HIST301I

Food as one of the most basic human needs has generated incredible efforts to shape the environment. Beginning in the nineteenth century, innovations that applied principles of industry to food production have resulted in an unprecedented availability of food. But nonhuman organisms have resisted complete commodification again and again, and have shaped the U.S. and global food system in return. From the vantage point of the United States and Maine in particular, this seminar explores how humans linked agriculture, labor, science, technology, industry, empire, and global trade and development into a powerful industrial-agrarian system that feeds us today.