What does artistic production look like during a time of cultural unrest? How did America’s poets help shape the political landscape of the American 60s and 70s, two decades that saw the rise of the Black Panthers, “Flower Power,” psychedelia, and Vietnam War protests? Through reading poetry, studying films like Easy Rider, and engaging with the music of the times (Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors) we will think about art’s ability to move the cultural needle and not merely reflect the times but pose important questions about race, gender, class, sexuality, and identity at large. We will think of poetry as a tool with which to interact with the world, looking at it critically on the basis of language and aesthetics, but also as a countercultural product that has the ability to occupy both cult and mainstream status. The poets we will study include Allen Ginsberg, Amiri Baraka, Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Eileen Myles, and others. We will talk about The Beats, The San Francisco Renaissance, The New York School poets, and the Black Mountain poets as well.

Natural Law theory has a rich and varied history extending back to the classical period. Although in recent decades it has often been associated with religious thinkers, especially Catholic ones, it also has non-Catholic, and even non-religious adherents. This theory offers a first-personal account of practical reason that acknowledges diverse basic values as fundamental aspects of living a fulfilled life.

For some, contemporary natural law theory offers a compelling alternative to deontology, consequentialism, and virtue ethics—and it can even be incorporated into the latter. For others, such as Peter Singer, it offers a stimulating sparring partner that helps philosophers of different perspectives to refine their own argument. In any event, it is a doctrine held by thinkers as diverse as Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther King, Jr., and current U.S. Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas. For that reason, it is worthwhile to understand it and to be able to respond to it, even if one does not ultimately agree with it.

Finally, if any students are interested in other ethical perspectives, such as consequentialist, Kantian, virtue-ethical, or neo-scholastic natural law perspectives, I encourage them to respectfully share their disagreements in class discussions so that we can have healthy and critical discussions about these matters.

Generative Art is art produced by repeated application of an autonomous process, based on a set of rules established by the artist. Although the process and the rules may be quite simple, their repeated application can lead to surprising, intricate, and captivating outcomes.

While the concepts can be traced back many centuries to works such as Islamic geometric tiling patterns or Musikalisches Wurfelspiel (“Dice Music”) of the Classical music period, algorithmic art ideas were explored in depth in the 20th century in many various analog media, including both visual art such as the wall drawings of Sol LeWitt, the pen plotter art of Vera Molnar, and the computational systems of Ernest Edmonds, as well as the music of John Cage, Laurie Spiegel, Brian Eno, Pauline Oliveros, and Steve Reich. The 21st century has precipitated a renaissance of activity in this field, through an evolution and maturation of these ideas fueled by the malleability and ubiquity offered by the digital medium. Contemporary visual artists such as Golan Levin, Cory Arcangel, and Tamiko Thiel, as well as musicians such as Paula Matthusen, Ryoji Ikeda and Mark Fell are examples of a new movement in generative art. Meanwhile exhibits such as those at the Whitney Museum (Programmed: Rules, Codes, and Choreographies in Art) and Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Sol LeWitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective) reinforce the cultural relevance and historical grounding of the field.

Students will learn to create and critique works of generative art within the theoretical and historical context for the techniques they explore. Specifically, we will focus on audio-visual work produced in the digital medium. Students of all backgrounds will learn algorithmic thinking and acquire basic programming skills, sufficient to be able to realize their own generative art ideas. For the visual aspects of their work, students will learn p5/Processing, a programming language designed by digital artists Casey Reas, Ben Frye, and Lauren McCarthy to support artists in this medium. Likewise, for audio, students will learn to program in Max/MSP, the industry standard software environment for interactive electronic sound and music.

This seminar will be practice-oriented. The bulk of the student work will be in the form of weekly projects and exercises, presentations and critiques, readings coupled with written responses, and a capstone project. Tutorials by the seminar instructors will be supplemented by local field trips and lectures given by guest specialists and practitioners.

Note - Laboratory Monday (1:30-4:20 PM) - [Actually Precept MW 1:30-3:00 and Lab MW 3-4:20]

This is a hands-on seminar and laboratory experience about the engineering design of motorcycles. Students will restore or repair a vintage Triumph motorcycle and will compare it to previous restorations of the same make and model of motorcycle from other years (1955, 1957, 1958, 1959, 1962, 1963, and 1964). No previous shop or laboratory experience is necessary, and we welcome liberal arts students as well as engineering students. The class meets twice each week, starting with a discussion session followed by laboratory work.

What does it take to be an interculturally competent person? What skills or qualities are needed for a speaker/hearer to be interculturally effective? In recent decades, the interaction between people from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds has never been greater. And the study of intercultural communication continues to grow in importance in response to greater population mobility, migration, and the global economy. Intercultural competence is the ability to function effectively across cultures, to think and act appropriately, and to communicate and work with people from different cultural backgrounds—at home or internationally. Thus, it is essential for a global leader to be able to communicate effectively across cultures and to develop a deep understanding and respect for others’ cultural norms.

This course explores the linguistic and extralinguistic aspects of intercultural communication, including pragmatics, semiotics, discourse analysis, studies of politeness, and cross-cultural communication. It aims to develop an understanding of the culture-language relationship and an interest in the multifaceted nature of language and the way its components are shaped by sociocultural practices. It also seeks to raise awareness of the social factors and cultural reasoning that may prevent cross-cultural misunderstandings. Finally, the course aims to prompt the learners to learn more about themselves (e.g., their values, communication styles, attitudes toward different accents, etc.) and to challenge their assumptions and preconceived notions about other worldviews and ways of being.  The learners will analyze examples from a variety of languages and cultures (e.g., international students’ testimonials, incidents in study abroad programs, etc.), and will discuss recent research from global and pluralized perspectives, including barriers to effective intercultural communications (namely, due to ethnocentrism, stereotyping, conflicting values). Throughout, the students are encouraged to engage, explore, and dialogue with others as they develop a deeper understanding of what it means to be intercultural.

The course does not require any background in linguistics, and it is meant to be an accessible introduction for undergraduates who are new to intercultural communication and are interested in international relations. Requirements will include bi-weekly responses and/or leading discussions, a reflective paper in lieu of the Midterm exam, and a final group project, involving some intercultural communication phenomena of their choice.

This seminar interrogates the human body as represented in literary works from several genres and over broad spans of time.  We will also examine media adjacent to literature—sculpture, film, and photography—to learn about those systems of representation.  We will focus on texts that challenge the durable construct of the fleshly creature by morphing the body from one state to another:  human, nonhuman, and maybe a little bit of each.  In our current cultural states of disruption, mobility, and tension, we’ll discover political and politicized bodies, bodies out of place, and bodies from outer space. When we encounter the cyborg, the werewolf, or the ent, with what very human problems are we engaging?  Literature creates a space where we can encounter what may be outside our experiences, but is not beyond our imaginations. These metamorphosizing bodies invite us to engage both critically and creatively with acts of othering, with bodily experiences, with both vulnerability and power.  Together, let’s read about bodies that are always in the process of becoming.

