Global Arc

We are what we eat--morally as well as molecularly. So how should moral concerns about animals, workers, the environment, our health, and our communities inform our food choices? Can we develop an effective and just model for feeding growing populations while respecting religious, class, and cultural differences? The main goal of this course is not to prescribe answers to these questions, but to give students tools to reflect on them effectively. These tools include a working knowledge of the main ethical theories in philosophy, and a grasp of key empirical issues regarding the production, distribution, consumption, and politics of food.

In this presidential election season, the relationship between religion, race and the political project of the United States will be front and center. This course provides a foundation for thinking through these intersecting themes and placing them in historical perspective. The course asks: What is Race? Religion? Politics? How have Americans' ideas about religion and race informed the ways they think about, engage and articulate political engagement? How has religion informed political and social justice activism? What political ideas and motives came from religious bases?

The purpose of this course is primarily to provide students the ability to read complex Buddhist materials in Tibetan language. We will do by delving into the Mahamudra writings of Gampopa, a 12th Century Tibetan figure who championed a contemplative approach to reality based on the unmediated experience of one's own nature of the mind. This will inform conversations around unmediated religious experience as sui generis to religious studies and further introduce students to the unique intellectual history of 12th century Tibet.

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.

In this course we will focus on the rich body of Jewish norms and practices, the literature that discusses and prescribes them, and the diverse ways in which Jews have lived them out throughout history. We will highlight the embodied, material, mundane, and habitual aspects of Jewish practice and the ways in which they are enforced. We will also explore the common ground that Jewish norms (halakha) have with Islamic norms (sharia). Our focus on Jewish religiosity will bring us to examine the relationship between practice and belief as well as the very concept of "religion."

This course examines how Hindu traditions imagine the divine in human, animal, and digital forms - whether as Rama and Krsna in epic narratives, temple images, dramatic reenactments, or living gurus. We trace the epic and Puranic roots of the avatara ("descent") idea, explore medieval debates on what it means to be human/divine, and consider modern expressions including temple worship, goddess possession, new religious movements, and digital avatars - engaging primary texts, scholarship, and film.

This course explores how Sanskrit texts from various genres - epic, puranic, scholastic, and polemical - stage arguments with and about the divine. Through close readings of Brahmanical, Buddhist, and Jain sources, we will examine narrative confrontations challenging the ethics of gods, philosophical critiques of rival traditions, and polemical debates over the supremacy of specific deities. Along the way, we will pay special attention to the technical language and structures of sastra, learning how to follow extended prose arguments, identify the purvapaksa and siddhanta, and read commentaries.

Junior Independent Work requires students to complete a substantial piece of research and scholarship under the supervision and advisement of a Princeton faculty member. The work requires sustained investment and attention throughout the semester. See below for details on works-in-progress submissions and due dates.

What does it mean to be a good person in a world of competing obligations, uncertain outcomes, and moral compromise? In this course, we will closely read selected portions of the Mahabharata, one of the longest epics in the world and a key source for Hindu ethics. We will explore the idea of "dharma" (duty, moral order) through dilemmas of love, gambling, exile, "necessary" violence, and grief, where every option has a cost. Readings are in translation (no Sanskrit required). We will also ask how the epic gains authority as "scripture" through interpretation, performance, and retellings in television, film, and theatre.