Course Structure: The course is divided into 3.5 sections, based chronologically. Each section will treat all three of the cities, but one section will focus more on each one, through the text selection. 

 

Section 1: A Growth Industry: beginnings of local tobacco industry-1890. (wks 2-5)

This section will introduce the beginnings of the tobacco industry in the three tobacco towns that the course studies, and begin to explore the relationships between that industry and labor movements and gender and racial politics. It will introduce Spain in decline, the movement of the cigar trade from Havana to Florida, and Durham after the Reconstruction Acts.

 

General structure:

Week 2: History of tobacco in Galicia/Spain

Week 3: History of tobacco in Durham

Week 4: History of immigration/tobacco in Ybor city

Week 5: Discussion of La Tribuna (Pardo Bazán - 1882)

 

Other things in this time frame:

• First visit to the Wilson Library Special Collections

• Historical Intervention paper

• Film screening

• Visit to the Duke Homestead State Historic Site and Tobacco Museum

• Student Presentations

​

 

Section 2: Prepping for War: 1891-94 (wks 6-9)

This section will take the tobacco trade as the backdrop for preparations for what will become the Spanish-Cuban-American war. It will explore the relationships between revolution and labor organizing, changes in political tactics, and the developing US opinions of the troubles in Cuba. It will trace Spain’s changing political tactics, establish the state of US labor in relation to the whisperings of revolution in Cuba, introduce Martí and his role in the revolution. It will connect revolution to the systems of mutual aid established in Ybor city by immigrant communities, and compare the structures of race in labor in Ybor and Durham.

 

General structure:

Week 6: Spain/Galicia: Relationship with Cuba

Week 7: Durham: Race, Otherness, Gender, and Labor movements

Week 8: Ybor: Fomenting revolution with a Labor apparatus

Week 9: Discussion of Martí writings and Domingos de tanta luz (Cartaya, 2019)

 

Other things in this time frame:

• Second visit to the Wilson Library Special Collections

• True fiction historical narrative

• Final Project Proposal

• Film screening

• Student Presentations

 

 

Section 3: In It Now: 1895-98 (wks 10-13)

This section will begin with the death of Martí and the beginning of the war. It will then trace the war from both the Spanish and US perspectives, concluding with personalizing the conflict through readings of the epistolary of Durham-born soldiers who went to Cuba.

 

 

General structure:

Week 10: The death of Martí and the start of a Revolution

Week 11: The revolt of a final Caribbean colony: tactics with Puerto Rico and Cuba

Week 12: The Imperial drive: conquest and growth

Week 13: Durham boys go to war.

 

Other things in this time frame:

• True fiction historical narrative

• Final Project Draft Workshop

• Film screening

• Student Presentations

 

​

Section 3.5: Inter/national Racial and Identity Politics (wk 14)

This final section, carrying into the final week of the semester (devoted to discussion of presentations, see assignment breakdown), will put the war in the context of social perception and national metaphors, largely through political cartoons and advertisements that use tropes of nation, race, and identity to sell tobacco products.

Other things in this time frame:

• Final Project Due

• Student Presentations