In the history of religion and philosophy, many important works have been written by authors who were behind bars. This course probes this extensive tradition and the concerns raised. Such texts deal, not only with classic problems in the history of philosophical and religious studies, but also with concerns that many of us share. Topics to be addressed include: arguments for and against the existence of God; whether there is life after death; the logic and rationality of nonviolent rebellion; the nature of evil; whether divine foreknowledge negates human freedom; ethical reasoning in times of radical crisis; justice, forgiveness, and reconciliation; the metaphysics of time; and the abolition of prisons.

Readings span the world’s major religious and philosophical traditions and include imprisoned figures such as Socrates, Boethius, Marguerite Porete, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Hannah Arendt, Angela Davis, and detainees at Guantánamo Bay. As we explicate the influence imprisonment has had within philosophy and religion, we will probe incarceration as both site and concept for individual moral growth, as a standard for societal justice and equity, and as the frequent tool of choice to eradicate the abnormal. While many of these authors have become standard reading, this course attempts to hear the voices “from below” as rebel, reformer, and outcast. Works will be exegeted according to contexts of origination while also asking what they have to teach us about abusive power, mass incarceration, and our own intellectual and political freedoms.

MLK left us a legacy of the sacrament of imprisonment while Lenin called prisoners “the best fighters for freedom.” Within the agony, Mandela also felt “the cell is an ideal place to learn to know yourself.” Gandhi argued “jail for us is no jail at all,” while Socrates famously argued while enchained that the mind imprisoned by untruth is a greater threat to freedom and civility. What will you learn from jail?

Glass is so ubiquitous in our daily lives that we barely notice it anymore. Yet, our modern lives would have been very different (or nearly impossible) without it. Although one may associate glass with only windows or containers, glass, as a class of material, has far-reaching applications in global communications, biomedical, and energy industries! In fact, glass has enabled so many technologies in the past 50 years, some may argue that we now live in the “Glass Age.” Glass has also been a versatile medium for artists to create visually stunning artworks for thousands of years. Few materials have so many wonderful characteristics and unique applications in human society, brilliantly connecting the artists and the scientists among us. So, what makes glass so special?

This seminar focuses on the science, history, and art of glass, appealing to students with multidisciplinary interests. We will:

•          study the unique physical and chemical properties of glass and glass-like materials through hands-on activities

•          make and characterize glass using chemical methods

•          learn hands-on glass blowing and flame work from the Princeton scientific glassblower*

•          explore glass-enabled modern technologies and specialty glasses

•          examine significant glass art from historical periods in local and regional museums*

•          visit and work in artisan glass studios in Venice, where the renowned Roman glass was invented and perfected. (International travel involved)

The seminar will help students develop an understanding of how glassmaking and applications have evolved over time and have made major impacts on culture, scientific discoveries, and technological advancement. By incorporating hands-on glassblowing and flame work, we can highlight the connections between material properties and artistic characteristics. The trip over Spring Break to visit the artisan glass studios and learn from local glass historians on the island of Murano in Venice will provide an unparalleled and memorable course experience for students.

Get ready to be “blown away” by the wonders from fire and sand!

(*Note that the class will take some Sat trips to visit museums and glass studios.)

When, where, why and how did human language originate? There are no definitive answers, but like cosmologists who propose a Big Bang or geologists who posit an early super-continent on Earth, we consider and evaluate evidence from multiple sciences. This seminar will examine relevant findings from physical evolution, paleontology, archeology, animal communication, neurobiology, genetics, and linguistics to gain a better understanding of the possible origin of human language, often weighing different, possibly competing, hypotheses.

We define and distinguish critical concepts such as language and communication and analyze key properties of human language that distinguish it from animal communication. We examine the status of proposed universal properties shared by all human languages. Can children’s language acquisition (ontogeny) and the documented emergence of sign languages in deaf communities shed light on the emergence of human language (phylogeny)?

Research in animal communication shows that our biologically closest relatives (chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas), while lacking the ability for speech, communicate in sophisticated ways and recruit some of the homologous brain regions that are involved in human language processing. At which stage in human evolution were the prerequisites for language given, i.e., when did our ancestors have a “language-ready brain”? We discuss fossil evidence with respect to the anatomical features (cranial volume, a descended larynx) required for language. Which features are shared by other species (such as birds and marine mammals) and why did they not develop a full language? In light of paleontological and genetic evidence of Anatomically Modern Human’s migration out of Africa, is a single origin of language (monogenesis) more plausible than polygenesis?

We ask whether language evolved gradually in tandem with primate cognition (symbolic, abstract thinking, categorization, Theory of Mind) or whether it appeared within a relatively short time due to a genetic mutation that some argue occurred between 70,000 and 40,000 years ago (the “saltational” hypothesis). Alternatively, was there a precursor to full, spoken language such as a gestural or a musical protolanguage?

What degree of societal organization was both a requirement and a catalyst for human language to arise? We examine several competing hypotheses (“verbal grooming,” efficient transfer of tool-making techniques). The earliest known artworks (cave paintings, fertility figurines) were likely created to fulfill ritual functions; prehistoric tools and jewelry similarly point to social structures that required a well-developed language. Why are humans unique in their drive to share thoughts?

The surviving funerary objects from the ancient Mediterranean, such as imposing monuments, carved grave markers, small offerings, personal altars, and elaborate sarcophagi, all stand as individual and communal efforts to grapple with loss, to focus the process of mourning, and to connect with the deceased. Even more, especially striking representations of the dead or powerful monuments that marked significant places of burial could also act as memory aids, prompting their viewers to remember the deceased through specific sensations, experiences, or memories. By considering a broad range of visual and literary material from the ancient Mediterranean that dates from the sixth century BCE to the third century CE, this course foregrounds the lived experience of mourning and commemorating the deceased. We will consider how objects could depict the deceased, how these scenes may have once acted on their viewers in specific spaces, and what the images and objects suggest to us about how the Greeks and Romans made use of certain formal aspects, materials, or representational strategies to understand those experiences of loss.

The course explores major themes within the context of Greek and Roman funerary art, including the contexts of funerary rituals and monuments; representation and the deceased; myth and funerary art; imperial power and death; and memory, sensation, and mourning. Students will be introduced to current and new methodologies for studying Greek and Roman funerary art, as well as to ancient conceptions of memory and perception. Our approach and framework will enable us both to analyze the material evidence for past experiences of mourning and commemoration, and to understand the connections among the peoples who participated in the work of mourning and the places in which funerary objects were once displayed.

This seminar investigates the nature, causes, and consequences of economic inequality.  We consider five big questions: who is unequal; what is unequally distributed; what causes inequality; what are inequality’s consequences; and how does inequality affect justice?

Who is unequal? Inequality discussions often focus on differences within countries: American women earn less than men, African Americans earn less than whites, rural workers earn less than metropolitan workers, the bottom 50% earns less than the top 1%.  But we also will explore economic differences across countries, and across individuals globally, where inequality is greater still.

