Abstract
This workshop will share our in-progress experiences co-designing and teaching an undergraduate course at Carnegie Mellon University called ‘Coffee, Capitalism, and Consciousness.” The cross-disciplinary course combines perspectives and methods from history and design to encourage students to redesign coffee systems. The course is divided into two parts: the first part focuses on historical perspectives on coffee systems and different narratives about coffee and coffee consumption. In addition to drawing on readings and web-based sources, students interact directly with people working in today’s specialty coffee system— harvesters, cooperative managers, importers, cuppers, roasters, and retailers— via real and virtual visits. During the second half of the course, students are given an opportunity to combine systems analysis with their values to redesign an aspect of the coffee system in order to make it more hospitable for people and biodiversity. The course takes the idea of hospitality literally by using the substance and ritual of coffee drinking to promote sharing and storytelling. We encourage students to align their values with systems thinking in order to move beyond connoiseurship when thinking about what makes for “good coffee.” Our workshop will both describe and simulate aspects of the course by serving coffee and encouraging participants to share stories about the meaning(s) of coffee. In addition, we will provide a coffee service during the break for coffee participants that will feature coffees rooted in “translocal” notions of hospitality.
Details
Presentation Type
Theme
2025 Special Focus—The Art of Hospitality
KEYWORDS
Hospitality, Coffee, Pedagogy, Design, History, Justice, Ecology
