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MC: Mary Neuburger: Consumption, Commodities, and Culture in East European History: Food, Drink, Tobacco

When

Dec 04, 2019 from 10:00 to 02:00 (Europe/Berlin / UTC100)

Where

Phil I, Building B, R.025

Contact Name

Contact Phone

+49 641 / 99-30 053

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This master class will explore questions, sources, and approaches to using commodities and/or consumption as subjects in East European history.  We will delineate and discuss the existing literature in the East European field, and look for successes, gaps, and empirical and theoretical possibilities. We will also look outside the field of East European studies for promising models, exploring why they do or do not work for the study of East Europe. In addition, we will explore about how specific commodities—for example different foods, drinks, or tobacco—require different kinds of theoretical framing and contextualization. We will talk about the kinds of questions and sources that might accompany a delving into longue durée histories of these consumables.  Finally, we will discuss how such work can fruitfully employ, transnational, or global approaches (and sources) to both better illuminate the subject at hand and widen the interest in our field.

 

Required Readings:

  • Balkan Smoke: Tobacco and the Making of Modern Bulgaria, 1863-1989. Cornell University Press, 2012. (Introduction)
  • Communism Unwrapped: Consumption in Postwar Eastern Europe, Paulina Bren, co-editor. Oxford University Press, 2012. (Introduction)
  • Mary Neuburger, “Red Meat: Morality, Pleasure, and the Cult of Protein”, unpublished chapter of book in progress. (provided)
  • Aaron Bobrow-Strain, White Bread: A Social History of the Store Bought Loaf.  (Introduction)

 

Suggested Readings:

  • Balkan Smoke: Tobacco and the Making of Modern Bulgaria, 1863-1989. Cornell University Press, 2012. (rest of book)
  • Communism Unwrapped: Consumption in Postwar Eastern Europe, Paulina Bren, co-editor. Oxford University Press, 2012. (rest of book)
  • Aaron Bobrow-Strain, White Bread: A Social History of the Store Bought Loaf.  (rest of book)
  • Tiago Saraiva, Fascist Pigs: Technoscientific Organisms and the History of Fascism.
  • Helen Zoe Veit, Modern Food, Moral Food: Self-Control, Science, and the Rise of Modern American Eating in the Early Twentieth Century.
  • Allan Brandt, The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product That Defined America.

 

// Prof. Mary Neuburger (University of Texas, Austin)

 

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