What is unequally distributed? Some measures, such as wealth, are more unequally distributed than is income, while other measures, such as spending, happiness and life expectancy, are less unequally distributed. Which measure is most meaningful? And are measured inequality trends the same everywhere?

What causes inequality? The list is long: less progressive tax and transfer policies, corporate governance failures, a widening college wage premium, restrictive land-use regulation and changes in family structure. 

What are inequality’s consequences? Some economic inequality is desirable; it spurs innovation, hard work, and investment in people. But economic inequality is also associated with political corruption, slower growth, and consumption arms races. How much inequality is too much inequality?

How does inequality affect justice? Is poverty or inequality the more serious problem?  Is inequality intrinsically bad or bad chiefly in its consequences? Is distributive justice solely a matter of the structure of a distribution or is it also a matter of the process that leads to that distribution?  Do moral obligations to reduce inequality extend beyond national borders or stop at the water's edge?

Ever since the invention of the camera, photographers have been compelled to make photographs of ancient Greek and Roman art. More recently, artists working with both photography and writing have drawn on ancient Greek and Roman cultures to create sublime work that addresses utterly contemporary issues. Why? In this class we will explore together the almost two-century long interaction between the medium of photography and ancient Greek and Roman art. We will begin by thinking about the role of the photographic image in contemporary culture and will develop the tools to closely look at and describe photographs. You will also learn to use digital cameras to make images that express your ideas about the world around you (Part 1). We will then think about the ways in which the ancient Greeks and Romans viewed their own visual arts before considering the creative potential as well as the imperialist implications in our access to this visual culture (Part 2). To round off the semester, we will discuss the work of three contemporary artists who have creatively combined photographs, words, and ancient visual cultures (Part 3). The forms of assessment for this class will be in-class photographing and writing exercises, one short essay on a contemporary photographic topic, and one longer project that combines photographs, words, and some aspect of Classical visual culture.

Fantasy and science fiction are often considered escapist genres more concerned with imagining new worlds than contemplating our own. Why, then, are these worlds frequently governed by educational institutions similar to those we encounter in our everyday lives? From Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry to the Jean Grey School of Higher Learning to Monsters University, we find individuals negotiating institutions that seem to promise infinite possibilities. Yet students of these imagined academies are repeatedly forced to accept the limitations imposed upon them by institutional culture and politics.

This course explores fantastical works that showcase the very real issues that shape education, including race, class, gender, privilege, and disability. How might television shows such as The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina or fiction by writers like R.F. Kuang and Ursula Le Guin inform the ways we imagine the educational policies and institutions we frequently take for granted? What might the experiences of characters like Hermione Granger, Kamala Khan, and the X-Men illuminate about our own experiences as students and engaged community members of the university?

We begin with a journey to Hogwarts, where we’ll immerse ourselves in scholarship on both fantasy and education as we contemplate the popularity of scholastic fantasies. From there, we’ll think about the often arcane-seeming systems guiding school admissions, as we look at magical and science fiction aptitude exams alongside studies of standardized testing. Next, with the help of various muggles, mutants, and vampire slayers, we’ll examine the curricula students study, the rules they’re forced to obey, and their feelings of belonging and inclusion. Alongside Buffy Summers, Mike Wazowski, and others, we’ll investigate honor codes, hidden curricula, and other labyrinthine academic byways. Finally, we’ll consider the processes through which students learn, examining fantastic portrayals of lectures, interactive game playing, and experiential education in order to reflect on what is prioritized in learning and the ways it is rewarded. 

Class assignments will reflect our concern with thinking about the different forms education might take, and students will experiment with delivering oral presentations, writing short papers, and pursuing independent research. For their final project, students will develop an educational guide, such as a lesson plan or digital archive, that draws on what they’ve noted about the unspoken norms of higher education and helps them prepare for further fantastic experiences moving forward at Princeton.

What would it mean to program a technology—like a self-driving car or a facial recognition program—to behave ethically?  What responsibilities do engineers, programmers and entrepreneurs have for the (un)ethical uses of the tech they create?  In this course, we will look at major theories of ethics and apply them to practical problems arising from new technologies.  Such problems include: what it means to program a machine to be ethical; how tech changes (and does not just mirror) social networks; the meaning of “free speech” in new technological environments; technologies that exacerbate racial or gender discrimination; how the use of cryptocurrencies and fintech might exacerbate inequality; how the use of A.I. in the health sectors will affect privacy; how artificial intelligence questions existing understandings of what it means to be an ethical human; and etc.

This is a class in Practical Ethics.  The academic discipline of Practical Ethics explores the difficulties of applying moral theories to real-world situations of moral conflict—for instance, where duties to those close to us conflict with duties to people unknown to us; or where an action that leads to the greatest utility for a living generation decreases utility for a future one. By looking at how ethical imperatives can be at odds—with a given ethical system suggesting two opposing “right” answers, or a plurality of systems suggesting different decisions that each seem “right”—we understand the dynamics of current social conflicts.  Through discussion of theory and practice, moving back and forth between the two, the Practical Ethicist devises alternative methods for resolving these conflicts.

This course will trace the creations of the outlines of American ideas.  We’ll begin with the New England Puritans and end in contemporary times, but in between we will run in unusual directions through early American moral philosophy, Black resistance, religious awakenings, and the creation of American colleges through 19th-century abolitionism and Romantic naturalism, before turning to the 20th-century modernist rejection and the influence of emigre European political thought. Princeton will figure significantly, from John Witherspoon to Archibald Alexander to Woodrow Wilson, and the formation of American collegiate philosophy. In the 20th century, we will examine the creation of a Black elite, the decline of philosophy into academic inertia, Progressivism, feminism, and modern conservative and progressive thinkers. The dominant motif will be the twin origins of American thought in Puritanism and the Enlightenment, and the ways in which these two have opposed each other and co-operated with each other. Readings will range from William Perkins and the Puritan technologia of the 17th century, through Jonathan Edwards and the 18th-century revivals, Archibald Alexander and collegiate moral philosophy, abolitionist thought (Douglass, Garrison, Lincoln), Populism, the Progressives and the socialists (Wilson, Du Bois, Debs), music (Chadwick, Kriebehl, Ives, Dvorak), anthropology (Boas, Benedict, Mead), the New Deal and the influence of European emigres (Adorno, Marcuse, the Nation of Islam) and neo-liberalism.

No attempt will be made to obey the conventional chronology of American ‘intellectual history,’ from Franklin to Emerson to William James, because it has promoted ‘pastlessness’; nor should this be considered as a ‘philosophy course,’ tending only to abstractions. The principal labor of the course will be devoted to directing the readings, and to generating discussion. The most important challenge will be making connections between past and present ideas. We’ll discover that nothing comes from nowhere; the ideas we think are so obvious and so current today have long roots in the American experience. Tracing out their genealogy will be intellectual detective work at its best, and will make clear the distinctive ways in which Americans think.

