Global Arc

How does Beowulf work as a poem? In this course, we will find out, learning the poem through close study of its manuscript context and of its literary and historical milieux. We will examine its genre; sources of and analogues to it; its metrics; its place in theories of oral performance; codicological problems (e.g., why the manuscript looks as it does; how paleography helps to date the poem); and its historical and cultural settings. Tune up your harp, sharpen your wits, and find out why this poem is first in collections of English literature.

The "art of losing isn't hard to master," claims modern poet Elizabeth Bishop. Humans write elegies because we are shredded by loss. Yet, the genre of elegy in English isn't easy to account for. This course starts where English does--in the Anglo-Saxon period. Old English lyrics, prose reflections, and the epic Beowulf are searing witnesses to yearning and regret. Paradoxically, these texts celebrate loss, even as they console. What could be mourned, and who grieve? What is this "English" sense of loss? In readings comparative and critical, we'll discover how millenium-old speakers comprehended and perhaps mastered their losses.

In conjunction with University College London, this topic course addresses a range of topics, including the role of class, gender, ethnicity, race, and sexuality in the social dynamics of London life. Students will be considering works that represent the city in terms of the longing for kinds of relation that the city promises but may withhold. We will consider London as a city of neighborhoods, a national and imperial metropolis, a postcolonial and global city. By attending to our texts in their historical contexts and in relation to one another, we will be exploring writing about London that is as restless as the city itself.

How do novels represent the global? How have new media systems and economic exchange transformed not only the way novels are produced and distributed but also the internal form of the literary works themselves? This course examines how writers register the interconnected nature of modern life and the narrative strategies that they invent to make sense of migration, war, urbanization, and financialization. Students will learn interdisciplinary methods for reading literature's potential for sociological and historical knowledge by considering how the global novel grapples with empire and what political futures it forecloses and opens up.

Inter-disciplinary class on early modern Amsterdam (1550-1720) when the city was at the center of the global economy and leading cultural center; home of Rembrandt and Spinoza (Descartes was nearby) and original figures like playwrights Bredero and Vondel, the ethicist engraver Coornhert, the political economist de la Court brothers and English traveling theater. We go from art to poetry, drama, philosophy and medicine. Spring Break is in Amsterdam with museum visits, guest talks and participation in recreation of traveling theater from the period.

The critical developments of 20th-century Europe and the consolidation of democracy in European countries, including the legacy of the two world wars, Nazism, Stalinism, the Cold War, colonialism and decolonization, the birth and development of the European Community, the development of the welfare state, the problems confronting the European Union (immigration, enlargement, political institutions, military role), and the varieties of democratic institutions in Europe. Two lectures, one preceptorial.

This course gives a broad and interdisciplinary perspective on some of the very diverse cultural and historical roots of European identity. It examines contemporary debates over contested identity in the light of long historical trajectories in which identities were continually defined and reshaped. It is conceived as an introduction to many of the courses in Princeton dealing with European issues. The landmarks include, but are not restricted to, written texts. They include Machiavelli, Montesquieu, Marx, and J.S. Mill, but also Fra Angelico, Beethoven and Thomas Mann. One three-hour seminar.

What kind of polity is the European Union? Is it a form of economic and political integration, an actor at the global scene, an interlocutor of the United States? What is its relationship to its Member States? How is it organized? What do democracy, citizenship, and fundamental rights mean for the EU? The seminar is designed to help better understand this organization--its political roots and objectives, its legal foundations and development, and its existence as a new kind of a federal system "beyond statehood". We will study the case law of the European Court of Justice and other writings about the constitutional process of the EU.

Introduces disease and healthcare problems worldwide and examines efforts to address them. Via an interdisciplinary approach, identifies the main actors, institutions, knowledge, and values at play in the "global health system", and explores the environmental, social, political, and economic factors that shape patterns and variations in disease and health across societies. Topics include: development and governance of disease; technological change and public health; human rights and social justice; measuring health outcomes; and the shifting role of states, civil society, and public-private partnerships in healthcare delivery. Two lectures.

Focuses on the distribution and determinants of disease. Diverse methodological approaches for measuring health status, disease occurrence, and the association between risk factors and health outcomes will be presented via classic and contemporary studies of chronic and infectious illness and disease outbreaks. Emphasis on: causal inference, study design and sampling, bias and confounding, the generalizability of research, health policy and research ethics. Prerequisite: an approved basic statistics course. Two 90-minute lectures, one preceptorial.