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National Endowment for the Humanities
Summer Seminar for Teachers
Production and Consumption in World History, 1450-1950
Director: Edmund Burke III
(History/University of California, Santa Cruz)
June 29-July 24, 2009
 
The NEH Seminar on “Production and Consumption in World History” will take place from June 29 to July 24, 2009 at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Director's Letter
Thank you for considering applying to my seminar on “Production and Consumption in World History, 1500-2000.” I have planned a stimulating four week seminar for all those participating—the visiting scholars (you), the faculty for the seminar and the staff here at UC Santa Cruz. In this seminar you’ll be able to share your ideas and to learn new ways of teaching world history as the linking of producers and consumers from many lands.
This letter provides an overview of the work we’ll be doing together and some sense of how the seminar will work. I hope you’ll read it carefully. Please let me know any questions you might have. I know that you have choices to make, and I’d be happy to provide further information so that you can make an informed choice.
Brief Overview
Ours is a consumer society. But where do the products we consume originate? What histories do they conceal? Popular histories like Mark Kurlansky’s Cod: a Biography of the Fish That Changed The World (1999) have raised awareness that the food we put on our tables, the clothing we wear and the objects with which we surround ourselves all contain embedded histories that open doors onto a wider world.
The Summer Seminar on “Production and Consumption in World History” seeks through the study of these embedded histories to understand the successive transformation of the modern world economy over the period 1450-1914 and the role of individuals in it.
Using a variety of different materials (art history, material objects, histories of production and work, as well as of consumption and fashion, micro-histories and global histories) our seminar will explore the making of the modern world from the bottom up. By linking the biographies of commodities (what Arjun Appadurai has called “the social life of things”) with the “social biographies” of ordinary (and sometimes not so ordinary) people, we can capture the sweep of the world economy, while also putting people in the center of the lens.
The summer seminar on “Production and Consumption in World History” provides new ways for teachers and students to grasp how the world they inhabit was made and remade, and the role of producers and consumers in this process of construction. It calls upon them to look at the past from unfamiliar angles, and to think through the logic of how connections developed, changed and were sustained over time.
Our approach derives from Sidney Mintz’s 1986 Sweetness and Power, which asks us to see production and consumption as “inter-digitated” (that is, inescapably bound up with one another). Inspired by Mintz, this seminar will use the interconnected histories of production and consumption for doing world history.
The curriculum integrates the history of the world economy from 1450 to 1914, as seen via the leading commodities in each historical era. Since I first began working with graduate students on world history three decades ago, I’ve become convinced that linking histories of individuals and world historical processes has the potential for transforming how we do world history.
A wonderfully imaginative gateway into the kind of time traveling we’ll be doing in the seminar is a recent book by Timothy Brook, Vermeer’s Hat: The seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2008). Brook follows the histories of the objects that appear in many of the best known paintings by this Dutch master. We’ll be reading it, together with other books and articles this summer. See how many objects you can find in this image.
During the seminar, participants will develop a “commodity biography” and a “social biography” website project. The completed projects can be included in the website of the UCSC Center for World History. For examples see http://cwh.ucsc.edu/commodities.html and
http://cwh.ucsc.edu/socialbiographies.html
In addition to these projects, participants will gain new perspectives on how the development of the world economy involved the linking of individuals and societies around the world by invisible threads of connection. They will also participate in the collective project of the development of a major bibliography of “Commodities in World History,” a proto-type model of which is posted in the Center for World History Website. http://cwh.ucsc.edu
I’ll be adding to this website the full seminar reading list, a bibliography on Commodity Histories, and other goodies as we get closer to the date. If you’d like further information, please feel free to call or drop me an email.
Seminar Faculty
This summer institute is directed by Edmund (“Terry”) Burke III, who is Director of the Center for World History at UC Santa Cruz. Between 2003 and 2007, he was the holder of a Presidential Chair at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he has taught world history for more than 40 years. He previously directed two National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institutes for College Teachers – one in summer 1995 ("Rethinking Europe/Rethinking World History, 1500-1750"), and one in summer 1998 (“The Environment and World History, 1500-2000”).
Burke has worked with classroom teachers for more than a decade, and was one of the co-directors of an NEH funded initiative for world history in middle and high schools, “World History for Us All.” The outcome of a three-year collaboration between scholars of world history and seasoned classroom teachers, WHFUA produced a comprehensive model curriculum for teaching world history from early times to the present. It can be viewed at http://worldhistoryforusall.sdsu.edu/
In addition to the director, the faculty of this seminar includes Steven Topik, (Professor of History, University of California, Irvine), and Pedro Machado (Assistant Professor of History, Santa Clara University).