The first drawings were created some 40,000 years ago in caves, predating paper drawings by millennia. Were they just decorations? Did they declare communal values? Were they religious? Whatever the rationale, cave artists made marks not in private but in public, a profoundly human activity. 

Students will use walls, ceilings and floors as support for drawings. The act of drawing will be communal rather than personal and the images will be created collaboratively. Students will use tape, black at first, followed by colored tape to create a series of large room drawings. The class’s room will change and mutate over time as drawings are created, re-arranged and pulled down. Weekly discussions, films and readings will center on the question of what makes an image art?  How do artists engage in public discussions? Does working collaboratively create community? How important is a recognizable image for these designs to be “read”? No previous art experience necessary.

Short:  Sidestepping paper and the primacy of an individual artist’s mark, students will repeatedly work together using colored tape to transform a shared studio by covering the walls, floor and ceiling with tape drawn designs. Projects include large scale abstraction, imagery, illustration, performance with costumes and the play of light and shadow. No previous art experience necessary.

It’s a basic premise of our culture that fiction and nonfiction are different things. At first sight that seems obvious: novelists make things up, whereas scholars document the truth. Yet on closer inspection they have a lot in common: both use similar techniques to construct narratives and convince their readers. Sometimes the dividing line between truth and imagination is blurred. Should we care about that? What does ‘truth’ mean, anyway? Is it different for fiction and for history?

This seminar is co-taught by a literary critic and novelist, and a historian and journalist. We will explore great works of fiction, journalism, film, memoir, and history. We’ll find out how makers of fiction and nonfiction go about using facts, imagination, and rhetoric. We’ll investigate how narrative, evidence, genre, and subjectivity condition what authors create, and how their work is interpreted. There will be visits and discussions with professional novelists, journalists, and screenwriters. With our help, students will collaborate on exercises in telling fiction and history. Members of the class will experiment with how to tell a convincing story, about themselves or the world, on paper, tape, film, or in person. The final project will be to produce a short individual memoir, in a format and genre of your own choosing.

In October 1922, when Benito Mussolini completed his semi-legal seizure of power in Italy, the Fascist era began in triumph and was cheered by the crowds. It ended two decades later in the Piazzale Loreto at Milan, where the bodies of Mussolini and his mistress were strung up by the heels by the partisans as silent evidence that the Fascist regime was indeed over. Between those two historical moments, Mussolini, the ex-socialist, had dominated the spotlight of Europe.

Produced from the post-World War II period to the present, the Italian, French, German, and Polish films we will study in this seminar establish a theoretical framework for the analysis of Fascism, its political ideology, and its ethical dynamics. We shall consider such topics as the concept of fascist normality, the racial laws, the morality of social identities (women, homosexuals), the Resistance, and the aftermath of the Holocaust. An interdisciplinary approach will be combined with learning basic concepts of film style, technique, and criticism. Some of the films we will study are Bertolucci's The Conformist, De Sica's The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, Malle's Au revoir les enfants, Schlöndorff's The Tin Drum, Wertmüller's Seven Beauties, Holland's Europa Europa, Polanski’s The Pianist, Rossellini's Open City, and Benigni's Life is Beautiful.

Readings will focus primarily on historical essays, interviews with filmmakers, and critical reviews. Students are expected to view one film per week. Students will be required to write three short papers based on the weekly readings and the films and a final paper (6-7 pages). All books will be available for purchase at the Labyrinth bookstore or can be consulted at Firestone Library. All other materials will be distributed by the instructor in class.

In this reading- and writing intensive seminar, we will critically examine some of the fundamental ideas and central themes of modern political conservatism.  Each week, we will read and discuss a seminal paper or book excerpt from a leading conservative theorist.  We will attempt to better understand conservative thought, and develop a framework for assessing its strengths and weaknesses, with respect to a number of representative topics, including the following: distributive justice, the role of the free market, and the apparent tension between liberty and equality; immigration policy; the nature of crime and criminal justice policy; and social conservatism and the role of religion in society.  We will also explore some broader conservative themes that appear repeatedly in the discussion of these and other topics, including conservative critiques of “good intentions,” “political correctness,” and the political and cultural influence of intellectual and cultural elites.  Some attention will be paid to the diversity of, and tensions between, the varieties of conservatism: what, if anything, do libertarian or economic conservatives have in common with social or religious conservatives, or conservatives who advocate a “law and order” approach to crime, such that it makes sense to consider them all “conservatives”?  Our readings will be drawn from a variety of sources, including philosophers, economists, social scientists, and legal theorists.

The Circus! While it’s easy to get mesmerized by beautiful, daring and graceful performances, have you contemplated what goes into executing these acts? While routines such as aerial acrobatics, juggling, balancing acts, and magic may not at first glance seem mathematical, they in fact require a methodical composition of techniques which have a rich analytical and logical structure.

Part of the beauty, and power, of mathematics is the precise language that mathematicians all over the world have formulated to express their ideas. The use of canonical mathematical language not only allows scientists to explore abstract ideas but it also allows us to describe physical phenomena. Moreover, this language, and the logical structure it imposes, can often reveal hidden relationships or principles and augment our physical intuition with powerful analytic tools that allow us to replace trial-and-error approaches with powerful thought experiments.

We will spend the semester developing creative applications of mathematics to analyze a variety of circus arts from the perspectives of both pure and applied mathematics. Our ultimate goal is to develop both new theories and notations surrounding circus acts including aerial acrobatics, juggling, balancing acts, and magic. Our course will consist of many open-ended research projects as we build mathematical language as a team.

Amazonia is a global hotspot of biocultural diversity with over 400 Indigenous peoples and more species of animals and plants documented than any other ecosystem. It is also a massive carbon sink on the brink. The rainforest is simultaneously one of the planet’s most threatened ecologies and a bastion for biodiversity sustainability. Studies show that deforestation rates are significantly lower on areas governed by Indigenous Peoples in the nine countries that comprise PanAmazonia. This is particularly noticeable in the Brazilian Amazon that encompasses 60% of the basin, currently threatened by illegal logging, mining, and megafires. Indigenous leaders, such as Ailton Krenak, rightfully critique the ways in which dominant powers suppress diversity and negate “the plurality of forms of life and existence.” There will be no future for Amazonia if Indigenous knowledges are not fully appreciated and foregrounded.

At the core of Planet Amazonia is the trust that Indigenous ontological, epistemological, and sociopolitical theories and practices of ecosystem management offer substantive opportunities to combat biodiversity loss and climate change. We will explore how local knowledge and the environment co-produce one another. Holding the sciences in parallel and in dialogue with Indigenous knowledge, we will seek to understand the dynamic ecologies in which the rainforest is shaped and cared for. Drawing from archeological, ethnographic, and ecological studies, we will examine the interplay between human communities, other than human beings, and landscapes both historically and in the present. Amazonia is not a domesticated landscape, but the product of overlapping world-making activities by many agents. In problematizing forest-making practices, Planet Amazonia expands the frontiers of conservation science and works as a platform for future-making agendas based on new scholarly and activist alliances.

