This course seeks to introduce students to Latin America’s experience of war and peace in the second half of the 20th century and the 21st century. It focuses on the causes of war, how political violence manifests, the effects war has on society, and how people seek to make peace and move on from war. Instead of studying only war or only peace, the course questions the division between these two categories, and considers how conflicts can transition from peaceful to violent expressions and back again. The course also considers a wide range of violent and peaceful dynamics, from civil war to authoritarianism, nonviolent civil resistance, and truth and reconciliation. At the center of the course is the question: what constitutes a just peace, and how has that been achieved or not achieved in the aftermath of Latin American political violence?

The course has four units. The first is theoretical, focusing on foundational theories of war and peace, as well as cases which are more ambiguous, such as nonviolent civil resistance, violent democracies, and mass violence beyond war.  The next three units each focus on particular countries and seek to provide students with a deeper practical grounding for the course’s theoretical texts. The cases of Chile, Peru, and Colombia provide varied examples, one of an authoritarian regime, one of a relatively short, two-sided civil war, and one of a very long, multi-sided civil war. These cases will also help students learn about the domestic politics of Chile, Peru, and Colombia, as well as the role the United States has played in them and their significance for the history of American foreign policy.

Students interested in politics, sociology, history, international studies, Latin America, law, and peace studies are welcome to apply. The course is designed to give students an introduction to some of these field’s themes, to help them realize what disciplines they might be interested in majoring in, and to prepare them for future coursework in the social sciences or humanities.

Note - Laboratory Monday (1:30-4:20 PM) - [Seminar 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 interculturally competent? Intercultural competence involves the ability to function effectively across cultures, think and act appropriately, and communicate and work with people from different cultural backgrounds. This competence has grown in importance due to increased population mobility, migration, and the global economy. It requires a deep understanding and respect for diverse cultural and pragmalinguistic norms, along with fostering empathy. A global leader must communicate effectively across various cultural contexts, appreciating the intricate differences in communication styles and cultural values. Such dedication enhances intercultural adeptness and nurtures shared humanity, leading to a more harmonious, peaceful, and empathetic global society.

This seminar explores linguistic and paralinguistic 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 the sociocultural shaping of language. The course also raises awareness of social factors and cultural reasoning that may prevent cross-cultural misunderstandings. Additionally, it encourages learners to explore their values, communication styles, and attitudes toward different accents, challenging assumptions about other worldviews. Students will analyze examples from various languages and cultures, discussing global research on barriers to intercultural communication, such as ethnocentrism, stereotyping, and conflicting values. Throughout, students are encouraged to engage, explore, and dialogue to develop a deeper understanding of interculturality.

This course is an engaging introduction to intercultural communication, perfect for undergraduates new to the field and interested in international relations. No background in linguistics is required. Course highlights include bi-weekly discussions and response essays, a reflective paper instead of a midterm exam, an internationally renowned scholar guest speaker, and a half-semester telecollaboration project with partners from the University of Sarajevo on intercultural communication, language, and pragmatics.

Exciting Addition! During Spring Break, we'll embark on a trip to the University of Sarajevo in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the country's largest and oldest university. This destination, known for its rich multicultural and multi-ethnic heritage, provides an ideal setting for our studies. Students will explore peace and empathy pedagogy, intercultural competence, and intercultural/cross-cultural pragmatics. Themes of universal democratic values, personal and mutual responsibility, inclusivity, solidarity, and cooperation will also be explored, all vital topics in second language pedagogies.

Students must have a passport that is valid until October 2025. Additionally, some non-US students might need to get a visa in a compressed period of time. We will reach out to all accepted students immediately to determine whether they need a visa. Visa costs will be covered by the course.

Have you ever wanted to “pay someone back” because you felt injured?  To “get even” with someone?  Each of us has likely been or felt wronged – and has pondered how that wrong is to be recompensed.  

