First-Year Interdisciplinary Seminar: Bananas: An Interdisciplinary Case Study

Catalog description

During the course of the twentieth century, bananas went from being an obscure tropical fruit never tasted by most people in the United States to an ubiquitous staple of the U.S. diet. This seminar will examine how the banana came to be readily available in U.S. grocery stores, investigate the political, economic, and environmental issues surrounding the banana, and analyze the ways that bananas have been represented in cultural texts in the United States and Latin America. Our study of bananas will serve as an interdisciplinary case study that highlights how one topic can be studied from a variety of disciplinary angles and the insights to be gained from an interdisciplinary approach. Students will explore the seminar topic through literary texts, films, advertising, and secondary material written by historians. Specific topics for discussion include the history of the United Fruit Company, the 1954 CIA-led overthrow of Guatemalan leader Jacobo Arbenz, the career of Brazilian performer Carmen Miranda, the poetry of Pablo Neruda, Gabriel García Márquez’s 1969 novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, sustainable agriculture, labor rights, and banana recipes.