Cultural Geography of Commodities: Coffee

Catalog description

This course examines the cultural geography of coffee as part of broader global processes shaping commodities, trade, and everyday life. The course situates coffee’s historical, geographic, and political contexts within frameworks such as slavery, colonialism, imperialism, economic development, global branding, and contemporary debates around labor, inequality, and sustainability. By focusing on coffee as a case study, students explore how commodities circulate through systems of production, consumption, and meaning across local and global contexts.