Together, we’ll sample that dish “best served cold” by reading great literature that puts revenge at the center of the story, depicting the heart-stopping dilemmas that accompany vengeance. These narratives write out of an idiom of revenge, showing its deep roots in human nature throughout time and around the world.  We’ll relate revenge to the principle of “evenness” in justice, to theories of punishment, and to philosophies of honor and of forgiveness.  These textual examples lay bare the wild-eyed genesis of retaliation and its toxic fruit which, though generated from a single raw moment of offense, soon poisons larger social units.  The very language of revenge, with its equation of an equal transaction, asks if an individual, or a system of justice, can mete out a punishment that is precisely equal to an injury.  How does literature lay out and calculate equivalent acts of retaliation, and write out the circumstances of that brutal equation of “an eye for an eye”?  We’ll consider large-scale ethical issues prompted by these literary treatments:  Can anger and resentment be purged without bodily retaliation?  Do moral issues like self-respect and self-defense factor into revenge?  Does – should – vengeance satisfy one?  
    
Though literature will be at the core of this course, comparative material will also engage us.  We will study works from the Princeton University Art Museum’s collections that represent social and gendered readings of revenge, and these would prompt reflections different from, but complementary to, literary analysis.  The discourses of law and of journalism, and the methods of psychology and of religion, yield essential lines of conversation as we trace the bloody genealogy of revenge.  At its most comprehension, this seminar will develop our shared humanness through several points of contact, however different are our life-stories from each other.  If human imagination has written a wide literature of calculated revenge, these works nevertheless draw upon our shared human vulnerabilities that – however hot the blood – urge us to relent, desist, and reconsider after we have closed the book.

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?

https://glassclass.my.canva.site/travelblogs
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.” 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 interdisciplinary seminar follows the material science framework of “structure - properties - applications” to take a deep dive into the science of glass, with components of history, art, and society impact discussions. We will:
•    study the unique chemical and physical properties of glass materials through hands-on laboratory activities
•    make and characterize glass using chemical methods
•    learn hands-on flame work and scientific glassblowing from scientific glassblowers*
•    explore glass-enabled modern technologies and specialty glass
•    visit glass museums, studios, and factory in Venice, where the renowned Roman glass was invented and perfected (international travel during Spring Break required)**

The seminar will help students develop an understanding of how glass science and applications have evolved over time and have made major impacts on culture, scientific discoveries, and technological advancement. The trip to Venice over Spring Break to visit the glass studios, cultural heritage archives, and learn from Venetian glass art historian will provide an unparalleled and memorable course experience.
* The class will take a field trip that requires students to be available from 1:30- 8:30 pm one day.
** Students must have a passport that is valid until October 2025. Additionally, some non-US students might need to get a visa in a compressed period of time. We will reach out to all accepted students immediately to determine whether they need a visa. Visa costs will be covered by the course.

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?

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?

This course explores the representation of the Middle East in Western media, especially in the United States. It aims to challenge and debunk misconceptions, prejudices, and stereotypes prevalent in Western societies regarding Middle Easterners, Arabs, and Muslims. The course analyzes how these perceptions are shaped and perpetuated through Western media. Students will investigate the influence of media portrayals on public opinion and critically examine themes in contemporary American cultural productions about the Middle East. Various mediums, such as films, television productions, fiction, documentaries, and video games, will be explored to understand how representations of the Middle East are constructed in Western media. For instance, the video game industry perpetuates harmful narratives by depicting Middle Eastern individuals as villains in well-known, violent war games such as Call of Duty and Six Days in Fallujah. The course provides an analytical framework to dissect underlying issues and concepts related to desire, gender, Islam, colonialism, revolution, nationalism, borders, refugees, and violence when depicting the Middle East. By analyzing these themes, students will develop critical analysis skills and challenge prevailing narratives. Emphasis will be placed on video games, entertainment television, and films as they significantly shape popular perceptions. Students will analyze the portrayal of Middle Easterners in these shows, and the implications of perpetuating stereotypes. The impact of these portrayals on the depicted groups, as well as society as a whole, will be highlighted. Ultimately, the course aims to cultivate the critical skills necessary to discern accurate and unbiased depictions of the "other" in Western media and cultural productions. It challenges preconceived notions and fosters empathy, respect, and appreciation for the diversity within our societies. 

