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Jun. 30 | 2012 Bode-Pearson Prize
Nominations for the 2012 Bode-Pearson Prize for Outstanding Contributions to American Studies due
Jun. 30 | 2012 Mary C. Turpie Prize
Nominations for the 2012 Mary C. Turpie Prize for Outstanding Contributions to American Studies Teaching, Advising, and Program Development due
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Resources: Abstracts of American Studies Dissertations
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Hannickel, Erica. "An Imperial Vineland: The Culture of the Grape in 19th Century America," American Studies, University of Iowa, December 2008. Advisor: Dr. Laura Rigal
American viticultural practice was a vigorous site for the construction of American empire in the nineteenth century. When horticulturists referred to vine culture, or a culture of the grape, they meant the technical aspects of how to best tend grapevines. But beyond giving advice on planting and propagating vines, the practices and publications of viticulturists went much further to construct a culture of the grape which was at the forefront of an international horticultural imperial consciousness. Viticulturists’ rhetoric and technologies were imbued with larger designs of national expansion, elite landscape construction, and international power, and informed a wider audience’s understanding of the vineyard. In turn, the narrative and visual trope of the grapevine offered nineteenth century publics a potent way of seeing and understanding the world and their nationalist place in it through a refined horticultural lens.
Grape and wine history has previously been told in overly vinophilic narratives, as a subtopic within religious history, or within histories of prohibition politics. This project goes beyond those discourses and situates a history of viticulture within the history of U.S. imperial and capitalist expansion. It reveals that there was a nationalist grape culture functioning in the United States, and that it was of major importance within the larger history of landscape construction and the process of urbanization. From New York and Washington to the Ohio Valley and California, grape culture worked to manifest and naturalize Americans’ grip on the continent. Ultimately, the history and logic of grape culture was located somewhere between the ideology of manifest destiny and final imperial control of several U.S. regions. Viticulture served as a crucial middle step between the dream of laying claim to the continent and later-nineteenth century dominance of varied American lands, people, and international agricultural markets.
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