Global Arc

In this project-based course, you will be offered a selection of small spaceflight hardware projects to design, analyze, build and/or test, either on your own or in small subgroups. In most years when the TigerSats Lab has a nanosatellite mission in active development for upcoming launch, the class will be subdivided into subsystem or specialty groups, and you will all work together as a team towards maturing the current nanosat towards launch-readiness. Other frequent projects include suborbital or orbital microgravity experiments or custom environmental qualification test equipment. You will write a final report describing your project.

After the decades-long dictatorship known as the Porfiria (1877-1911) and the series of political coups and peasant revolts that characterized the 1910s, Mexican artists including Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, and Dr. Atl forged a new, "authentically Mexican" modern art. Cultural pilgrims with leftist inclinations from all over the world, particularly from the United States and the Soviet Union, rushed to Mexico to learn from their example. The course will cover major events in Mexican art from approx. 1910-1970. This course will appeal to those interested in Mexican culture and politicized art practices.

Belief in photography's indexicality has haunted the medium since its inception. Once understood to offer proof of something real, the idea that we might trust a photograph to relay anything genuine now feels absurd. Looking to shifting discourses regarding photography's relationship with objectivity, authenticity, and fact, this course examines the origins and evolution of our understanding of the medium's duplicity. Over the course of the semester, we will trace the historically erratic belief in photography's ability to document and attempt to think critically about the medium's capacity to create, reveal, and critique the real.

This course considers the intersecting roles of gender and power, labor and knowledge, sacrifice and sustenance in the conception of Nahua femininity. Students who complete this course will gain familiarity with the culture of Nahuatl-speaking people of central Mexico and the representation of Nahua women. Special attention will be given to the changing perception of Aztec goddesses under colonialism and their Chicanx reclamation, as well as to historical figures such as Malinche, the "tongue" of Hernán Cortés, and Doña Luz Jiménez, muse to the Mexican Muralists following the Revolution.

This seminar focuses on the Netherlands in the early seventeenth century, a time when new scientific discoveries and geographical expansion challenged established worldviews. We examine how Netherlandish artists used elemental imagery to draw attention to the hidden forces of nature, the beginning and end of the world, the boundaries between the natural and the artificial, and the transformative powers of their own craft. How did they imagine and represent the elements and other ultimate particles of the material world at a time when the intersections of life and art were being redefined?

Vitruvius, the author of the only surviving architectural treatise from Antiquity has been called alternatively an architect or an engineer. Architects and engineers started to organize themselves as professions in the early modern period and to compete to secure commissions. This course addresses the story of how two professions came to define themselves against each other. Students will first review the different actors of the European early modern building world, before focusing on the fields of contest between architects and engineers and how this battle ultimately defined the nature of each profession, between art and science.

Archaeology is a visual discipline: it searches for material evidence of the human past and presents its discoveries with an array of graphic media. This hybrid studio/seminar combines training in drawing as an observational tool for excavation with critical analysis of visual media based on archaeological and art historical theory. Build your drawing portfolio with hands-on study of artifacts from the University's collections, delve into archives, and learn digital recording tools. What are the challenges of reconstructing fragmentary evidence? Do drawings shape our perception of the past?

How have collecting practices shaped the perception of Indigenous cultures in the Americas? The recognition and reception of native art and architecture reflects the evolving intellectual preoccupations of collectors over 500 years. Charting this history, topics will include the role of archaeological illustrations; the invocation of national identities; issues of appropriation in modern and contemporary art; the faking and restoration of objects; the ethical considerations of museum display; the reconstruction of ruins into tourist destinations; and misrepresentations in New Age religiosity, conspiracy theories, and popular entertainment.

The senior thesis (498-499) is a year-long project in which students complete a substantial piece of research and scholarship under the supervision and advisement of a Princeton faculty member. While a year-long thesis is due in the student's final semester of study, the work requires sustained investment and attention throughout the academic year.

The senior thesis (498-499) is a year-long project in which students complete a substantial piece of research and scholarship under the supervision and advisement of a Princeton faculty member. While a year-long thesis is due in the student's final semester of study, the work requires sustained investment and attention throughout the academic year.