Throughout this course, students will engage in weekly readings, video screenings, and discussions to critically analyze and deconstruct prevalent stereotypes and biases in Western media. Writing assignments include weekly short writing responses (one to two pages each) and a final research paper exploring various mediums like films, documentaries, and video games. Other activities include a presentation in lieu of a midterm test, participating in group discussions, engaging with the course materials and other students, and leading classroom discussions.

By taking this seminar, students will:

• Separate the reel from reality regarding the Middle East by investigating Westerners’ attitudes toward Middle Easterners, Arabs, and Muslims.

• Study the main themes and tropes in American (Western) cultural productions about the Middle East through an analytical framework.

• Survey a variety of examples from the written and cinematic culture. 

• Engage in various topics, including desire, gender, Islam, colonialism, revolution, nationalism, borders, and refugees from and/or about the Middle East. 

• Discuss the importance of examining entertainment television representations of racial/ethnic minorities and their implications for attitudes and policy support relevant to the depicted groups.

• Master critical methods to enable them to study and appreciate the ‘correct’ depiction of the ‘other’ in Western media and cultural productions.

Documentary filmmakers forge complex relationships with the real people who appear in their films. Even in the most empathic works, that precarious bond can be fraught.  So, what happens when filmmakers portray people with whom they have an adversarial relationship? How do documentarians grapple with antagonistic, reprehensible, or unreliable real-life characters? What can be gained from taking on tough subjects?

The answers to these questions have implications across today's media landscape, in which makers increasingly find themselves writing their own rules of engagement. Documentarians employ storytelling approaches from many worlds—art, ethnography, journalism, history, advocacy, social science—as a result, their creative choices offer both innovative strategies, and sometimes cautionary tales, to their colleagues across disciplines. 

This course treats documentary as an epistemological tool, a way of knowing the world. In this case, a hostile one. It examines non-fiction filmmaking from the start of a film idea to its reception in the public sphere, both through study and creative student work. We ask why documentarians choose the subjects and approaches they do, and how the medium of cinema serves (and perhaps complicates) that undertaking. As we watch some of the most influential documentary films in this genre and read related theoretical work, we focus on the practical and ethical dilemmas filmmakers face. And we consider the consequences of sharing those films with a broader audience.

The course will teach the basics of interview and film editing, giving students experience with documentary work, but it is primarily a film studies class.  No experience is required. Students should come prepared to encounter work that can sometimes be hard to watch. The course is taught by Purcell Carson, who works professionally as a documentary editor and director. For eleven years, she has taught a seminar in urban studies and filmmaking at Princeton, where she directs The Trenton Project, a multi-year, community-engaged, documentary workshop.

This freshman seminar explores the creative output of one of the most exceptional figures in European history: Hildegard of Bingen (1098 – 1179). Abbess, composer, dramatist, poet, prophetess, healer, theologian—Hildegard’s influence and originality was so profound and wide-ranging that she is difficult to pin down with any traditional label. Part of this is because her creative enterprise was turned so wholly toward the physical care and spiritual cultivation of the community of women with whom she was in fellowship. Hildegard thus offers a fascinating case of an intellect whose creative powers flowed to and from a culture of care, the maintenance of which was her highest aim. And nearly a millennium after her death, Hildegard’s creative force is still on the increase; contemporary composers, artists, and dramaturges still draw inspiration from her searingly bright vision of humankind’s connectedness—with nature, with one another, and with the cosmos. 

