Event – Detail

Coffee is among the most common goods traded and consumed worldwide and so omnipresent that its popularity is often taken for granted. Drawing from archival, material and quantitative research, Michelle Craig McDonald will discuss when and why coffee became part of North American daily life and how it shaped the lives of enslaved laborers and farmers, merchants, retailers, consumers and advertisers.

Program takes place in the Busch Room.

Book signing follows in the Reading Room, with book sales arranged through Head House Books.

Michelle Craig McDonald is the Librarian/Director of the Library & Museum at the American Philosophical Society. She has worked for nearly three decades as an educator and administrator. Before joining the APS, Michelle was a professor of Atlantic History at Stockton University. Michelle earned her Ph.D. in History from the University of Michigan where she focused on business relationships and consumer behavior between North America and the Caribbean during the 18th and 19th centuries. In addition to her doctorate, she holds an M.A. in Liberal Arts from St. John’s College, Annapolis, and M.A. in Museum Studies from George Washington University, and a B.A. in History from the University of California, Los Angeles, and was the Harvard-Newcomen Postdoctoral Fellow in Business History at the Harvard Business School.