Philosophy & Coffee

Northland College offered 4-week long, May-term courses. Due to the hands-on nature of Northland, students typically expected May-term courses to include travel and hands-on experiences, which were often lacking in many of out department’s humanities offerings. So, I decided to combine my love for coffee with philosophy to offer hands-on, unique learning experiences for my students. The first two weeks focused on the nature of coffee and the aesthetics of coffee; the third week focused on the coffeehouse and political philosophy; the fourth week focused on issues of environmental ethics and sustainability as related to coffee.

For the more hands-on portions of the course, we were lucky enough to be hosted by Full Keel Coffee and Duluth Coffee Company for tours of their roasting operations and cuppings (formal coffee tastings) of their products, allowing students to taste coffee, learn about its production, and pose questions to coffee professionals. The third included a trip to a local coffeehouse as an exploration of third places where we had substantive discussions about Locke’s and Proudhon’s respective political philosophies. The fourth week included a trip to Juniper Rock and an abandoned Swedish settlement in Wisconsin, fostering a fitting setting for discussing questions of naturalness and artificiality as related to coffee production.

For this course, I partnered with Northland College’s Hulings-Rice Food Center to run “coffee labs” that I designed, providing structured opportunities for students to learn different methods of coffee brewing, experiment with creating their own blends of coffee beans, and engage in analytical tasting. The course then culminated in a free coffeehouse pop-up in the student center, where students could demonstrate their learning and share it with the campus community.