Alcohol and Drugs History Society

CFP: history of alcohol in Latin America

Collection on the history of alcohol in Latin America, edited by Aurea Toxqui and Gretchen Pierce.

We are soliciting proposals from both senior and junior scholars for an edited collection on the history of alcohol in Latin America from the pre-Hispanic to the modern era.  We are looking for submissions that relate alcohol production, consumption, distribution, or control to (among other topics) politics, religion, race, class, gender, identity, space and place, and power. The proposal should be 1-2 pages (300-700 words), and should include a list of keywords.  They may be written in English, Spanish, or Portuguese.  Please send the proposal and a short cv to [email protected] and [email protected] by September 1, 2009.  Successful applicants will be notified by October 15; papers, which ought to be 20 pages, plus notes, would be due on July 1, 2010.

-- 
Gretchen Pierce, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Latin American and World History
Shippensburg University

Carib's use of alcohol as seen by Europeans (Article)

Frederick H. Smith, "European Impressions of the Island Carib's Use of Alcohol in the Early Colonial Period,"Ethnohistory 53/3 (Summer 2006): 543-66.

Caribbean black cake (with rum) for Christmas

A traditional and expensive Christmas treat in the Caribbean is black cake, a kind of fruit cake soaked in rum (and not brandy), typically eaten while drinking rum. For more, see here.

Eighteenth-Century Coffee-Houses and coffee today (book review)

Bee Wilson reviews in the Times Literary Supplement, 31 October 2007, Markman Ellis, ed., Eighteenth-Century Coffee-House Culture, 4 vols. (Pickering & Chatto, 2007). For the review, see here. Putting her review in a contemporary context, Wilson begins with references to the film Black Gold and Ethiopian farmers.

Commodities of Empire (from H-Empire)

Readers of ADHS may be interested in this post which appeared on H-Empire:

CFP: "Commodities of Empire" international workshop, London, July 13-14,
2007

The Ferguson Centre for African and Asian Studies (Open University) and
the Caribbean Studies Centre (London Metropolitan University) have
launched a collaborative research project entitled 'Commodities of
Empire'. Details of this project can be found on our website:
http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/ferguson-centre/commodities-of-empire/index.h
tml

We are organising an international workshop in London, 13/14 July 2007,
and would like to hear from anybody interested in participating. We
would particularly like to hear from researchers wishing to attend from
Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and Latin America who are working on any
historical aspects of the global movement of commodities (i.e.
industrial crops, foodstuffs and stimulants).

For more details, please contact either Sandip Hazareesingh
([email protected]) or Jonathan Curry-Machado
([email protected]).

Dr Jonathan Curry-Machado
Research Fellow
Caribbean Studies Centre
London Metropolitan University

Mintz reviewing Smith's Caribbean Rum (book review)

The celebrated anthropologist Sidney W. Mintz reviews Frederick H. Smith, Caribbean Rum: A Social and Economic History, in American Historical Review 112/2 (April 2007): 553-554.

Carib's use of alcohol (article)

Frederick H. Smith, "European Impressions of the Island Carib's Use of Alcohol in the Early Colonial Period," Ethnohistory 53/3 (2006): 543-566.

Smith's Caribbean Rum (review)

David M. Fahey, review of Frederick H. Smith, Caribbean rum: a social and economic history (University Press of Florida, 2006), in Choice, January 2007.

Rum and Bacardí (book)

Mari Aixalá Dawson and Pepín R Argamasilla, Bacardí: a tale of merchants, family and company ([Puerto Rico] : Bacardí Foundation, 2006).

Rum.

Caribbean's toughest smoking ban coming to Puerto Rico

Touted as the Caribbean's toughest smoking ban, Puerto Rico's "clean air act" not only prohibits smoking in enclosed public areas, but also in private cars carrying children under 13 and in open-air terraces or outdoor bars with one or more employees.

Puerto Rico's governor signed the law into effect earlier this year over the objections of some in the $3 billion tourist industry, who feared it might turn away tourists.

Read more here.