The seminar starts with an overview of the presence/absence of Indigenous and local knowledge in Amazonian conservation science. We will then analyze how scholars in the Global South have alternatively engaged with Indigenous cosmologies and practices of conservation, especially around biodiversity, fire techniques, forest management, agriculture, and plant familiarization. We will conclude with an exploration of the ethical and political tenets and storytelling practices accompanying Indigenous environmental mobilization around forest-making and forest-caring. Throughout, we will pay attention to diverse evidentiary and visualization practices, i.e., juxtaposing satellite imagery and fine-grained human knowledge on the ground. Students will engage with Amazonian environmentalists and Indigenous scholars and will work in groups, developing audiovisual projects and crafting alternative visions to safeguard this vital planetary nexus.

1964 was a tipping point, after which the nation took a deep dive into the tumult of this fractious decade. The year began with Lyndon Johnson in the Oval Office, following the tragic assassination of John F. Kennedy. The year would end with Johnson’s resounding reelection victory against the right-wing conservative from Arizona, Senator Barry Goldwater, a landslide that opened the doors to what the president called a “Great Society.”

 With the economy booming, 1964 was filled with dramatic battles over the contours of American democracy that continue to influence us to this day—Freedom Summer, which brought thousands of volunteers to the South to register African American voters; a War on Poverty, which expanded the federal commitment to help those in economic need; and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended legally sanctioned segregation in the South. The grassroots- Civil Rights Movement emerged as a force to be reckoned with, shaking the conventional wisdom about what was possible in American politics. When the Nobel Prize Committee awarded this honor to Martin Luther King Jr., the recognition gave a new level of international legitimacy to activists who were still deemed radical by much of the country. In August, during a heated presidential campaign, Johnson planted the seeds of his own political demise when he convinced Congress to pass the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution granting him vast authority to use military force in Vietnam. He hoped this would make him look tough on national security right before he released blistering television spots—including the Daisy ad—that accused Goldwater of being too unstable to hold the levers of power.

Outside of Washington, the nation was heating up. There were natural disasters like a massive earthquake in Alaska. In New York City, protesters gathered for the first time to burn their draft cards. The Beatles reached the top of the music charts with their song “I Want to Hold Your Hand” as “Beatlemania” swept youth culture. Meanwhile, in San Francisco and New York City, smaller communities of poets and beatniks introduced hip new ways of dressing and speaking that created a counterculture to the mainstream—at a time when most Americans were watching the Beverly Hillbillies on television. The world champion boxer Cassius Clay changed his name to Muhammad Ali.

In our age of rapid technological advancement, myth may seem to be a thing of the past. Yet in the last hundred years, classical myths have been retold, reimagined, and reinvented again and again. In this course we will be thinking about why this might be so—about why literature of the modern world should return so consistently to some of our most ancient stories. We will consider modern recastings of classical myths in a variety of different literary traditions, following the development of particular myths and mythical figures (e.g., Odysseus, Orpheus, Helen) from their ancient sources to their modern iterations and transformations.  Each trajectory will reveal a new aspect of the definition and reception of classical myth in both antiquity and modernity.          

We will be thinking about the cultural work that modern myths accomplish. How do later versions of a myth serve to “interpret” an earlier version? How might that interpretation itself serve to interpret the later historical moment? How do modern artists, and especially women artists, use myth to give voice to characters traditionally ignored or to challenge conventional narratives? Is the use of myth opposed to an interest in the modern or the contemporary? How do different genres and media affect the way myths are used or the effect that they have on us? Are these myths, in any of their versions, still relevant for us today? Can they help us tell our own stories?

Over spring break, we will travel to Athens, Greece, in order to seek contemporary answers to these questions, thus moving from text to context. We will have the unique and exciting opportunity to study pictorial and architectural representations of myths on site—whether on the Acropolis or in museums—and to speak with a variety of contemporary writers and artists based in Greece about the importance of myth in their own work.

Over the course of the semester, students will explore the relationship between our two terms—myth and modernity—as it is reflected in literature and the arts, and slowly, through conversations and weekly written responses, build an argument for what it might be, culminating either in a final critical essay, or in a creative project accompanied by an analytical account.

This first-year course will introduce students to hybrid media and performance practices through which artists consider the body in public space, onstage and digitally. The course will explore various sites of cutting-edge contemporary art practices from scenes of political theater to experimental staged performances. Our texts will include live and recorded performances, as well as historical and theoretical secondary sources. The class will host a guest artist talk series featuring pioneering artists, scholars, and curators sharing their perspectives on the ever-shifting cultural climate. Dress comfortably for class as we will perform embodied exercises during class. Some classes may take place asynchronously and/or remotely. No movement experience is required.

Our way of speaking is an essential part of our identity. Whether we realize it or not, our particular variety of language gives information to the listeners about where we were born, how old we are, our social class and even our race or ethnicity. Of course, this can become an obstacle in society, since not all dialects are considered equal. For that reason, everyday thousands of speakers around the globe consciously try to change their way of speaking, hiding some parts of their identity, so as not to feel judged or discriminated against.

In the first half of this seminar, we will focus on what constitutes a dialect, and differentiate it from a language or an accent. We will start by finding out the uniqueness of our personal idiolect within our language variety. We will learn, through a number of examples, why some dialects are better regarded than others, and why there is some confusion between language and dialect. We will explore the role of society and politics in determining what the prestigious variety is, with a focus on English and the US, including the many geographical dialects and AAE (African American English). We will debunk the myth that there is only one correct way of speaking and examine the reasons behind that belief. During the second half, we will turn our attention to the phenomenon of languages in contact and the distinctive varieties that result from them, including pidgins and creoles. We will focus on one of the most common occurrences in the US, the code-switching between English and Spanish, and also other examples. We will also discuss diglossia, a situation that often appears when two or more languages coexist in the same area, and the implications that eventually follow, for instance, the figure of the heritage speaker. One of the main goals of this course is to empower every language variety and their speakers.

This seminar is designed for students that are interested in how people talk and the social implications of their way of speaking. No previous knowledge in the field of linguistics is required. Students will write about and study some varieties of their own language and the impact of multilingualism in a particular community.

This seminar is about survival, resistance, and the power of language in the face of cultural and political domination. After the fall of Aztec Mexico by Spanish conquistadors threatened to destroy the Aztec civilization as it was known, its descendants fought to preserve their culture and gain agency and power under the Spanish Crown. Students will dive into this most captivating ancient civilization of Mesoamerica to reflect on its rich history and enduring legacy from pre-Columbian to colonial times. 

Students will have the opportunity to learn the basics of the Nahuatl language, from which words like avocado, tomato, chili, and chocolate come. They will also learn about the Aztecs’ origin stories, their ways of preserving the past and the main features of their writing system before contact with the Europeans. Finally, students will work closely with the Mesoamerican collection at Princeton University’s Library, which contains important manuscripts that document colonial life in Mexico and Central America in Indigenous languages. We will visit the collection often to discuss how these manuscripts document Indigenous Christianity, rhetorical and poetic practices, gender roles and concepts, views of class and ethnicity, and concepts of good and bad governance—sometimes with an implicit critique of colonial institutions.

