3737 - (OSHEROnline)Endless Grounds: Coffee's Social, Economic, and Cultural Life (Robert Thurston, PhD)
Course Description
This is an Osher Online course, created and offered through the Osher National Resource Center. These courses are different from our regular OLLI at Emory program. These are six-week courses and live attendance required. You must also have an active OLLI at Emory membership and to register. Currently all classes are limited with 13 seats.
This class is supported by the NRC and participation details can be found on our website.
Endless Grounds: Coffee's Social, Economic, and Cultural Life (Lecture)
Coffee will provide a lively lens on major past and present issues, including climate change, social life, health, global North–South differences, social and economic justice, tourism, and slavery. We will begin “from the ground up,” tracing coffee from planting and processing through shipping and, ultimately, the beverage in our cups - part of nearly two billion cups consumed daily worldwide. We will explore coffee’s global history and its shift from an elite drink to an everyday staple. Drawing on current research, we will examine coffee and health, as well as practical questions such as how more income might reach farmers and how coffee production might adapt to a changing climate. The instructor will share firsthand experiences from coffee farms around the world, discuss a range of brewing methods, and demonstrate how coffee is brewed. Sessions will be interactive, with time for questions throughout.
Your instructor: Robert Thurston, PhD
Robert Thurston, PhD, is Emeritus Professor of History at Miami University (Oxford, Ohio). He earned a BA in History from Northwestern University and a PhD in modern Russian history from the University of Michigan. His writing spans twentieth-century Russian/Soviet history, witch hunts (Europe and Salem), the body in the Anglosphere (1880–1920), and coffee as an economic and social force. A devoted coffee educator, he has opened a roastery and coffee shop and has visited coffee farms from Asia to South America.
VIMEO LINK: https://vimeo.com/1140515675?fl=ml&fe=ec