HS 464 - Seminar: Social and Political History of Alcohol and Drugs in America

(3.00 cr.)

Prerequisite: One HS 100-level course, one HS 300-level course. Psychoactive substances, both legal and illegal, have been integral components of economic, cultural, social, and political life in the United States. Focusing on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, topics include the social and class functions of drinking and bar culture; gender and alcohol; the rise of drugs in modern culture; temperance reform; successes and failures of alcohol and narcotics regulation and prohibition; and the contradictory postwar developments of a diseased-based, therapeutic model of drug and alcohol dependency; and the popularity of alcohol and drugs in consumer society and counterculture. Written or electronic permission of the instructor.