Teaching Points – Points: short & insightful writing about the long & complex history of drugs & alcohol

Comments on The State of Drug and Alcohol History Pedagogy and Research

August 18, 2022 by David Korostyshevsky

Editor’s Note: In this post, David Korostyshevsky comments on The State of Drug and Alcohol History Pedagogy and Research Roundtable Discussion at the Alcohol and Drugs History Society Conference, Mexico City, June 15, 2022.

After more than two long, hard years of global pandemic, it was truly wonderful to assemble once again with colleagues, friends, and fellow scholars at the Alcohol and Drugs History Society’s Conference in Mexico City this past June. As I begin designing a new course on the history of alcohol and drugs, it is with particular interest that I participated in “The State of Drug and Alcohol History Pedagogy and Research” Roundtable discussion. Without giving a point-by-point breakdown of the presentations and discussion, I highlight general themes and salient observations about the conversation. I also include a few comments about my takeaways from the conversation.

A Chronology of Drugs

April 5, 2022 by Points Editor

Editor’s Note: During her career as a Professor of History, specialising in 20th century Latin America and the war on drugs, Myrna Santiago compiled a chronology of drugs. This contains a log of key dates throughout the history of drugs. We’re incredibly grateful that Myrna has offered to share her chronology within this blog post and will remain part of our Teaching Points collection. I’ll defer to Myrna to explain the rest…

Teaching Points: Transforming a Survey Course and Improving Student Research

August 17, 2021 by Points Editor

Editor’s Note: Today’s post comes from contributing editor Bob Beach. Beach is a PhD candidate in history at the University of Albany, SUNY. The Teaching Points series investigates the role of alcohol, drug, and pharmaceutical history in the classroom.

When I first started teaching in 2009, I assigned my class a research project. With absolutely no classroom experience beyond my own, I naively assumed that students just kind of knew how to do research, and I quickly grew frustrated with the poor results. From that point on, I decided to forego “independent” research entirely in my classes and instead to focus on providing a “guided tour” of the material, providing students with textbooks, articles, and/or primary sources and requiring a mix (over the years) of exams, quizzes, analytical essays, and/or source analyses. Unable to spend sufficient class time explaining the research process or troubleshooting issues, I reasoned that the efficacy of a research project in a survey course would always be undermined by my students’ limited exposure to proper research methods.

In subsequent years, I continued teaching under this assumption. But, coinciding with my transition to a PhD program at Albany and my TA responsibilities, I also increased my efforts to explore how others instructors taught their survey courses, and I continued to make adjustments to my own teaching based on knowledge gained at conferences and in professional journals, newsletters, and magazines. I encountered two appealing strategies. The first is the idea of the flipped classroom, where the activities that typically take place in a classroom and those activities usually occurring outside the classroom are flipped. The second are strategies that stress digital l iteracy (a topic covered recently on Points by Stephen Siff) to help future citizens confront the information dump that they see every day online.

Combining these two strategies, I thought, would provide the ideal model for teaching real-world “research skills” during class time. On this forum (so long ago) I dreamed of one day flipping my classroom, but I lamented the prep-time required—particularly for a doctoral student and later an adjunct. I could, and did, adjust for prioritizing digital literacy, but the flipped classroom remained just that, a dream.

Then the pandemic came, and everything changed.

Beach August Teaching Points Title Card — Left: Sample student research subject, “Why did the Reagan Administration show Just Say No Ads with the likes of NFL and MTV Stars?” Image of Nancy Reagan accepting a “Just Say No” jersey from quarterback Doug Williams in 1988 courtesy of the Ronald Reagan Library.

Teaching Points: Lesson Plan in Truth, Lies, and Anti-Drug Propaganda

August 3, 2021August 3, 2021 by Points Editor

Editor’s Note: Today’s guest post comes from Stephen Siff, an Associate Professor in the Department of Media, Journalism and Film at Miami University of Ohio. He is the author of Acid Hype: American News Media and the Psychedelic Experience (University of Illinois Press, 2015).

I teach media literacy in introductory journalism and mass communication classes at Miami University of Ohio. My recent research explores the history of US anti-drug propaganda campaigns. I was happy when these interests collided over the summer in conjunction with the publication of my article, “‘Why Do You Think They Call It Dope?’: Richard Nixon’s National Mass Media Campaign Against Drug Abuse” in Journalism and Communication Monographs. As supplementary material for my article, I have also provided readers access to a digital lecture about 1970s anti-drug ads, a lesson plan, and two primary source/discussion exercises.

1970s Ad Council Anti-Drug Ad — 1970s Ad Council anti-drug advertisement discussed in my powerpoint presentation.