Seminar activities shuttle between medieval and modern, historical and hands-on. On a trip to the Met Cloisters Museum in New York City, students tour a medieval garden containing many of the curative plants that formed the basis of Hildegard’s reputation as a healer. This firsthand work with historical gardening practices shapes our engagement with twelfth-century music and poetry, which was saturated in horticultural imagery. We consider Hildegard's refreshingly open invocation of the female body in her theological and medical writings, and its spectacular expression in the paintings produced by her community. We explore twelfth-century ideas about food’s relationship to the care of body and soul, and learn to cook medieval pottage in one of the residential dining facilities. Later in the spring, students have a unique opportunity to attend the premiere of Hildegard, an opera by one of the leading composers of the twenty-first century, Sarah Kirkland Snider, which explores Hildegard's biography through the medium she believed most expressive of the soul: music. In fact, music serves as our anchor and guide to the seminar's theme of creativity and care. Students will have opportunities to attend several performances at Princeton University Concert's Healing in Music series.

Each student will be given a small plant—of the kind known, described, and used by Hildegard and contemporaries—to tend throughout the semester. This small and daily act of cultivation will form the see the seed of your final project.

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 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, race, sexual, and class politics in those mass-marketed cultural products that we love or hate (or hate to love). Questions we will ask include: How did 1950s sitcoms perpetuate an idealized image of the “happy housewife” and how did ‘70s feminists protest it? What did pop music contribute to the Third Wave politics of the 1990s? How have women’s magazines maintained raced and classed gender norms? How might the superheroes at the center of Wakanda Forever (2022) defy them? What does the Barbie movie (2023) tell us about feminism today? Does loving Bravo’s Real Housewives franchise make you a “Bad Feminist,” to borrow Roxane Gay’s term? How should we interpret Ali Wong’s “cringe comedy”? Can analysis of The L Word (2004 – 2009) and Generation Q (2019 – 2023) help us track shifts in lesbian feminist politics? 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.

From climate change to political unrest, it can often feel like we are hurtling towards an existential crisis. But what comes after loss and devastation? In this seminar, we approach what are traditionally thought of as political questions—how to rebuild a community, to adjudicate justice, to articulate a new social contract—from a narratological perspective. We use close textual reading skills to examine how fictional communities, like Boccaccio’s brigata, attempt to reinstitute society after a plague, the Black Death of 1348, and film theory to analyze recent tellings of Giorgio Rosa’s very real project to build an artificial island for his own independent nation. Expanding beyond literature and film, this seminar examines the nexus of narrative and solace in textiles, such as The NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt and in the interweaving of storytelling and player experience in The Last of Us game series. In class, we will use a variety of methods from close-reading and film analysis to hands-on-making and critical theory to discuss, investigate and present our findings about these objects of inquiry and reveal what they can tell us about the role of narrative. By closely studying these ‘texts’ in our own community of readers, we’ll have the opportunity to explore the relationship between literature and consolation—imagination and resilience—as we generate and pursue new questions about the art of storytelling. 

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.

https://www.instagram.com/p/C6byBqjLfem/?img_index=1

What is a nation, how is it made, and how does it constantly have to be remade? How do ideas about race, language, gender, and dissent shape understandings of community and belonging? This course takes Greece as a case study to examine the cultural and ideological resources that go into making a nation. What makes someone Greek, and on what grounds is that identity claimed, conferred, or withheld? How can something as seemingly trivial as a recipe become a means of establishing national difference? And what can we learn about nation making and nationalism by examining their vulnerabilities and even failures? Through the study of textual, visual, and material objects we bring the history and anthropology of modern Greece into conversation with theories of nation making to explore the resources used in the ongoing project of making a nation. Each week we consider one resource, from the use of the past and the construction of ethnicity to food, travel, and art. While our focus on Greece allows us to consider the variety of resources that contribute to a single nation-making project, we actively explore the relevance of our study to understanding the U.S. today. Throughout the semester, students work towards a collaborative final project created for a public audience—an online resource that examines how specific cultural artifacts contribute to making, or unmaking, the nation.

