A Cup of Culture: How Professor Katharine Burnett is Changing the Way We View Tea

In exploring the rich tapestry of global cultures, few elements weave as intricate a story as tea. Tracing the spread of tea culture offers a unique lens for art historian Katharine Burnett, professor and co-chair in the Department of Art and Art History, to explore the complex interplay of tradition, globalization, and identity. Burnett’s fascination with tea inspired her to launch UC Davis’s Global Tea Institute for the Study of Tea Culture and Science, which delves into both the cultural and scientific aspects of tea. Burnett is also a Public Scholarship Faculty Fellow on campus. Here, she shares insights into her study of tea culture and her engagement with the global tea community.

What role does public scholarship play in your research and teaching?

I like to understand how culture forms, and the forces that shape a culture. It’s fascinating to me how tea culture moves from one place to another — how it is accepted, transformed, mimicked, and adjusted.

Typically, I do my research in libraries and museums, or with site visits to understand where an artist was born and where they did their work. Now, because of the Global Tea Institute, I’m in the field with the farmers, the pluckers, the processors, and people in the industry who show me how the machines work and tell me how tea gets to grocery stores and tea shops. There are all these things that I, as an art historian, wouldn’t normally think about and it enables me to have a much bigger picture and an appreciation of this little leaf than I would have otherwise. Already, this interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approach has really changed how I think about my work, my role, and UC Davis’s role as well.

Why did you create the Global Tea Institute?

One of the fascinating things to me is that tea is the most consumed beverage in the world after water, yet tea is a woefully understudied in the world. Tea is indeed worthwhile for us to study. It is remarkable, shockingly interesting, and really important to know about.

I created the Global Tea Institute ostensibly to increase knowledge-based understanding of tea. There is a lot of anecdotal evidence and lovely stories out there about tea, but as researchers, our role is to make sure what we are saying is validated through evidence and data.

There are tea research institutes around the world that largely focus on their nation’s agricultural product, but do not look at tea the way we do at UC Davis. This is also one of the reasons why UC Davis is one of the perfect places for the Global Tea Institute. We have over 100 undergraduate majors, over 100 areas of graduate study. We can study tea in just about every single one of those areas.

What question do you wish interviewers asked you (but they never do)?

Why is it important to study tea? It’s shocking because that’s such basic thing.

In many ways, we think of tea as a nice, soothing beverage (which is fine!), but it has played a role in society in many different ways — as a symbol of power, of knowledge, of culture, of reliability. It’s played a role that is far more important than what many Americans might think of tea. Tea was essential for the Shogun to establish power and peace and for his  leadership role in Japanese society. I think that it is also really fascinating to understand its role in trade, and how tea brought the world together in different ways.

There are so many ways of understanding it and thinking about it that it's endlessly fascinating and in such a lovely way. It’s everything and nothing. It’s important but it is just tea. It’s the people who matter. But it is also nothing and everything. It’s like a Zen meditation or koan. From this nothingness comes all these deeper relationships and understandings. It symbolizes so much more than what it is. There are so many kinds of threads that weave meaning together, and because tea is what it is, it fits wonderfully into this whole matrix of global understanding and nuance that brings us together.

The theme of this year’s Global Tea Institute Colloquium was "Tea in a Changing World". Why is that an important topic right now?

We always try to come up with a topic that's flexible, that people could address from any number of perspectives, typically with a focus on society and science, culture and health, and the industry. One of the important discussions for that event was about climate change and global warming. Because Kenya is one of the world’s largest tea exporters, I was excited to have our speaker from Kenya, Dr. Chalo Richard Muoki, speak on how climate change is affecting Kenya’s tea fields.

Next year, for GTI’s 10th anniversary, the theme will be Tea and Peace: Bringing Communities Together. One of the interesting things about tea is the theanine, the chemical compound that makes the body feel soothed, so I want us to think about how tea makes us feel peaceful. In Fall Quarter, I want us to organize (with the Global Tea Club) a sip-in for peace on the Quad, then our annual colloquium in the Winter, and then in Spring Quarter hold a forum on Paths to Peace, to really celebrate peace and elevate tea in people’s consciousness.

This article originally appeared on the UC Davis Public Engagement and Scholarship website.