Advisor

Hubert Cook

Document Type

Honors Paper

Publication Date

2025

Abstract

In this honors study Wine as Gossip: The Making of Living Objects and Human Experience, I argue that there is an inherent power to wine as a means to subvert the narrative of the current American myth. I emphasize how the living nature of wine reflects how objects can have a level of consciousness and power. In the opening chapter, “Gossip and Wine: Uncovering Forms of Resistance and Methods to Subvert and Revise Power Structures” gossip serves as a means to understand how wine can be used in this subversion. I argue that wine and gossip are linked in their ability to rise up against power structures. Using the work of Patricia Meyer Spacks and her article “In Praise of Gossip” as well as popular culture references, like wine magazine Noble Rot and Apple TV show Drops of God, I argue that wine and gossip are positive structures that are ever changing and evolving with the individual. The second chapter “Drinking Essence: The Power of Wine as Gossip Through James Hemings and Thomas Jefferson” is a case study of how wine can be understood as a form of gossip through this historical lens. I argue that wine created the means and type of consciousness, building on W.E.B Du Bois’ work in The Souls of Black Folk, that Hemings needed in order to act upon his own right to freedom. Particularly how wine as a living object could offer a way of existing outside the bounds of formality and whiteness. In the short epilogue I apply my theory of third consciousness, essence, and the ways which gossip functions through objects such as wine to challenge power structures in Charles Chesnutt’s story “The Goophered Grapevine”. This story encompasses how wine has the power to capture and transform social bounds and dynamics of existence.

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The views expressed in this paper are solely those of the author.