In this seminar, students will make valuable contributions to a larger project and actively participate in the creation of an  on-line platform  known as "Translating Mesoamerica." This platform aims to explore the ideas, history, and linguistic characteristics of the manuscripts housed in the Mesoamerican collection of Princeton University Library. Students' research findings from this seminar will be integrated into this collaborative endeavor, designed to make the documents more accessible, to promote the study of Mesoamerican cultures, and to showcase the collection to a wider audience.

U.S. popular culture both shapes and reflects our society’s understanding of feminism. When Beyoncé declared herself a F-E-M-I-N-I-S-T onstage at the 2014 Video Music Awards, interpolating a quotation by Nigerian feminist writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie into her song “Flawless,” she expressed explicit allegiance to a politics that fans had been celebrating in her work for years. Performing a medley of her most famous hits that night, she defined “feminism” in and on her own terms for a generation.

Feminism is an identity practice, but it is also a lens that we can use to examine the world around us. In this seminar, we will study influential feminist theories—historical and contemporary, scholarly and popular—and use them to analyze a range of contemporary pop cultural forms including Broadway musicals, movies, television shows, stand-up comedy specials, social media, and music. In other words, we will take seriously subjects that are sometimes deemed unworthy of scholarly study.

Over the course of the semester, we will investigate how feminist theory can help us to understand the gender politics in those mass-marketed cultural products that we love or hate (or hate to love). Questions we might ask include: Is Euphoria a feminist series? How can feminist theory help us to analyze the representations of masculinity in a show like Ted Lasso? What does the live action Barbie movie and its many memes tell us about today’s gender norms? How might the superheroes at the center of Wakanda Forever defy them? Does loving Bravo’s Real Housewives franchise make you a “Bad Feminist,” to use Roxane Gay’s term? What do we make of the Broadway musical Six claiming to be a “Euphoric Celebration of 21st century girl power”? Does an analysis of Ali Wong’s stand-up comedy specials reveal them to be empowering or exploitative? What do we have to learn from TikTok feminism?

You can expect about fifty pages of reading a week and a requirement to watch, listen to, or otherwise encounter an example of popular culture. In addition to theory, we will read a range of contemporary feminist criticism to examine how writers formulate and support arguments about popular culture, which will serve as models for your own writing. The final project will be a paper in which you draw on feminist theories to develop your own critique of a pop cultural artifact of your choice.

We use chemicals every day. We bathe in chemicals. We apply chemicals to our lawn. Chemicals are sprayed to control insects. Industries release chemicals intentionally and unintentionally. While chemicals are an important part of modern life, these chemicals wind up in the environment and in our bodies. This seminar will examine how our use of chemicals drives our exposures and ultimately, where these chemicals wind up in the environment and what their impacts are. How this information influences personal and policy decisions will be discussed, as will how scientists and policy makers need to exchange knowledge to solve these issues. This class is designed for you to look at how you use chemicals in your daily life and how this influences your exposure to chemicals, environmental releases of chemicals, and the impact of chemicals on humans and then environment. You will also be asked to evaluate how your perspective and personal, educational, and cultural experiences influence your views on chemicals and the environment. The perspective of impacted communities and the topic of environmental justice also will be explored. Each week will be devoted to the discussion of a different chemical or chemical group. Readings will include popular books, news articles, and a few scientific papers. You will learn how to locate and critically evaluate information. Written and oral communication skills will also be emphasized. There will be weekly writing assignments, a reflection log/journal, and a semester project.

It’s a year or so into the Covid-19 pandemic, and #thatgirl is trending on TikTok. Videos show her – prototypically white, thin, affluent – performing routines like rising early, working out, journaling, applying skincare products, and preparing a plant-based meal. Why? As another meme would have it, “it’s called self-care.” In times of crisis, we hear again and again that we should practice self-care. But what is this practice? When is self-care a radically ethical and political act, and when is it a distraction from ethical, political, and social problems? When do self-care practices liberate, and when do they pressure people to conform to problematic norms? When do they isolate individuals, making them wholly responsible for their well-being, and when do they facilitate relationship and community? In this seminar, we ask how to distinguish self-care from both selfishness and self-domination by examining a variety of practices focused on the individual and her relation to herself. The course begins with wellness culture in the age of social media before turning to other contexts, including: the health activism of the Black Panther Party and the feminist women’s health movement in the 1960s and 70s; practices of self-fashioning, truth-telling, and love from antiquity to the present; and exercise regimens and work routines from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Several histories of self-care emerge over the course of the semester to help us think critically about the present moment. Assignments include readings (approx. 80 pages per week), class participation, two short essays (5–7 pages), and a practice-based research project. Plans for a community-engagement component to the course are in development.

 

Is 1980s America better defined by Cabbage Patch dolls or Garbage Pail Kids? As the era of Ronald Reagan’s social conservatism or Public Enemy’s call to “fight the power”? By the rise of corporate greed, yuppie excess, and home entertainment, or by protest groups like ACT UP and grassroots efforts to save the ozone layer? In this seminar we’ll explore the complexity of the 1980s by focusing on a range of works responding to the period’s biggest moments. For instance, we’ll begin with Apple’s famous “1984” Super Bowl commercial and spend several classes examining the role of technology in everyday life, from brick phones and Ms. Pac-Man to the sci-fi classic Blade Runner. We’ll spend one unit on the AIDS crisis, looking at essays and plays by Susan Sontag, Randy Shilts, and Tony Kushner. To make sense of the racial violence of the times, we’ll read Toni Morrison’s Beloved alongside Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing and Joan Didion’s essay on the Central Park jogger case. In other units, we’ll consider airborne toxic events in Don DeLillo’s White Noise; the threat of nuclear war in films like WarGames; and gender politics in MTV music videos. In the final week of the class, students will reflect on our current culture’s obsession with the 1980s. Topics might include Netflix’s Stranger Things, HBO’s Chernobyl, or the governmental response to Covid and Monkeypox.

Whether through carefully curating images we share on social media or recounting our lives’  milestones to new acquaintances, we’ve all presented a somewhat fictionalized identity to others through our choices in selecting, framing, and narrating parts of our lives. Pondering how we represent ourselves to others and the identities they ascribe to us raises a host of sociopolitical questions that autobiographical fiction introduces to us and helps us analyze. The Irish writer Elizabeth Bowen commented that “any fiction … is bound to be transposed autobiography.” This claim seems at least partially true since all writers view the world from an embodied, subjective angle, and it is only natural that we draw upon our lived experiences when constructing stories. Bowen’s claim seems especially true when we consider Irish Bildungsromane (coming-of-age novels) in which authors create alter egos who undergo fictional experiences nearly identical to the authors’ lived experiences. How do we interpret texts claiming to be novels that draw on many “real” events from the author’s life? What puzzles arise as these fictions collapse the traditional tripartite author-narrator-character distinctions as well as the unspoken pact between reader and author that the novel is a work of imagination? What characteristics define genres of life-writing, and where are the boundaries between autobiography, memoir, autofiction, and fiction? Are these generic distinctions even helpful tools for readers, critics, and scholars? And do they even matter for our interpretations of the texts? This seminar will investigate such questions through a study of Irish fictions centered on protagonists’ self-discovery and identity formation. The texts we’ll study are notable not only for their novel explorations of these themes, but also for their formal and stylistic innovations as these writers create narrative versions of their experiences of different life stages. We’ll encounter characters as they first acquire language and become integral members of a family, as they assert their independence in secondary school and college, and as they establish adult identities forming communities and families of their own.

