Editor’s Note: Over the next few days we’re excited to bring you interviews with the authors of the newest issue of the Social History of Alcohol and Drugs. The current issue deals with the topic of radical temperance–the act of not drinking alcohol in booze-soaked eras. Today we’re speaking with Emily Hogg, of the University of Southern Denmark, who wrote the article “After Alcohol: Gender and Sobriety Counterstories in Two Contemporary Novels.”
Tell readers a little bit about yourself.
I’m an Assistant Professor in the Department for the Study of Culture at the University of Southern Denmark, where I research and teach Anglophone literature, especially contemporary literature. I am part of a research group called Uses of Literature: Social Dimensions of Literature, which is funded by the Danish National Research Foundation and aims to produce precise, accurate and concrete descriptions of literature’s sociability – that is, its ability to both affect and be affected by the individuals, collectives, practices and objects it interacts with. Outside of work, I like yoga, true crime, swimming, baking bread and making zines, and I’m currently helping to organize a new roller disco event in Odense, the city in Denmark where I live.
Alcoholics Anonymous is one of the most successful social movements in history. It has exercised more influence over treatment of substance use disorder than probably any other non-state organization in history. AA programming is the foundation of upscale private rehabs and prison programs alike. Today almost two million people are believed to be AA members, with many more in the myriad of other 12-step fellowships created in its image. But for the great majority of people who go to AA, it doesn’t work. 
In an effort to bring to the classroom the debates over global intoxicants, I was given the opportunity to teach an Honors College tutorial at the University of Maine titled “Narcotics in the Construction of Western Civilization.” My objective was to deconstruct stereotypes and build awareness about the long history and culture of drugs in the West, juxtaposing it to the experiences of other cultures that also built intimate relationships with intoxicants of all kinds. The course became a way to connect my past with the present. 
I grew up in Colombia during the 1970s and 1980s, experiencing the escalation of the American-led War on Drugs. I had been searched at airports continuously as a child when visiting my family in Texas, and later disenfranchised by the narco-centered stereotypes during my college years in New England. My first exposure to marijuana had taken place in Brownsville, Texas, not so distant from the story told by Domingo Martinez in 
Four years before William Burroughs’ 
