Uncommon Courses is an occasional series from The Conversation U.S. highlighting unconventional approaches to teaching.

“Intoxication Nation: Alcohol in American History”

I wanted to get students excited about studying the past by learning about something that is very much a part of their own lives.

Alcohol – somewhat surprisingly to me at first – featured prominently in my own research on minority rights and U.S. democracy in the mid-19th century. As a result, I knew quite a bit about the temperance movement and conflicts over prohibition during that period. Designing this course allowed me to broaden my expertise.

Prohibition is a must-do subject. Students expect it. But I cover several hundred years of history: from the 17th-century invention of rum – as a byproduct of sugar produced by enslaved people – to the rise of craft beer and craft spirits in the 21st century.

Along the way, I’m thrilled when students get excited about details that allow them to taste a more complicated historical cocktail. For example, they learn why white women’s production of hard cider was crucial to the survival of colonial Virginia. The short answer: Potable water was in short supply, alcoholic drinks were far healthier, and white men – and their indentured and enslaved workforce – were busy raising tobacco. It fell to women to turn fruit into salvation.

Alcohol remains a big and almost inescapable part of American society. But of late, Americans have been drinking differently – and thinking about drinking differently.

Examples abound. Alcohol producers, we learn, now face competition from legalized weed. Drinking l evels rose during the COVID-19 pandemic, yet interest is declining among Gen Zers. The “wine mom” culture that brought some mothers together now faces mounting criticism.

And, of course, there’s the never-ending debate about the health benefits and risks of alcohol. Of late, the risks seem to be dominating headlines.

Alcohol has been a highly controversial, central aspect of the American experience, shaping virtually all sectors of our society – political and constitutional, business and economic, social and cultural.

Historian Bill Rorabaugh’s “The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition”: a classic social history explaining why Americans in the early 19th century drank twice as much per capita as we do today

Jack London’s alcoholic memoir, “John Barleycorn”: a deep dive into the notorious workingmen’s saloons of the industrial era, as well as one person’s reckoning with alcoholism

“Days of Wine and Roses”: the 1962 film starring Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick that spotlighted the place of alcoholic marriages and Alcoholics Anonymous in post-World War II America

Murray Sperber’s “Beer and Circus: How Big-Time College Sports is Crippling Undergraduate Education”: a provocative early 2000s assessment of college sports and the surrounding party culture vis-a-vis declining academic standards – still relevant today

Like any history course, this one aims to develop student’s analytical, written, research and verbal skills. In lots of ways, the topic is just a tool to get students to grow their brains. But I also seek to grow students’ critical awareness of the place of alcohol in their own lives. The course has also informed students’ paths after graduation – including some who wound up working in the alcohol industry or recovery organizations.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Kyle G. Volk, University of Montana

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Kyle G. Volk works for the Department of History at the University of Montana. He has received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.