The State of Drug and Alcohol History Pedagogy: Teaching Challenges and Innovations (Teaching Webinar Roundtable, 1/8/2021)

January 26, 2022January 6, 2021 by Points Editor

Tune in this Friday, January 8, 2021, at 1:00 PM EST (12:00 Noon CST / 10:00 AM PST) for a Teaching Roundtable, “The State of Drug and Alcohol History Pedagogy: Teaching Challenges and Innovations,” sponsored by the American Historical Association and the Alcohol and Drugs History Society. The free streaming online webinar will bring together teaching faculty to discuss the challenges (and rewards) of drug and alcohol history pedagogy and the unique approaches, methods, and tools they employ for responding to these challenges.

Click here to access the Zoom link for the panel.

The Roundtable Participants will be:

Chair: Robert Stephens, Associate Professor of History, Virginia Tech
Presenter: Aileen Teague, Assistant Professor of International Affairs, Texas A&M: “Using Experiential Learning to Understand the Opioid Crisis“
Presenter: Lucas Richert, Associate Professor, University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Pharmacy: “Pharmacy Education & Psychoactive Substances in History”
Presenter: Kenneth Faunce, Associate Professor of History, Washington State University: “Using the History of Drugs to Examine the Processes of Globalization and Imperialism“
Presenter: James Bradford, Assistant Professor, Berklee College of Music and Adjunct Lecturer, Babson College: “Professor, Therapist, or Clinician?: Teaching the History of Drugs to “Users” Amidst an Evolving Legal and Social Environment”

Webinar Abstract:

Over the past decade, cutting edge scholarship has opened new frontiers in the study of drugs and alcohol. At the same time, popular interest in these topics continues to motivate undergraduates to enroll in courses that help them better understand the history of psychoactive substance use and addiction and how it has shaped the current landscape of drug and alcohol issues in our society. But also, such popular interest in these topics is itself a tool for helping faculty engage students in broader subject matter in our society, culture, and politics.

Teaching Points: The Urgency of History

August 18, 2020 by emilydufton

Editor’s Note: Today’s post comes from contributing editor Bob Beach. Beach is a Ph.D. candidate in history at the University of Albany, SUNY. He contributes to our Teaching Points series, which investigates the role of alcohol and drug history in the classroom.

Things have changed.

In February, I wrote what now seems like a rather whimsical preview of my newly fine-tuned version of a Drugs in American History course at Utica College in the Spring of 2020. About two weeks into that ill-fated semester, I highlighted the “enrollment crisis” in history programs, perhaps the central issue among academic historians in the last decade, and how the History Department at Utica College was attempting to retool its history major to appeal to students’ interest in their world. I then discussed the results of my course survey, which brought out the various issues in drug history that interested my students and that I was going to center the course on.

At the time, based on the interactions at the start of the term, I was very optimistic. My optimism rose as we explored David Courtwright’s Forces of Habit as the course’s foundational/theoretical framework over the first seven weeks of class. As the Covid-19 crisis rose to engulf us here in New York State, the class was about to make the transition from theory to research. Students had chosen a “drug category” and were preparing to use basic research tools, also introduced during the first half of the course, to create a 5 minute research presentation (and accompanying 5-7 page research paper) exploring one of the major themes from Courtwright’s book within their chosen category.[1]

Teaching Points: A New Survey Course – The History of Drugs and Alcohol in American History

February 13, 2020 by emilydufton

The history department at Utica College, acutely aware of falling enrollments in history courses throughout the US, has decided to re-cast the 100-level “survey courses” in more thematic terms that we thought might appeal more to student interests, and possibly add some new majors in the process. I teach American history at Utica, and debuted my HIS 128: Drugs in American History this term.

Screenshot 2020-02-13 at 7.42.50 AM — The Great Recession wasn’t kind to history

Narcotics and Western Civilization: A Student-Based Reflection

October 15, 2019 by emilydufton

Editor’s Note: Today’s post comes from Dr. Stefano Tijerina, a lecturer in management and the Chris Kobrack Research Fellow in Canandian Business History at the University’s of Maine’s Business School. He adds to our Teaching Points series, on bringing drug history into the classroom.

Screenshot 2019-10-14 at 10.07.33 PM 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.

Screenshot 2019-10-14 at 10.08.52 PM 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 The Boy Kings of Texas. Since then I always asked myself, why was I exposed to narcotics in the U.S. and not in Colombia, where everybody said drugs were the common denominator? Growing up I was always curious about the nature of the construction of Colombia’s narco-stereotype, knowing first-hand that the cultural desire for all kinds of intoxicants was in the U.S., and the West for that matter, and not in Colombia. As a preceptor in the Honors College, I wanted students to have the unique opportunity to ask similar questions and reflect on their own experiences growing up in the largest global market for intoxicants, where the cultural taboo and the demand-side of intoxicants slept side by side in the same bed.