Global Arc

Berlin is famous for its neighborhoods (der Kiez), its history of exclusions, national unity and divisions, as well as for its atmosphere of urban cosmopolitanism. We explore ethnographically the current state of civility, hospitality, and xenophobia in the German capital, and through readings explore its states in the past. We will debate issues of Kultur, multiculturalism, integration, Islam, political party representation, East/West polarization, and immigration. Students are introduced to an ethnographic approach to knowledge production.

This course, taught at Ashoka University (India), is an introduction to Indian politics. The first half is structured as chronological 'political history'. We begin with the colonial period (1757-1947), before studying the eras of Nehru (1947-64), Indira Gandhi (1965-1984) and the contemporary period (1985-2014). The second half looks at 'concepts' in Indian politics such as: the state, democracy, federalism, judiciary, political parties, social movements, identity politics, and welfare schemes. The final weeks will focus on the Narendra Modi years from 2014 to 2022, applying what we have learned in the course to the present day.

What does it mean to be a woman or a man? Or neither? How do gender and sexuality, those seemingly most personal and private of attributes, emerge from networks of power and social relations? This course introduces major concepts in the interdisciplinary field of gender and sexuality studies. We will analyze the ways in which gender, as an object of study and as a lived experience, intersects with class, race, and ability, and will examine the relation between gender, sexuality and power in literary, philosophical, political and medical discourses.

An introduction to the various roles and experiences of women in contemporary American politics, media, and society. The course explores changing definitions of womanhood and women's identity during the late 20th and early 21st century. The class will discuss women who hold positions of leadership and relative privilege, and women who find themselves in the most powerless and difficult circumstances in contemporary America. It also explores cross-cutting issues of class, race, sexuality, gender identity, and faith to help understand the many experiences of women in America. One 90-minute lecture, one 90-minute preceptorial.

This course explores the intellectual history of the intersections of race and sexual violence. We analyze the evolution of legal frameworks about sexual violence in different jurisdictions, while also exploring the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality in the history of sexual violence in the Atlantic slave trade and contemporary carceral systems. Students will examine case studies of sexual violence against trans youth of color and the racialization of intimate partner sexual violence, genocidal rape, post-catastrophe sexual violence, and sex trafficking, including forced marriage and child sexual exploitation.

This course explores the intellectual history of media, sex, and the racialized body. We will analyze the representation of the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality in film, advertisements, the fashion industry, reality TV, animation, and music videos. This course will closely examine the predominance of white heteronormativity in media, the representation of gender in K-pop and K-dramas, the media conceptualization of the "intimacy of the Arab woman," and the sexualization of blackness and Latinx bodies in blaxploitation films and telenovelas.

Human reproduction is often taken for granted as a merely biological phenomenon, yet reproduction is laden with cultural meaning and import for individuals and for society as a whole. Despite its significance, reproduction is rarely addressed in the Princeton curriculum. This new lecture course explores human reproduction from a sociological perspective. It also seeks to introduce students to some of the basic modes of thinking in both sociology and gender and sexuality studies.

This course explores the intellectual history of the racialization of beauty. We will begin by analyzing how the history of Atlantic slavery and scientific racism set precedents for the contemporary dominant conceptualization of beauty in the body, art, and nature. Students will then concentrate on the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality in beauty pageants, advertising, and the plastic surgery industry. This course will also closely examine racialized fat phobia, the racial politics of hair, transnational colorism, and racialized exploitation in beauty service work.

This course explores the recent history of ideas about contemporary unfreedom, focusing on the influence of discourses about race, gender, and sexuality. We will study how scientific racism, structural violence, and climate change fuel contemporary slavery. Students will analyze how the silencing of the pervasiveness of contemporary slavery is tied to the narrative of "abolition" and the globalization of economic dynamics based on the exploitation of predominantly people of color. This course will also examine the racialization of child exploitation, survivor criminalization, and representation of unfreedom in the annual U.S. TIP Report.

Why does sex work raise some of the most fascinating, controversial and often taboo questions of our time? The course explores the intricate lives and intimate narratives of sex workers from the perspective of sex workers themselves, as they engage in myriad varieties of global sex work: pornography, prostitution, erotic dance, escorting, street work, camming, commercial fetishism, and sex tourism. Themes include: the 'whore stigma,' race, class and queer dynamics; law, labor and money; technologies of desire and spectacle; dirt, marriage and monogamy; carceral modernity; violence, agency and, above all, strategies for social transformation.