Through close reading, application of contemporary theoretical approaches to autofiction and autobiography, and comparison with corresponding memoir, biography, and interviews we’ll consider how these different types of narratives function, what they prioritize telling a reader, and how they do so with aesthetic, ethical, and sociopolitical aims. From James Joyce’s modernist Bildungsroman A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) to Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s feminist literary detective-work of A Ghost in the Throat (2020) we’ll explore how, why, and to what effect Irish authors mined their lives for the materials of their fiction.

 

Increasing global connectivity has brought forth (at least) four major challenges today. One is global health threats such as the ongoing SAR-CoV-2 virus unleashing the COVID-19 pandemic. A second is the rise in cryptocurrency assets driven by mistrust in institutions and authority. Third is mass migration, possibly related to climate change. And fourth is informational opacity despite constant and continuous digital connectivity. Either due to deliberate obfuscation or mindless content creation, impactful knowledge exchange is impeded.

In order to coherently address these challenges, we need to understand the history of the technologies that have precipitated their trajectories. In this seminar, we will explore the history of modern communications technology from a non-technical perspective. What are the economic and social factors that played a role?

We will start with the evolution of Bell Labs and the invention of the transistor in 1949. Every decade since has seen a path-breaking invention with the integrated circuit or microchip at Xerox Parc in 1959, the microprocessor or brains of the computer at Intel in 1969, as well as Arpanet, the precursor of the modern WWW. Around 1979 we saw the introduction of the personal computer, with the IBM PC with MS-DOS launched finally launched in 1981. In 1989, Tim Berner-Lee introduced the world-wide-web. After that, we were in a sprint with streaming technology introduced in 1995, Google in 98, Napster in 99, Facebook in 2004, Netflix in 2007 and so on. The transistors, lasers and information technologies developed by these firms have been incorporated into the computers, communications and devices and processes as the list of new firms shows.

As these new technologies are developed, they create the need for new technologies to solve the problems created by earlier developments. This is the history of innovation.

In addition to class discussion we will have speakers from these various organizations tell their story of innovation. The goal is to understand the process of invention and innovation from a historical perspective and to find some generalizable principles.

 

Using an array of creative research methods, students will explore their environments, searching for data and identifying connective patterns, stories, and observations. They will collect and catalog their findings in evolving digital archives, iterating on modes of communication, techniques of design, methods of art practice, and applications of creative technology. Some topics to be covered include: archival research, documentary media, mapping, digital illustration, data collection & analysis, information graphics, and interaction design. Discussions on and responses to the work of data-driven artists, writers, filmmakers, designers, and engineers will provide context to these topics. Students will practice and investigate these approaches through the production of small, weekly creative projects. In-class exercises and demonstrations will introduce a range of digital production tools and technologies. The course will culminate in the production of a larger creative data visualization project. This final project will be built on the foundation of one or more of the smaller weekly sketches, developed and iterated upon throughout the semester.

Lasers are not focused, and quantum leaps are tiny. This freshman seminar first explores the science behind quantum technologies. What makes a physical object "quantum", and what does it mean for the way it behaves? The future of quantum technologies, especially quantum computation and quantum cryptography are discussed. Besides the technical aspects, this freshman seminar also explores the use of "quantum" in popular culture, media, film, and literature. This seminar is open to all first-year students, and does not require any specialized prerequisites beyond general high school science and mathematics.

The shakuhachi is flute of ancient origin along the Silk Road. It thrives in contemporary Japan and in the West, notably in the honkyoku (Original Pieces) repertoire of the 16th-17th centuries. Honkyoku are associated with Zen mendicants. Many view playing and listening to honkyoku as a form of Zen meditation.

But is it? Is playing honkyoku really meditation? Was it in the past? How would we know? How do we know anything? What is ‘knowing’? What is meditation? Does it differ from mindfulness? How does music practice relate to meditation and/or mindfulness, if at all? What has memory got to do with any of this?

Is the shakuhachi culture-specific? Is the shakuhachi honkyoku experienced by people within the Japanese culture the same way as by those not of that culture? Has the pedagogy of the honkyoku changed with location and time?

This seminar examines music, meditation, mindfulness and memory through the specifics of the shakuhachi honkyoku. It will also look at how the traditions surrounding this repertoire has changed as the instrument itself changed from being extremely culture-specific to virtually universal within the last 50 years.

Led by shakuhachi master Riley Lee, students will explore basic theories of knowledge, what it means, in the shakuhachi tradition, to ‘know’ a piece. By learning how to perform a short honkyoku, on instruments provided, they will learn how to learn, and how to ‘practice’ (anything) effectively. One side benefit might be an improvement of one’s working memory.

 

New York’s Central Park, 843 acres in the center of Manhattan Island, remains, now more than a century and a half after its construction, the most iconic urban park in the United States.  Visited by 42 million people each year, Central Park has been the subject of innumerable paintings, photographs, and images, and has been called the most filmed location in the world.   How can we best uncover the meaning and significance of this place, both as a symbolic site from the past, and as an active public space of the present?  This seminar will take a deep dive into Central Park’s history and employ a wide variety of disciplinary approaches. Examining the social, political, and artistic context of the park’s nineteenth century origins, the course will take up the complexity and contradictions inherent in the creation and preservation of “nature” in the center of the most densely developed region in the nation, and in the heart of the city that would go on to become the cultural and economic capital of the United States.

We will consider the history of the land prior to European settlement down through the present, and will explore both the democratic idealism and strategies for social control embedded in the original design of the park by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux.  We will look at the history of Seneca Village, an African-American community of land owners residing within the confines of the present park who were displaced and dispersed by the eminent domain process, and visit the Afrofuturist period room based on Seneca Village in the Metropolitan Museum.  Later on, the course will take up the “exhibitionary complex” of the park (the museums, the zoo, and other attractions) and look at the rich history of different mediums (painting, sculpture, photography, film) through which a wide range of artists have approached Central Park, from its beginnings to the present.

The course will include field trips to New York and Central Park.  Over the semester students will produce a class presentation focusing on one of the attractions of Central Park, a short take-home midterm, and a final project which can be in the form of a research-oriented paper or a creative project such as a photographic essay with text.

