Alcohol and Drugs History Society

Cultural history of the recovery movement (book)

Trysh Travis, The Language of the Heart: a Cultural History of the Recovery Movement from Alcoholics Anonymous to Oprah Winfrey (University of North Carolina Press, forthcoming 2009).

Product Description
In The Language of the Heart Trysh Travis explores the rich cultural history of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and its offshoots and the larger "recovery movement" that has grown out of them. Moving from AA's beginnings in the mid-1930s as a men's fellowship that met in church basements to the thoroughly commercialized addiction treatment centers of today, Travis chronicles the development of recovery and examines its relationship to the broad American tradition of self-help, highlighting the roles that gender, mysticism, and print culture have played in that development.

Travis draws on hitherto unexamined materials from AA's archives as well as a variety of popular recovery literatures. Her analysis traces AA's embrace of the concept of addiction as disease, the rise of feminist sobriety discourse and the codependence theories of the 1970s and 80s, and Oprah Winfrey's turn-of-the-millennium popularization of metaphysical healing. What unites these varied cultures of recovery, Travis argues, is their desire to offer spiritual solutions to problems of gender and power. 

Treating self-help seekers as individuals whose intellectual and aesthetic traditions are worth excavating, The Language of the Heart is the first book to attend to the evolution and variation found within the recovery movement and to treat recovery with the attention to detail that its complexity requires. 

Drunken nation: Russia's depopulation

Russia is losing population for many reasons, none more important than widespread alcoholism.  Russians drink more spirits than any other European people, much more.  For details, see here.

UK teenagers as binge drinkers

According to a recent study, United Kingdom teenagers are the third worst binge drinkers, after only Denmark and the Isle of Man (usually considered by foreigners as part of the UK.  UK girls indulged in binge drinking even more than UK boys.  For more, see here.

Drink and (mostly British) politicians

The (London) Times looks at drink and politicians, mostly British, here.

Britain's heavy drinkers ask for liver transplants

Controversy has arisen over heavy drinkers receiving nearly a quarter of all liver transplants in Britain.  Is this fair to other people who need a donated organ?  For details, see here.

Alcoholism (historical and social aspects) conference in Romania, August 28-29, 2009

Call for Papers:  Alcoholism - Historical and Social Issues
 
The National Museum of Unification, Alba Iulia, „Iuliu Maniu” Center for Political and Historical Studies, University of Alba Iulia, is pleased to announce the organizing of a conference with the title 
“Alcoholism – historical and social issues” 
 
The aim of this conference is to discuss the different aspects of alcoholism around the world, and also to promote an interdisciplinary dialogue between different branches of science (history, anthropology, sociology, psychology or medicine), and to promote a comparative analysis between eastern and western European patterns of alcoholism.   At the same time, the conference is intended to encourage the improvement of alcoholism studies in Romania. 
 
The conference will be held on 28-29 August 2009 at the National Museum of Unification, Alba Iulia, Romania.
 
Selected papers from the conference will be revised for publication in the form of an edited volume.
 
The cost of accommodations (all the meals, hotel rooms, official reception of the conference) will be covered by the organizers, excepting the travel expenses for participants.
 
Please send an abstract not exceeding 250 words with your paper proposal to Dr. Marius Rotar, at mrotar2000@yahoo.com
Deadline: 15 May 2009
 
http://www.apulum.ro/index-en.htm 
http://www.muzeuluniriialba.ro/
http://www.uab.ro/index_.php
 

Cultural construction of the alcohol abuser (dissertation)

Timothy Archibald Yates, "Unmade in America: The Cultural Construction of the Alcohol Abuser in the Industrializing United States" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Davis, 2007).

Drunkenness in colonial Australia (prize essay)

Alecia Simmonds (also known as Sloane Pringle), 

"Inebriety, Indolence and Insubordination: 

The Construction and Regulation of Drunkenness

in Colonial Australia, 1788-1860" (postgraduate prize

essay, University of Sydney, 2007).

Proof: Alcohol and American Life (New York Times blog)

Here is a link to the New York Times blog, Proof: Alcohol and American Life.  There have been seven essays, with comments by readers, to date.  The focus in contemporary and not historical.

Drunken Irish widows (article)

M. Alison Kibler, "Pigs, Green Whiskers, and Drunken Widows: Irish Nationalists and the 'Practical Censorship' of McFadden's Row of Flats in 1902 and 1903," Journal of American Studies 42 (2008): 489-514.