I teach an undergraduate seminar here at the University of Texas which is
partially a social history of alcohol. Specifically, it is a cultural
history of alcohol and other drugs in the United States. As its goal is
primarily to view American culture through time as reflected in Americans'
behavior toward drugs, it is both more and less than what I would see as a
social history.
The following is a syllabus somewhat modified.
American Studies 370/ History 350 L: American Cultural History of Alcohol
and Drugs
Fall 1997 Dr. Mark Smith
TuTh 12:30-2 Office: Garrison 302
Garrison 107 Tues 2-4; Wed 9:30-12 and by appt.
Phone 471-7277
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
Course Description: Most scholars of alcohol and drug use have
concentrated upon its physiological aspects. It is clear that addiction
and craving have a physical and perhaps even a genetic basis. Yet, as many
anthropologists and sociologists have pointed out, cultures directly affect
the types of drugs used, how they are used, and for what purposes. In
addition, one can examine a culture's drug use and attitude toward it and
often discover a great deal about that society's functioning and values.
One can also note the changes over time within a culture. Thus, drug use
is not only a cultural product but also a very useful social and historical
descriptor. In this course, we will study both how American culture
affected the use of drugs and attitudes toward them and how these serve as
keys to the changing American intellectual, social, and political
landscape.
The study of drug use and attitudes toward it is particularly
appropriate to the United States because of its pluralism. Its settlement
was roughly contemporaneous with the first widespread European use and
abuse of distilled spirits, and different racial, ethnic, and religious
groups brought their different drug habits and attitudes with them. As
each group insisted upon its own traditional approach, the issue became one
of power, control, and eventually politics. Racial, ethnic, and class
prejudices enter directly into almost every one of the discussed issues.
The following is a list of some of the topics to be considered: an
overview of the cultural approach to drug use; alcohol use in colonial
America; proliferation of alcohol abuse in Jacksonian America; the
Prohibition movement from its beginning in the 1800s; the role of women in
the Prohibition movement; the criminalization of opiates, marihuana, and
psychedelic drugs; Alcoholics Anonymous and other treatment modes for
alcohol and drug addiction; medical responses to addiction; and the present
issue of legalization. Among the sources will be anthropological studies,
journalism, public policy, self-help, oral history, documentary films,
autobiography, medical studies, and even history. Although the course's
primary focus will be on drug use, it will always be concerned with what
the issue tells us about American society of the time.
Required Texts
Course Packet--Available at Paradigm Notes West 24th Street
W.J. Rorabugh The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition
David Musto The American Disease: Origins of Narcotic Control
Alcoholics Anonymous Alcoholics Anonymous (the Big Book)
Claude Brown Manchild in the Promised Land
Jay Stevens Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Experience
William Adler Land of Opportunity: One Family's Quest for the American
Dream in the Age of Crack
Jim Carroll The Basketball Diaries
Class Format: This is a seminar course. My idea of hell is listening to
anyone (especially myself) for over fifteen minutes. Therefore, this class
will absolutely be conducted on a seminar basis. This requires regular
attendance, up-to-date reading, and informed discussion. Class
participation will count 20% of your grade, and you will receive a grade
for that at the end of the course. I do take attendance. Anyone who
misses six or more of the classes will receive an automatic F for the
entire course.
Course Requirements: In addition to class participation, your final grade
will consist of two reading quizzes worth 15% each and scheduled for
October 9th and either December 4th or 11th (class will make a choice
early in the semester), a book report worth 10% due on October 2nd, and an
approximately 20 page paper due on November 27th and worth 40% of your
final grade. The quizzes will consist of matching and identification
questions and will be directed primarily toward the reading with some
lecture content included.
Writing Assignments: This is a writing component class and half your grade
will derive from your papers. The first assignment will be an
approximately 5 page report on a book dealing with your tentative paper
topic. You may approach the book in whatever way you feel most
comfortable, but the major goals are for you to begin serious work on your
topic and to get a feel for my expectations for your writing.
As for your major paper, you should choose a topic dealing with
some aspect of alcohol and drug use in the United States. This may be
something touched upon in class or of your own devising. I have received
excellent papers in the past on such topics as Inhalant Abuse in
Contemporary America, Female Opiate Addicts in Late 19th Century America,
and Depiction of Drug Users on the TV show "COPS." Ideally, the topic
should be of personal interest to you and allow you to use cultural and
historical insights from the course.
Course Calendar
Aug 28 Introduction
Sep 2 Cultures and the Use of Drugs
Benedict, Madsen, Heath, and Carstairs, and Giles
4 History and the Use of Drugs
Brennan and Giles
9 Alcohol in Early America
W.J. Rorabaugh The Alcoholic Republic, chapters 1-4
11 Alcohol and Jacksonian America
Rorabaugh, chapters 5-6
16 The Temperance Movement
Rorabaugh, chapter 7; Coggshall, Dow, and Crane,
18 Opiates and Their Uses
David Musto, American Disease, preface and chapters 1-3;
Bok, Riis, and Bayer ad
HAND IN PAPER TOPIC
23 The Concept of Addiction and Its Treatment
Musto, chapters 4-5
25 Demonization of the Addict
Musto, chapters 6-7; Addicts Who Survived
30 Women and the Prohibition Movement
Levine and Lewis
BOOK REPORT DUE
Oct 2 Prohibition during the 1920s
In-class film "Demon Rum"
7 FIRST QUIZ
Rorabaugh; Musto, chapters 1-6; Packet to Lewis
9 Alcoholics Anonymous
Alcoholics Anonymous, foreword-chapter 4; AA schedule
14 The Twelve Steps and the Personal Perspective
Alcoholics Anonymous, chapters 5-11 and Personal Stories
"Dr. Bob" and five or six others; "New Ways," "Clean
and Sober," and "Half Steps vs. 12 Steps"
ONE PAGE SUMMARY OF WORK IN PROGRESS
21 Development of the Medical Model
In-class film "Addiction"