Professor Topik is the author of several books on coffee in the world economy, as well as the editor (with Kenneth Pomeranz) of The World That Trade Created, a widely used supplementary text in world history courses. He will join us in Week 3 to introduce the coffee story, and provide an alternate perspective on the role of trade in world history. )
Professor Machado is an expert on the history of handloom cotton production in India, and the place of Indian cottons in the East African economy from the eighteenth century to the present, and will join our group in Week 4 to share his work on the history of cotton handloom producers in western India, and the development of an export market to East Africa that dates to the fifteenth century.
Selection Process
Participants will be selected by a three person committee, consisting of the director, a UCSC world history faculty colleague and a high school teacher of world history. Members of the committee will read and evaluate each application.
We will be especially interested in selecting teachers who can show a commitment to improving their own teaching and to developing the teaching of world history. We will strive to assemble a group that includes a broad diversity in backgrounds and interests. Teachers with backgrounds in US, European and World history, as well as art history, economic history and related disciplines are especially urged to apply.
Conclusion
I hope you will join us for what promises to be an exciting and stimulating seminar this coming summer. Please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions that you have about the seminar or about UCSC.
Sincerely,
Terry Burke
Director
About UCSC and the Santa Cruz Area
Location and Facilities
The campus of the University of California, Santa Cruz is an ideal place to hold an NEH Summer Seminar for Teachers. The campus is situated in the hills at the north end of Monterey Bay, within easy driving distance of the San Francisco Bay Area and major airports. The climate in summer is mild with cool, misty mornings and bright afternoons. The campus is a very active place in the summer with many other conferences, institutes and a summer session.
Santa Cruz is located at the north end of Monterey Bay. We are 90 miles from San Francisco and about the same distance from Berkeley & Oakland. If you have access to a car, the Monterey peninsula is on the other side of Monterey Bay, from where you can easily get to Carmel, and Salinas (Steinbeck country). Big Sur, Yosemite and the Sierras are also within range for weekend trips.
Participants will have access to the UCSC McHenry Library, which contains over a million volumes and access to major electronic data bases. In addition, participants will have access to the full resources of UC inter-campus libraries via the UC Inter Library Loan system.
Access to the UCSC campus fitness facilities can be arranged for a fee via the OPERS (Office of Physical Education, Recreation and Sports).
Housing
In the past we’ve been able to house participants in the faculty apartments at the base of the UCSC campus, where many faculty (who have summer research plans of their own) are willing to sublet. The faculty apartments have their own kitchens and come in various sizes. Sharing with another person in a faculty apartment sublet is also an option. We’ll provide a list of available units with your formal acceptance. We are happy to help match up people interested in this possibility. For those with their own cars, parking is available at their apartment. Given the size of our group, we expect to be able to find housing for all in the faculty apartments. Be sure to let us know if you’d be interested in this by April 15, 2009.
Since Santa Cruz is a tourist town and attracts lots of visitors, off campus summer rentals can be relatively expensive. If you are interested in exploring this possibility please let us know. The Humanities Division maintains a housing list which is refreshed weekly and we’d be happy to refer you to it. If you have special housing needs, please let us know.
About Santa Cruz
For more about the Santa Cruz and Monterey Bay see this link:
http://www.santacruzca.org/index.shtml
Getting Here:
For those dependent upon public transport, the good news is that Santa Cruz has a relatively robust (by California standards) public transit system. There is regular bus service between the campus and the city of Santa Cruz at every 15 minutes in summer. The UCSC website contains information on access to local airports. The closest is San Jose International Airport (45 minutes drive time). San Francisco International Airport is approximately two hours by car from Santa Cruz). For more information on public transportation, see UCSC website: http://www.ucsc.edu/about/
Continuing Education
Continuing Education Units or In-service credits are available through the University of California Extension, Santa Cruz. Program participants can opt to enroll for CEUs or In-service credits on the first day of the program by completing the UCSC Extension CEU application. Contact Us:
Center for World History: (831) 459-2287
Email: NEHseminar@ucsc.edu
Other Links
UCSC Center for World History
UCSC Department of History
University of California, Santa Cruz
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