Coffee Break
Coffee Break seeks to promote disruptive thinking about “good coffee” by bringing coffee drinkers into conversations with coffee farmers, roasters, baristas, and one another in order to re-imagine forms of hospitality rooted in sustainability and justice, not connoisseurship.
Coffee drinking is associated with hospitality around the world, yet producing coffee is not always hospitable to biodiversity, the millions of small-scale coffee farmers, or the migrant laborers who harvest coffee. The Coffee Break project will use coffee and its myriad associations with hospitality as a means to encourage diverse people to enter into generative, self-reflective conversations about coffee, capitalism, and their consequences.
These conversations take place first and foremost in the undergraduate course Coffee, Capitalism and Consciousness, co-taught by project collaborator Saurin Nanavati (School of Design) and John Soluri (History Department). The course integrates theory and practice: Students explore coffee as a complex socio-ecological system via scholarly work and direct engagement with people in the business of coffee (grower cooperatives, traders, and roasters and retailers) to understand the lived realities of those working in the sector. The course culminates with a "Spirit of Coffee Festival" during which students present multimedia projects to peers, faculty and Pittsburgh-area coffee professionals. Ultimately, the course encourages students to see their university as a powerful leverage point for transforming the coffee sector. When universities build intentional partnerships with coffee-growing communities, they can brew hospitality.
Project Director
John Soluri
Professor
Department of History