Global Arc

This course explores the biochemical foundations of human physiology and how it is disturbed in disease. We discuss the roles of metabolic, the cardiovascular, and immune systems in various diseases, particularly cancer. Specific topics include: the functions of the major organ systems, and how we measure and model their activity; nutrition and the maintenance of metabolic homeostasis; the anti-tumor immune response; the origins, consequences, and major treatment paradigms of cancer; and the process of translating basic science into novel therapies. The class will consist of lectures and student-led discussions of scientific papers.

This course will first provide a brief historical introduction to gene regulation in simple organisms (e.g. bacteria, yeast). We will then focus on animal regulatory genomics, with a particular emphasis on gene regulation in mammalian genomes. A distinctive property of animal genomes is long-range communication between remote enhancers and their target genes. Enhancers can map over a megabase away from genes controlling developmental and disease processes in humans and other mammals. We will discuss the underlying mechanisms for such long-range control of gene activity, considering both biophysical and experimental genomics methodologies.

This course is an interdisciplinary introduction to the idea of sacrifice in ancient Israel. We will examine sacrifice as a religious practice through literature, history, archaeology, and theology. Students will also study material artifacts related to sacrifice, and learn about the histories of excavating, acquiring, and curating those artifacts for public display. The focus of this course will be on ancient Israelite religion, but we will discuss related Mesopotamian, ancient Greek, Christian, and Jewish materials. At the end of the course, we will critically analyze multiple representations of sacrifice and temples in the modern world.

This course merges research in American religious history with creating an archive using digital and deep mapping practices. It explores the politics of mapping, geography and race before delving into a place-based exploration of American religious communities during the late 19th century. The course investigates extant archives of postemancipation southern Christian communities and applies strategies of historical analysis to explore the formation and transformation of American religious community.

How do we find a window into the lives of ordinary Medieval Muslims? How did the ethics, language and rituals of Islam inform their daily lives? What can we learn about emotions, struggles, material culture, relationships, and lived religion? Course materials include translated letters, petitions, contracts, court cases, tombstone inscriptions, graffiti, and excerpts from chronicles and legal texts. We will also make use of artefacts, images, archaeological evidence and coins. Two class sessions will be held in Rare Books and Special Collections. The class will make a field trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

Defining the boundaries of a community inherently involves identifying those who belong and those who do not. In antiquity, Jews grappled and debated the contours of their community. Some envisioned pathways through which people who were not Jewish could become Jewish. Others were focused on separating themselves not only from non-Jews but from other Jews as well, marking them as Outsiders and denying their legitimacy. In this course we will analyze diverse frameworks employed in ancient Jewish texts to conceptualize "Otherness," to cultivate community, to establish group boundaries, and to define Jewish identity.

Our world is filled with stuff. Some people have too much. Others want more. Advertisers promise happiness through possessions, while psychologists tell us there's a limit to how much pleasure wealth can bring. Meanwhile trash heaps overflow, creating environmental disasters. How do we live in a material world? Do objects bring us happiness or cause hardship? What is the value of stuff? This class explores how Buddhists have responded to these questions over the last 2,500 years through readings as well as hands-on learning using rare books and precious works of art in the Princeton University Art Museum and Library collections.

Concepts of reincarnation - rebirth as a god, human, animal, hungry ghost, or hell being -have been central to Buddhism. How have Buddhists imagined the afterlife? Are men and women treated differently? What does cosmology imply about vegetarianism and animal welfare? Is Buddhism possible without belief in the otherworld? This course surveys the Buddhist otherworld across history, from ancient to modern, Asia to the West. Sources include paintings of heaven and hell, philosophical tracts, meditation manuals, tales of the Buddha's past lives, ghost stories, anime, Buddhist theme parks, and modern ethical debates.

This course considers the diverse, and at times contradictory, ways in which modernity has both shaped and been shaped by the reception of the Hebrew Bible. Focusing on the books of Genesis, Exodus, Samuel, Ruth, Ecclesiastes, and Job, the course explores how the Bible inspired an array of modern writers, philosophers, and political theorists, from Machiavelli to Shakespeare to Melville to Kierkegaard to Camus to Baldwin to Morrison, and beyond.

This course offers a close encounter with biblical passages and their reception in other ancient texts (including those collected in the Bible). By tracking how stories, norms, and ideas transformed as they were read in antiquity, we will develop analytical strategies sensitive to the multiple meanings, possibilities and problems that are inherent in these passages. We will also relate the different interpretive moves to their broader historical and literary contexts, examining the interaction between the development of different readings and social, political, and cultural changes.