In her dissertation, Tobacco, Chocolate, and the Rise of Modernity, 1492-1800, Townsend Fellow Marcy Norton, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History, examines in new ways the impact of the New World on the Old. In considering how, in the early modern period, the European appropriation of “barbarian” customs was understood and justified by doctors, theologians, jurists and finance ministers, Norton is able to view critically the histories of the development of the early modern state, the growth of the professions, and the Catholic Reformation.