In a world inundated with information, storytelling stands out as a potent force that transcends temporal and spatial boundaries, prompting questions about its impact on our lives, its potential for transformation, and what renders a narrative universally appealing. This seminar delves into these inquiries through the exploration of Elena Ferrante’s best-selling 'Neapolitan Novels,' published between 2011 and 2014. The novels, translated into fifty languages, turned into a global phenomenon and sparked a Ferrante Fever on social media. The tetralogy has inspired a critically acclaimed TV series and fueled Ferrante-themed tourism in Naples. The author's decision to maintain anonymity has proven a successful strategy, enhancing the allure of her work. 

We will scrutinize the Neapolitan Saga as a microcosm of themes reflecting female friendship dynamics, identity formation, socioeconomic disparities, and pervasive violence within patriarchal societies. The investigation extends to the author's deliberate choice of anonymity, seen as a feminist act of defiance. Our exploration employs psychoanalysis, deconstruction, and feminist philosophy to examine how Ferrante’s novels contribute to broader political and philosophical debates within the transnational realm of global literature.

Assignments include short response papers, a midterm, and a final paper. Each student will also present two critical essays and lead class discussions.

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.

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.

Long before the popularization of generative Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, speculative fiction imagined the promises and perils of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in literature. From Ovid’s Pygmalion (8 CE), to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), to Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot (1950), early representations of AI wrangled with ethical questions about what makes us human, and what the invention of AI means for us as a species. As the pace of technological developments in the field of AI accelerates, contemporary speculative fiction continues to explore these ever-more urgent questions in new ways.

This course will introduce students to literature and ethics through the topic of AI, asking such broad questions as: How can literature help us think through philosophical questions and ethical problems? How does culture borrow from literature in ways that are ethically dubious? What can the literature of the past tell us about our society’s present and future? 

In the process, students will

1. analyze how speculative fiction shapes the ways AI is developed, marketed, and understood: In what ways do companies use AI’s connection to speculative fiction to mystify its workings? What are the implications of that mystification, and what is our responsibility to demystify it for ourselves and others? 

2. interrogate the relationship between speculative fiction and real-world technological innovation: Is speculative fiction a mirror of the present? a crystal ball into the future? an agent of political change? a dangerous source of inspiration or misinformation?

3. close read important works of speculative fiction to think critically about key topics in the ethics of AI, such as what automated labor means for the future of work and who should be held responsible for AI’s mistakes; 

4. engage with critical arguments and scholarly debates from the fields of literary studies, digital humanities, and the history of AI;

5. connect readings to current events in the technology and culture sector through in-class presentations of news articles;

6. familiarize themselves with basic machine-learning concepts through hands-on “lab” activities (no programming skills or technical knowledge required);

7. produce their own ethical position papers about how they will engage with AI in their own lives, based on their close readings.

The Holocaust has frequently been viewed as an event whose nature and magnitude are such as to challenge representation in any of the modes available to us, including historiography, written and oral testimony, fiction, poetry, film, photography, and painting. Generally speaking, however, the very difficulty of representing the Holocaust has not inhibited but rather inspired, with special urgency, the effort to portray this event and its aftermath. And in recent decades, with so many survivors aging and passing away, increased attention has been drawn to the singular contribution their witnessing makes to our understanding of how the event was experienced by its victims. In this seminar, we will consider, through different genres of witnessing—mostly written accounts, but also videotaped and filmed testimonies, historical fiction, and the graphic novel—some of the major questions that survivors have raised: how to communicate an “unspeakable” trauma; whether or to what extent, for this purpose, recourse to artistic means is ethically justifiable; how to reconcile or, at minimum, to relate history and memory; what happens to our assumptions about individuality in the midst and the wake of such a collective upheaval; and not least, what the condition of survival itself entails, and why the enabling and transmission of survivors’ speech.

