New Lectures in History (300-0-22)
Topic
Cannabis: Global History
Instructors
Lina Britto
Harris Hall 304
Professor Lina Britto is a Colombian historian and journalist. She received her Ph.D. in Latin American and Caribbean History from New York University. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, Harvard University. While still residing in Latin America, she studied at a M.A. program in Anthropology at the Universidad de la Cordillera (La Paz, Bolivia), and at a B.A. program in Journalism at the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana (Medellín, Colombia). Her teaching philosophy is to help students to develop critical reasoning skills, analytical abilities, and organizational capacities. In her courses on 19th- and 20th-century Latin America and the Caribbean, Prof. Britto resorts on all kinds of historical materials, from academic works to pop culture products. She also uses approaches and methods from different disciplines, from history to anthropology and journalism.
Meeting Info
Locy Hall 111: Tues, Thurs 11:00AM - 12:20PM
Overview of class
This course examines the history of cannabis in a global perspective to understand how and why a plant that has been crucial to most civilizations for thousands of years became one of the most consumed intoxicants in human history, and one of the most demonized, criminalized, controversial and profitable commodities of the modern world. We consider archeological evidence to explore the earliest uses and meanings of the plant in antiquity and how it spread from Central Asia to the rest of the planet. We also examine various types of historical works to comprehend what roles cannabis played in the rise of maritime empires and the formation of a global capitalist world. Then, we revisit some of the urban and rural cultures in various parts of the world that modernized the plant's uses and meanings in the 20th century. We also study scientific, legal, and pop-culture materials to elucidate what was at stake in the most heated controversies and campaigns against and in favor of the plant. We conclude analyzing the most recent debates and policies on decriminalization and
legalization in North and South America in a comparative perspective, and their socio-economic, political, and environmental implications. We address these topics reading history, anthropology, sociology, political science, and journalism; and watching and analyzing critically songs, advertisement, literature, feature films, and documentary movies.
Learning Objectives
The objective is for students to get to know the depth of the history of humanity's relationship with one of the most consumed psychoactive plants on Earth and comprehend how and why the history of cannabis defies rigid conceptualizations at various levels, such as North and South, centers and peripheries, legality and illegality, femininity and masculinity, black and white, archaic and modern, etc. Ultimately, students learn, apply, and practice interdisciplinarity to get comfortable with indeterminacy, contingency, flows, transitions, and plurality in history.
Class Notes
History Major Concentration(s): Americas, Global
Class Attributes
Historical Studies Foundational Discipline
Historical Studies Distro Area
Associated Classes
DIS - Locy Hall 305: Fri 11:00AM - 11:50AM
DIS - Locy Hall 305: Fri 12:00PM - 12:50PM
DIS - Locy Hall 305: Fri 1:00PM - 1:50PM