Global Arc

Though we might not all be religious, religion affects us all. It's woven into the fabric of communal life, from politics to sports to art. So how do journalists, whatever their personal convictions, write about belief (and nonbelief) with fairness, nuance, and creativity? In this course, students will study storytelling about religion in various nonfiction genres, including feature writing, investigative journalism, and memoir. We will discuss bias, vulnerability, meaning-making, and audience. We will meet with practitioners in different media. And we will report and write thoughtful, incisive stories about how and why faith matters.

The seminar introduces students to Forensic Data Journalism-an investigative approach to uncovering state-actor malign activity through data-driven methods. Students trace the full investigative arc: from story discovery in large-scale data, through algorithm design, resource assessment, collaborative coordination, and ethical risk analysis, to publication strategy and impact amplification. Students will also learn how to use forensic data and open-source investigations as working journalists make ethically grounded decisions.

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.

This course treats the supernatural and the paranormal as phenomena warranting serious exploration in their entanglement with race, gender, the psyche, and the body. Texts and audio-visual materials will introduce us to ghosts, fairytales, monsters, witches, spirit possession, and many forms of enchantment. Through a series of case studies, we will investigate how several key concepts work together to create our sense of reality: nature, science, religion, magic, reason, modernity. Ultimately, the course will push students to interrogate their assumptions about what is natural, normal, rational, and real.

Are our emotions reliable sources of moral intuition? What role do emotions play in political life? This course focuses on how humans engage with questions of morality, faith, justice, and social wellbeing, and how emotions mediate these engagements. Emotions such as anger, happiness, disgust, shame, compassion, love, and grief play an important role in shaping and challenging moral convictions and political orientations. Through ethnographic and theoretical readings, we will learn how anthropologists discern the emotional textures of our moral and political lives.

Are robots as capable, autonomous, or dangerous as often depicted in the public imagination? Can robots save the world? If so, whose vision of the world do they actualize? This course provides opportunities for students from STEM, social sciences, and humanities to collaborate with Boston Dynamics' SPOT. Through in-class discussions about the potential roles, meanings, and ethics of robots in society and accompanying hands-on lab practicums manipulating a robot for generating its ethically-sound and community-engaged applications on campus, students will innovate and propose Princeton models of introducing robots in human ecology.

How can dissent be a catalyst for change? What motivates people to challenge power and authority in all their myriad forms? Can acts of dissent be at once political and intimate, public and personal? What do ethnographic methods and anthropology as a discipline bring to the study of dissent? In this course we will examine these questions through an immersion in the multifaceted ways in which people dissent. We will investigate the social and historical underpinnings of dissent vis-à-vis a range of oppressive forces, be they authoritarian states, colonial power, patriarchal orders, or regimes of caste or religion.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, human experience has become heavily defined by our digital/virtual interactions. From Zoom calls and classes online to meeting up with friends in magical lands in video games, we have come to rely on digital technologies in ways rarely seen in the past. But how does one go about understanding our new digital condition? And how might one develop research around the many virtual worlds that have come to exist? This course is an anthropological exploration of the history of human interaction with the internet, social media, virtual worlds, and other forms of digital existence.

The sensation of an ocean breeze; the taste of watermelon; the smell of a familiar person: how to put such visceral experiences into words? While social scientists have focused on language as a way to communicate human experience, this course focuses on the visceral ways in which we interact with the world: through our body and our senses. Drawing on ethnographies, history, art, music, podcasts and films, we will look at how senses- touch, hearing, smell, taste, sight, movement and balance, and beyond- are experienced in different cultural, social and political contexts. We will go on mini-field trips to experience hands-on ways of knowing.