23 Alcohol and Drug Addiction as Disease?
DSM III-R definition, Goodwin, "Researchers Cannot,"
Goleman, Peele, Fingarette, and Vaillant
Oct 28 Heroin and Black America--The Great Migration
Claude Brown Manchild in the Promised Land, chapters 1-9
30 Drugs and Race
Brown, chapters 10-end
Nov 4 Marihuana and Its Criminalization
Musto, chapter 9; Anslinger, Ad, Cartoon
6 Beats, the 1950s, and the Emergence of the Counterculture
Lindesmith,; Jay Stevens, Storming Heaven, preface and Book 1
11 From Science to Religion
Stevens, Book 2
TOPIC OUTLINE DUE
13 From Religion to Culture
Stevens, Book 3
18 Crack and Black America
William Adler, Land of Opportunity and "Deep East Texas"
SENTENCE OUTLINE DUE
20 God Damn the Pusher or Entrepeneurial Spirits?
guest lecture Bill Adler
25 NO CLASS
26 PAPERS DUE
Dec 2 Youth Culture and the Rise of Heroin Chic
Jim Carroll, Basketball Diaries, "Sunday in the Park,"
"Cartels Another Chance," "Rockers, Models and
New Allure," and "Music Industry's Secret"
4 SECOND QUIZ
Alcoholics Anonymous, Brown, Stevens, Adler, Carroll, and
Packet AA Schedule-end
CULTURAL HISTORY OF DRUGS PACKET TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Ruth Benedict "Psychological Types in the American Southwest,"
Proceedings (1930)
2. William and Claudia Madsen "The Cultural Structure of Mexican Drinking
Behavior" Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcohol (1969)
3. Dwight Heath "Drinking Patterns of the Bolivian Camba" Quarterly Journal
(1958)
4. George Carstairs "Bhang and Alcohol: Cultural Factors in the Choice of
Intoxicants" Marihuana Papers (1966)
5. Thomas Brennan "Social Drinking in Old Regime Paris" in Drinking:
Behavior and Beliefs (1991)
6. Geoffrey Giles "Student Drinking and the Third Reich: Academic Tradition
and the Nazi Revolution" Drinking: Behavior and Beliefs (1991)
7. William Coggshall "Little Peleg, the Drunkard's Son," American
Temperance Magazine (1854)
8. Neal Dow "The Story of a Neighborhood" ibid.
9. J.T. Crane "A True Story" ibid.
10. Edward Bok "The Patent Medicine Cure" Ladies Home Journal (1904)
11. Jacob Riis "Chinatown" How the Other Half Lives (1890)
12. Bayer advertisement / Syringes ad (early 1900s)
13. David Courtwright, et. al. Addicts Who Survived (1989)
14. Harry Gene Levine "Temperance and Women in 19th Century U.S.," Research
Advances In Alcohol and Drug Problems (1980)
15. Sinclair Lewis "Babbitt Has A Party" Babbitt (1922)
16. Austin Alcoholics Anonymous Schedule
17. "New Ways to Treat Alcoholism" NYTimes (December 1990)
18. "Clean and Sober--and Agnostic" Newsweek (1991)
19. "Half Steps vs. 12 Steps" Newsweek (1995)
20. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders III-R "Substance
Dependence and Abuse" (1987)
21. Donald Goodwin "Studies of Familial Alcoholism" Longitudinal Studies (1983)
22. "Researchers Cannot Confirm A Genetic Link to Alcoholism" NYTimes
(December 1990)
23. Daniel Goleman "Brain Images of Addiction in Action Show Its Neural Basis"
(August, 1996)
24. Stanton Peele "Brain Images Tell Nothing About Addiction" (August, 1996)
25. Herbert Fingarette "Alcoholism: The Mythical Disease" (1988)
26. George Vaillant "The Doctor's Dilemma" (1983)
27. Harry Anslinger "Marihuana: Assassin of Youth" American Magazine (1937)
28. Alfred Lindesmith "The Marihuana Problem: Myth or Reality?" The
Marihuana Papers (1966)
29. Federal Bureau of Narcotics Ad (1940s)
30. Furry Freak Brothers (1960s)
31. Joan Didion "Slouching Toward Bethlehem" (1967)
32. William Finnegan "Deep East Texas" New Yorker (August, 1994)
33. "Sunday in the Park" Mother Jones (1990)
34. "The Cartels Would Like a Second Chance" Rolling Stone (1994)
35. "Rockers, Models, and the New Allure of Heroin," Newsweek (August 1996)
36. Michael Cochran "Music Industry Confronts Its Dirty Little Secret"
Austin-American Statesman
Mark C. Smith
Associate Professor American Studies and History
University of Texas at Austin
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