How can humankind harvest enough energy to maintain or raise the standard of living of people everywhere, while minimizing the damage to our habitat and the conflicts over resources? We don’t know! But we do know that this is a central problem facing our civilization, and that the solution to the problem will require a clear understanding of the physics of energy in all its fascinating manifestations. In this seminar, we will survey the physical phenomena involved in energy extraction, conversion, and storage. Starting from an AP Physics level of knowledge (or equivalent), we will learn the basics of mechanical, electromagnetic, thermal, chemical, and nuclear energy. Through quantitative discussions and problem-solving, we will come to appreciate the advantages and disadvantages of harvesting energy from the Sun, wind, and rain; the Earth’s hot interior; fossil fuels and plants; and nuclear fission and fusion, among other possibilities. Since this seminar is taught by an astrophysicist, we will also trace these energy sources back to their astrophysical origins: stars, supernovae, and whatever caused the Big Bang. Our emphasis will be on order-of-magnitude analysis and distinguishing between fundamental physical limitations and engineering or economic challenges. We will eschew politics and polemics and embrace this important subject in the spirit of humility and curiosity. Weekly homework will consist of readings drawn from physics texts and current events, and calculations related to energy harvesting and conversion. Students will also write a final paper about a topic of their choice. 

This course is an intensive introduction to the work of Bob Dylan. Dylan achieved a kind of immortality when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016.  Yet approaching a decade later, he remains a vital force as a writer, songwriter, performer, and recording artist. Across the many genres of contemporary popular music, and not just popular music, his influence is unmatched. Examining his long career not only unlocks major currents in American cultural history; it provides a model of American creativity and self-creation for the present and the future. Starting with his early days in Greenwich Village, the seminar will retrace Dylan’s roots, examine the cultural contexts in which his art developed, and look at the continuities as well as sharp changes of his singular career.

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.

This seminar offers a contemporary, interdisciplinary introduction to the study of the Holocaust (or “Shoah”). We will study this unthinkable atrocity in its historical specificity, its afterlife, and its relevance to the present. In the first instance, this entails studying the rise of fascism, the emergence of genocide, as well as questions of memory, testimony, and trauma. We will thus move between works of history, first-person accounts, fiction, poetry, film, psychoanalysis, critical theory, and philosophy, testing the limits and powers of these divergent idioms, genres, disciplines in the face of atrocity. We will also have to ask to what extent the traditional functions of philosophy and theory – critique, speculation, and abstraction – are still valid in the wake of genocide and how they might need to be transformed to reckon with the Shoah. Similarly, we will have to ask, following Theodor Adorno, to what extent poetry (and by extension, the other arts) are still possible “after Auschwitz.” Finally, we will also have to engage a set of specifically contemporary questions: how, if at all, can we compare different genocides? Is it possible to think about the Holocaust “comparatively” or indeed “intersectionally”? How does the Holocaust relate to contemporary forms of racism, xenophobia, antisemitism, and fascism? What are the various ways in which the Holocaust is invoked in contemporary culture and politics?

In this seminar, we will study the problem of power and morality, or the tension between the pursuit of rule and empire and the pursuit of excellence, through an examination of classic works of Greek literature. The intense experience of living and acting together in the Greek city-states inspired a remarkable degree of reflection on questions of human nature and many texts that have endured as sources of self-knowledge and humane critique in subsequent cultures. Students will engage works from four distinctly Greek literary traditions—epic poetry, tragedy, history, and philosophy—that explore the attraction of power and glory, the claims of divine and human law, how to combine rule with justice, and the place of war and politics in the good life.

Many of the works we will read were written in or about 5th century Athens, which felt most intensely the alternately reinforcing and competing claims of the pursuit of power and devotion to virtue. During this period, the democracy led a Greek alliance against the Persian empire, converted that alliance into an empire of its own, and fought a generational war with Sparta for supremacy within the Greek world. The reflection occasioned by these events touches on many ethical and political questions—regarding the nature of democracy and democratic imperialism, the elements of prudence and persuasion, the character of leadership and the danger of demagoguery—that continue to be felt in our time.  

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.

