Course Description
How did a food delivery system emerge across the Atlantic after 1492? Part I explores cocoa, sugar, coffee, and tobacco, biological science, nautical engineering, and the slave trade. Part II explores the potato famine, abolition, the wheat trade, the growth of European states, World War I, and the Russian Revolution.
Athena Title
Food Science and War
Pre or Corequisite
One course in HIST or RUSS or GRMN or INTL or POLS or PHIL or AESC or AGED or ANTH or ECON or BIOL or AFAM or AFST or ECOL
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Student Learning Outcomes
- By the end of this course, students will be able to arrive at conclusions about food, science, and war in the Atlantic by gathering and weighing evidence, logical argument, and listening to counter argument.
- By the end of this course, students will be able to write stylistically appropriate papers and essays. Students will be able to analyze ideas and evidence, organize their thoughts, and revise and edit their finished essays.
- By the end of this course, students will be able to identify how the history of food, science, and war in the Atlantic World shaped diverse social and cultural attitudes toward the interplay of environment, agriculture, and militarism, encouraging them to understand diverse worldviews and experiences.
- By the end of this course, students will be able to apply appropriate methodological approaches to their analysis of primary sources and to organize their evidence to show historical continuities and discontinuities.
Topical Outline
- Chocolate: Marcy Norton, “Tasting Empire”
- Tropical drugs and biology: Benjamin Breen, chapter from The Age of Intoxication
- Slavery and shipbuilding: chapter from Rediker, The Slave Ship
- Sugar and industry: John E. Crowley, “Sugar Machines: Picturing Industrialized Slavery”
- Tobacco and slavery: TH Breen, chapter from Tobacco and Slaves
- Coffee: chapter from Stuart McCook, Coffee is Not Forever
- Flour: chapter 3 from Nelson, Oceans of Grain
- Free Trade and water molds: chapter 4 from Nelson, Oceans of Grain
- U.S. Civil War: chapter six from Nelson, Oceans of Grain
- Food and Logistics in European Wars: chapter 7 from Nelson, Oceans of Grain
- European State expansion post-1865: chapter 10 from Nelson, Oceans of Grain
- A World War over Bread: chapter 13 from Nelson, Oceans of Grain
- Revolutions over Bread: chapter 14 from Nelson, Oceans of Grain
Institutional Competencies
Analytical Thinking
The ability to reason, interpret, analyze, and solve problems from a wide array of authentic contexts.
Communication
The ability to effectively develop, express, and exchange ideas in written, oral, interpersonal, or visual form.
Critical Thinking
The ability to pursue and comprehensively evaluate information before accepting or establishing a conclusion, decision, or action.
