Although geographically rooted in the Southern United States, the U.S. poultry industry is best understood in a transnational, or even global, perspective that can be difficult to address in regionally bounded courses. In intellectual terms, the topic straddles a number of historiographic subfields that have steadily grown in recent decades. These include fields like labor and migration, race in the Americas, and animal studies, which have collectively highlighted histories of African Americans' and Latinos' interactions in the United States, animal and human relationships, foodways, agribusiness, and global capitalism more broadly. The production, trade, and consumption of chicken address these themes in ways that are local, comparative, and transnational. Teaching about the poultry industry also pushes students to reflect on a number of complicated political issues in a way that transcends the terms of mainstream political debates, which are often narrow. The most obvious are Latin American immigration to the United States and the plight of organized labor, both of which have particular salience to African American communities in the United States. Additionally, chicken offers students a unique perspective for considering the protracted debates about the proper role that government should play in the economy and society.