2016-2017 Speaker Series
May 8: Brett Rushforth “‘Daily Trafficke with the Frenchmen’: Merchant Colonialism and African Sovereignty in the Sixteenth-Century Atlantic”
March 9: Zachary Lockman, “Adventures in Field-Building: On the History of Area Studies/Middle East Studies in the United States”
February 23: Ruth Mostern, “Loess is More: A Spatial and Ecological History of Erosion on Imperial China’s Northwest Frontier”
November 17: Marc Matera, “The Global 1930s: The International Decade”
2011 NEH Summer Seminar
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” sought, 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 explored 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 captured 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” provided new ways for teachers and students to grasp how the world was made and remade, and the role of producers and consumers in this process of construction. It called 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 derived 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 used the interconnected histories of production and consumption for doing world history.
The curriculum integrated 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.
During the seminar, participants developed a “commodity biography” and a “social biography” website project. The completed projects will be included here on our website. In addition to these projects, participants gained 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 also participated in the collective project of the development of a major bibliography of “Commodities in World History,” a prototype model of which is also posted on our site’s bibliography page.
2011 Summer Scholars
Back Row: Beth, Whitney, Ann, Erin, Stephanie, Linda. Front Row: Kelly, Terry, Laura, Tara, Traci, Keishla, Jaisha, Lesley, Vince. Missing: Therisa
Photo by Tara Rana.
Erin Bronstein
State College Area High School, State College, PA
Elizabeth Brownson
Dunn School, Los Olivos, CA
Jaisha Bruce
Southwest DeKalb High School, Decatur, GA
Keishla Ceaser-Jones
Cypress Ridge High School, Houston, TX
Whitney Davidson-Hinz
Poly Prep, Brooklyn, NY
Traci Gizzi Romeo
Churchill High School, Livonia, MI
Ann Matney
Scott High School, Toledo, OH
Lesley Muller
Saint Francis High School, Mountain View, CA
Stephanie Portman
Menlo School, Atherton, CA
Tara Rana
The Beacon School, New York, NY
Therisa Rogers
Harrison High School, Farmington Hills, MI
Kelly Sharbel
Pope John Paul the Great High School, Dumfries, VA
Vincent Stewart
Bowie High School, Bowie, MD
Laura Thompson
Tesoro High School, Las Flores, CA
Linda Wohlman
Bancroft Middle School, Long Beach, CA
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FACULTY
Dr. Edmund (Terry) Burke III
NEH Seminar Director
Department of History, UC Santa Cruz
Pedro Machado
Visiting NEH Seminar Faculty
Department of History, Indiana University – Bloomington
Steven Topik
Visiting NEH Seminar Faculty
Department of History, UC Irvine
2009 NEH Summer Seminar
National Endowment For The Humanities Summer Seminar for Teachers
Production And Consumption in World History, 1450-1925
Director: Edmund Burke III
(History / University of California, Santa Cruz)
June 29-July 24, 2009
The University of California, Santa Cruz, will host a summer seminar directed by Edmund (“Terry”) Burke III on “Production and Consumption in World History, 1450-1950″.
The Summer Seminar on “Production and Consumption in World History, 1450-1950” explored the history of the world economy from 1450 to 1914, through a study of the leading commodities in each historical era. During the seminar, participants developed a “commodity biography” or work on their own projects. The seminar was primarily intended for classroom teachers of world history, although others with a strong interest in teaching the history of world economy via commodities were warmly welcomed.
About the director: Edmund (“Terry”) Burke III is Professor of History at UCSC, where he directs the Center for World History. http://ucsc.edu He has worked with classroom teachers for a decade, and was co-director of “World History for Us All,” an NEH-funded initiative for world history in middle and high schools. Other faculty are Steven Topik (History/UC Irvine) and Pedro Machado (History/Santa Clara University).
Participants in the four week seminar received a $3200 stipend, which was meant to help cover travel, housing and food costs during the seminar. Participants were housed on a shared basis in faculty apartments on the UCSC campus. For further information on the application process, see the NEH website at: http://www.neh.gov//projects/si-school.html
For more information on “Production and Consumption in World History, 1450-1914” please browse the rest of our site
Prof. Burke can be reached at (831) 459-2287 or by email at NEHseminar@ucsc.edu.
2009 NEH Summer Scholars
Rochelle (Shelley) Anziska
Yeshiva University High School for Girls, New York, NY
Rashmi Chopra
Hoover High School, North Canton, OH
Tom Collins
Annie Wright School, Tacoma, WA
Diane N. Egan
John S. Burke Catholic High School, Goshen, NY
Erica N. Evans
Miami Lakes Educational Center, Hialeah, FL
Karen Grant
Los Angeles School of Global Studies, Los Angeles, CA
Andrew Kretz
Woodrow Wilson High School, Los Angeles, CA
Andrea Maoki
Melrose Leadership Academy, Oakland, CA
John Morrow
Baltimore City College, Baltimore, MD
Carrie Sato
Hawaii Virtual Learning Network, Honolulu, HI
Neal Schultz
New Rochelle High School, New Rochelle, NY
Sally Stanhope
Dekalb Path Academy, Atlanta, GA
William Tolley
Manhattan Center for Science and Mathematics, New York, NY
Sarah Wilkinson
Shrewsbury High School, Shrewsbury, MA
April Word
The Thacher School, Ojai, CA
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FACULTY
Dr. Edmund (Terry) Burke III
NEH Seminar Director
Department of History, UC Santa Cruz
Pedro Machado
Visiting NEH Seminar Faculty
Department of History, Santa Clara University
Steven Topik
Visiting NEH Seminar Faculty
Department of History, UC Irvine