice of history.

Additional information

The shown timeslot is not yet definitive and can change until the 3rd Wednesday of September.