This class will explore a group of performance artists and pedagogies from Latin America that use the medium of theater and live performance to react to social and political injustices and to prompt audiences to respond.  These works challenge structures, cast light on societal inequities, empower the voiceless, and more. Through a mix of readings, practice (play), viewing, and discussions, we will gain a deep, embodied understanding of these approaches, understanding the traditional view of a "good play" stemming from Aristotle's Poetics, to precisely how each of these artists’ works provoke action and awareness to their audiences. In our own practice, we will explore the material while applying techniques to our own relevant issues. 

This class will include a trip to NYC to take a workshop and see relevant work (a performance).

We will begin with Augusto Boal's "Theater of the Oppressed,” which originated in Brazil, through which we will learn first of his perspective on Greek and European approaches to theater.  In the spirit of his vision, we will next explore the idea of the spect"actor" at the forefront—using our own selves; bodies, voices and imagination in guided games and exercises in order to explore the interactive relationship between the audience and performer. (Image Theater, Forum Theater, Invisible Theater, and more) 

We will then delve into ritual and exploration of embodied memory through Teatro Yuyachkani, the satirical and feminist cabaret styles of Jesusa Rodriguez, and the tightly wound exploration of theater criticizing itself and questioning trauma healing in Guillermo Calderón's work.  We will also learn what we can of TiT political happenings (5 minute provocations under an oppressive government we can only read few accounts of) in Argentina,  explore the joyful exuberance of youth-led troupe Teatro Trono who use clowning and mask work to address social/political issues, and more.

As we explore these theatrical contexts, we will embody their methods to share and learn of the historical, social and political contexts of the surrounding culture of these artists in their countries and gain a broad overview of Latin American theater history and its constant grappling with colonialist and imperialist perspectives. (This will include study of excerpts from Theatre of Crisis, by Diana Taylor.)

The class will culminate in a final set of group showings of pieces that students will create based on your own social/political interests, using inspiration from all we have studied in class.

Spanish not required. Acting experience not required. Willingness to play and take risks is integral to class.

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.

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.

In a world facing unprecedented environmental challenges, how can lessons from Japan’s past help shape a greener and more resilient future? This course explores the intersection of sustainability, aesthetics, and innovation by examining Japan’s unique approach to environmental stewardship. From the Edo period’s circular economy to Japan’s cutting-edge technologies, we will uncover how historical practices and modern advancements offer insights for building a sustainable world.

The course provides students with an immersive and collaborative learning experience, combining readings on Japanese history and culture with virtual, zero carbon footprint trips to Japanese sites, both real and imagined. These virtual trips—ranging from the Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum to futuristic innovations in robotics and AI—reinforce the course themes and offer practical insights into Japan's contributions to sustainability policies and practices.

We will not only learn from Japan’s history but also seek to apply these insights in addressing contemporary global environmental issues.

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.

The parable of the Good Samaritan is one of the most celebrated teachings of Jesus about the meaning of love and justice.  But, like most biblical stories, its meaning is contested.  By looking at diverse religious and secular interpretations of this story and its themes, this seminar examines the nature and scope of morality in an age of globalization.  Debates about immigration, global poverty, and humanitarian intervention witness varied and contradictory appeals to this parable.  The questions raised by these issues are neither abstract nor limited to public policy.  They involve practical decisions that face ordinary people in everyday life.  In fact, so the seminar will argue, they reveal basic understandings of politics, human nature, and the place of morality in life itself. 

Most people praise the Samaritan for his compassion and his willingness to transcend cultural boundaries in order to meet the desperate needs of a stranger.  The story, conventionally read, teaches the importance of universal concern for any human being.  But not everyone shares the same convictions about what human beings owe one another and how best to meet the needs of others.  Some find it essential to distinguish between actions that are morally required and those that are praiseworthy, above and beyond the call of strict duty.  Some argue that charity may be appropriate for interpersonal relations, but it should not guide political communities.  In fact, virtues like compassion are dangerous because they are inadequate and often cause more harm by trying to do good.  Still others argue that universal concern threatens special relationships and their unique bonds of affection—like those found among friends, neighbors, families, fellow citizens, and co-religionists.  These particular relationships, for example, may justify preferential concern in ways that trump the claims of those who are more “distant.”