Global Arc

A vortex is known as the rotating, whirling or circular motion of fluid around a common centerline. Through history, humans have drawn on the principles of the vortex to induce a trance state, an altered form of consciousness, and psychospiritual embodiment. This course will explore our ancestry in understanding sacred trance dance practices in the tradition of western theatrical dance and its connection to identity, creativity, and community. Students will work with the original cast of Núñez's choreography The Circle or The Prophetic Dream, to reimagine the choreographic material that they will perform as a final project in an open studio.

This course is designed for students to engage in the process of creating new work for performance. Rather than starting with a written play or a pre-conceived movement vocabulary, the students will work together to develop a show from scratch, using a range of improvisation, experimentation, and writing techniques to generate ideas, shape the content, and structure the performance. This course will take inspiration from Raja Feather Kelly's company `the feath3r theory's' model for devised danced theatre called "The Approach". The final work will be performed at the Princeton Dance Festival in Fall 2023.

Reinforcement learning (RL) is a core technology at the heart of modern AI that learn to make good decisions in complex environments. It encompasses technologies such as continuous variable optimization, Q learning, neural networks, policy search, and bandit exploration. In this course, we aim to give an introductory overview of reinforcement learning, its core challenges, and approaches, including exploration and generalization. In parallel, we will present a collection of case studies from intelligent systems, games and healthcare. Students will learn through a combination of lectures, written assignments and coding assignments.

Assumptions and practices by the nonprofit industrial complex, government agencies and affordable housing developers treat poor communities, especially poor communities of color as problems to be managed by those from outside these communities. The Reclamation Studio explores the humanistic design practices applied by social entrepreneurs from low-status communities near Princeton (our "clients") that counteract that history of systemic bias with innovative development projects designed to retain the talent from within their communities. Students will have the opportunity to learn from, and contribute to their efforts.

In this course, students will think dynamically about the relationship between archival records of Black life and Black women's creative expression to interrogate the possibilities and the limits of historical archives. Through hands-on engagement with archival objects in special collections and deep readings of literature, poetry, and visual arts, we will explore what the archival record affords, erases, and silences, and, conversely, how imaginative practices can begin to address and redress its subjects and their histories.

This seminar course will explore the interaction of viral infections and the human nervous system. Topics will include both direct effects of neurotropic viruses affecting the central and peripheral nervous systems and indirect effects of infection on these systems (e.g., rabies encephalitis, Covid-19 brain fog, EBV and multiple sclerosis). The course will be discussion based, focused on primary literature from a multidisciplinary perspective - considering the function of neural circuits and systems, mechanisms of neuroinvasion, and viral pathogenesis.

The goal of this course is to introduce students to the field of motor control from an interdisciplinary and comparative biological perspective. We will focus on how organisms move through a complex, unpredictable environment. Major topics will include muscle and limb control, how animals build and execute a motor program, and how they incorporate sensory feedback into that motor program. We will use examples from both vertebrate and invertebrate systems and look across scales of biological organization. The class will be a mix of the occasional lecture and discussion of primary literature.

Storytelling shapes the public narratives around wars, and journalists face massive challenges in witnessing and communicating complex global conflicts. Focusing on empathy and rigorously independent thought, this course will examine tried and tested lessons of celebrated 20th-century war reporting as well as newer techniques and perspectives that ready reporters for the intricate landscape of contemporary conflicts. Students will learn foundational journalistic skills and approaches used to produce sensitive, compelling reporting in the face of online warfare and misinformation campaigns.

ENV 210A offers an introduction to the scientific and technological dimensions of the nexus of global environmental problems: climate change, the carbon cycle, biodiversity loss, and food and water for 9 billion people. The course will provide students the scientific foundations to understand each of these complex environmental problems, first in isolation and then in its interaction with the others. By the completion of the course, students will be able to understand major scientific reports on the interacting environmental challenges of the 21st century. All sections of ENV 210A will meet together for lecture and precept each week.

ENV 210B offers an introduction to the scientific and technological dimensions of the nexus of global environmental problems: climate change, the carbon cycle, biodiversity loss, and food and water for 9 billion people. The course will provide students the scientific foundations to understand each of these complex environmental problems, first in isolation and then in its interaction with the others. By the completion of the course, students will be able to understand major scientific reports on the interacting environmental challenges of the 21st century. All sections of ENV 210B will meet together for lecture and lab each week.