Recent conflicts in Ukraine and elsewhere remind us of war’s terrible toll on civilians.  This seminar considers the cultural, scientific, geopolitical, and military developments that led to the massive aerial bombardment of cities in World War II—including the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  We address a troubling question of modern times: How did nations come to accept the deliberate targeting of civilian populations as a “normal” part of war? Bombing and food blockades became the core of what some call the global “civilianization of war.”

Among other things, the seminar introduces students to the Japanese side of the story— including Japanese accounts of the atomic-bombing and firebombing.  In addition, we consider the broader history of bombing and starving cities that predated the atomic bombs.  Beginning with blockades and aerial bombardment in World War I, the seminar will read about Japanese, German, and Italian bombing of civilians in the 1930s; European bombing to control colonial populations; the German “Blitz” of London; and the Allied firebombing of German and Japanese cities.  Readings will be supplemented by British, Japanese, German, and American films about the bombardments and the creation of the atomic bomb.

Seminar discussions will focus on an array of ethical and strategic questions. Was aerial bombardment effective in bringing about the defeat of Japan and Germany?  Did the A-bombs by themselves end the war with Japan?  What role did race play in targeting civilians?  Was Japan singled out for atomic bombs because of American racism? To what extent did Western powers perfect bombing techniques by first using them against non-white populations in their colonies?  Did the scientists who devised the atomic bomb or incendiary bombs bear significant responsibility?  Although Americans today condemn acts of “terrorism” and the bombing of urban infrastructure, how do we judge the Allies’ self-conscious adoption of “terror” and urban “area bombing” to demoralize German and Japanese civilians in World War II?  Can the bombing of cities—then or now--be justified if the cause is just?  And is it moral or effective to use air power to bomb densely populated areas in order to save the lives of one’s own soldiers?

There is much more to fairy tales than the simplified and sanitized versions for children that we’ve all grown up with. This seminar will attempt to explore the complex history of the fairy tale genre and to address the many critical questions it raises: What exactly is a fairy tale? Who used to tell these stories and to whom? How have their forms, meanings, and functions evolved over time and across cultures? We will examine issues such as gender roles, family dynamics, social structure, and the relations between humans and animals. While the disturbing “darker side” of fairy tales – sadism and cannibalism, incest and infanticide – will have to be courageously confronted, their humorous, playful, subversive, and utopian dimensions won’t be neglected either.

The readings for this seminar will revolve around the most famous “tale types” such as Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, but also include lesser-known narratives such as Bluebeard, Rapunzel, Rumpelstiltskin, and Puss-in-Boots. We will study the canonical texts by the Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault and discover a number of other versions, ranging from ancient Rome to the Italian Renaissance and the French 18th century. We will also read a selection of diverse and often conflicting interpretations of these stories by historians, folklorists, psychoanalysts, and literary critics. Although the primary focus will be on the European fairy tale tradition, attention will also be paid to its counterparts in non-Western cultures. The second half of the course will examine the literary fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen and Oscar Wilde and conclude with contemporary Anglo-American retellings. Throughout the semester, we will consider the ways fairy tales have been illustrated over the centuries as well as their presence in opera, ballet, and musical, and watch various video clips and feature films such as Jean Cocteau’s La Belle et la Bête and Neil Jordan’s Company of Wolves.

Participants in this seminar will be expected to read thorougly and critically the texts assigned for each meeting (ca. 100 pages per week), to participate actively in class discussion, and to introduce and lead one discussion session. Written assignments will consist of weekly responses to the readings on Canvas, a short midterm paper and a longer final paper. The seminar requires the willingness to engage with “strange,” non-Disneyfied stories and to question one’s assumptions about the nature and purpose of fairy tales.

Jerusalem is considered a holy city to three faiths: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.  In this course, students will learn the history of Jerusalem from its founding in pre-biblical times until the present.  Over the course of the semester, we will ask: What makes space sacred and how does a city become holy?  What has been at stake—religiously, theologically, politically, nationally—in the many battles over Jerusalem?  What is the relationship between Jerusalem as it was and Jerusalem as it was and is imagined?

Through engagement with a wide range of sources—including biblical lamentations, archeological excavations, qur’anic passages, medieval pilgrim itineraries, modern poetry, and international political resolutions—students will develop the historiographical tools and theoretical frameworks to study the history of one of the world’s most enduringly important and bitterly contested cities.  Together, we will reconstruct Jerusalem’s past and understand it from the perspectives of Jews, Christians, and Muslims.  Students will also encounter persistent themes central to the identity of Jerusalem: geography and topography; exile, diaspora, and return; destruction and trauma; religious violence and war; pilgrimage; social diversity; missionizing; the rise of nationalism; and peace efforts.  By the end of the course, students will have a more nuanced and sophisticated understanding of why the issue of Jerusalem plays such a pivotal role in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

They say, “you are what you eat,” but what does the food that we consume say about us and our ways of being? The home and hearth are essential elements of what defines a community, yet this concept differs radically throughout the world. The kitchen, for example, is often viewed across cultures as the heart of the home in literature, film, commercial enterprises, and television. This course examines food practices and eating behaviors through an interdisciplinary lens – the anthropological, historical, sociological, economical, and psychological interpretations of food and eating. An understanding of how food and meals have evolved to create culture and identity as well as distance and otherness (You eat what?!) will enhance students’ understanding of their relationship with food and their culture, history, geography, and themselves. Because food is one of our most basic needs, understanding its significance will allow us to explore how foods and eating convey (and perhaps limit) self-expression and establish relationships between individuals and groups.

In a universe filled with movement, how and why and where might we find relative stillness? What are the aesthetic, political, and daily life possibilities within stillness? In this studio course open to all, we'll dance, sit, question, and create substantial final projects. We'll play with movement within stillness, stillness within movement, stillness in performance and in performers' minds. We'll look at stillness as protest and power. We'll wonder when stillness might be an abdication of responsibility. We'll read widely within religions, philosophy, performance, disability studies, social justice, visual art, sound (and silence).

I developed Stillness after years of teaching interdisciplinary courses within the Program in Dance at Princeton. As I worked closely with Princeton students, I realized that, for many, their growing edge is in exploring a gentler, deeper, and more still approach to learning and physicality rather than continuing to push faster and further. In this class we pause and reflect, develop tools to practice—and even value—a quieter approach to learning and work.  We integrate an intellectual approach to the study of stillness with an embodied one, moving back and forth between learning about stillness across fields and then practicing it. Students’ homework includes readings, viewings, and creative projects. They write reflective journal assignments twice a week to integrate the material.

Many of the upperclassmen I’ve worked with in this course have said they wished they’d had it at the beginning of their time at Princeton. They found tools that helped them dig deeper into their studies while also caring for themselves, ultimately helping them feel connected to their work, and lives, in a way that is sustainable. I love working with first year students!  One of my goals for the course is to develop a warm and generous community of students who can support one another for the rest of their time at school. Students develop personal stillness practices, and often friendships, that last long past the end of the course. My hope is that the class gives students a warm welcome to Princeton and sends them off into the rest of their years with a set of tools to engage with Princeton in a full and centered way.