People around the world and throughout history have consumed plants, brews, chemicals and alkaloids in an effort to change consciousness. Some of these efforts are recreational, some ceremonial, and others part of medicine and experimentation. In this class we explore different ways that alcohol and drugs have been used in the past, by examining themes from different areas of the world. We examine how historians have contributed to popular understandings of drugs, alcohol, and intoxication and we consider what role social sciences and humanities scholars play in shaping our popular understandings of what makes good drugs and bad drugs, or how scholars and policy makers have determined limits for acceptable intoxicating behaviours and who has the privilege to be intoxicated, or who is criminalized for seeking intoxication. Rather than follow a chronological structure, in this course we examine how different psychoactive substances have been viewed in different places, from the perspectives of colonizers and colonized at different time points in history. Weekly hours: 3 Seminar/Discussion hours Prerequisite(s): 6 cu of senior HIST courses of which 3 credit units must
People around the world and throughout history have consumed plants, brews, chemicals and alkaloids in an effort to change consciousness. Some of these efforts are recreational, some ceremonial, and others part of medicine and experimentation. In this class we explore different ways that alcohol and drugs have been used in the past, by examining themes from different areas of the world. We examine how historians have contributed to popular understandings of drugs, alcohol, and intoxication and we consider what role social sciences and humanities scholars play in shaping our popular understandings of what makes good drugs and bad drugs, or how scholars and policy makers have determined limits for acceptable intoxicating behaviours and who has the privilege to be intoxicated, or who is criminalized for seeking intoxication. Rather than follow a chronological structure, in this course we examine how different psychoactive substances have been viewed in different places, from the perspectives of colonizers and colonized at different time points in history. Weekly hours: 3 Seminar/Discussion hours Prerequisite(s): 6 cu of senior HIST courses of which 3 credit units must
