Global Arc

This seminar examines the history of antislavery movements and struggles from the end of the seventeenth century to the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment that abolished slavery in 1865. With intensive reading in an array of primary sources, including speeches, manifestos, private letters, poetry, and more, supplemented with pertinent secondary readings, it inquires into how antislavery fitfully moved from the margins of American politics and culture to become, by the middle of the nineteenth century, a mass political movement that won national political power and sparked the Civil War.

From renowned artists to everyday artisans, cultural history provides a lens to view complex formation of societies, ideas, and identities. Spanning Egypt to Ethiopia this course takes the Nile Valley as its scope to break down boundaries between the Middle East and Africa. Rather, it is a useful place to examine the fluidity of cultural production, how it can be localized, nationalized, and globalized. Students will examine forces of imperialism, capitalism, nationalism and explore how 20th century states, empires, and individuals mobilized culture to create and challenge national identity and to articulate their own sense of place.

Throughout WWII, over 16 million Americans served in uniform, while countless others contributed to the war effort on the Homefront. We will delve into the remarkable transformation of American society from the Great Depression to the Cold War, as the country rallied to fight what was considered a "just" war. However, we will also tackle the moral and ethical dilemmas surrounding the notion of a "good war" and who truly benefited from it. The class will be taught from different perspectives including the women, African Americans, and Navajo who mobilized during the war and Japanese Americans who were imprisoned in concentration camps.

This course will examine the U.S. West's place, process, idea, cultural memory, conquest, and legacies throughout American history. The American West has been a shifting region, where diverse individuals, languages, cultures, environments, and competing nations came together. We will examine the West's contested rule, economic production, and mythmaking under Native American Empires, Spain, France, England, individual filibusters, Mexico, Canada, and United States.

This seminar explores Mexico's history from independence (1821) to the contemporary era. We delve into the contentious process of nation building, the explosive outbreak of the first major social revolution of the 20th century, and the creation of a remarkably durable one-party state that was far from revolutionary. Readings focus on the political, social, and cultural negotiations that shaped these processes. Key themes include indigeneity, political violence and dissent, migration, urbanization, capitalism and the environment, and Mexico's relationship with the U.S. We will also visit the university museum to analyze revolutionary art.

How do women in Asia become "gendered" in times of war-as caregivers, as refugees, as sex workers, as war brides? This course offers an introductory survey of American wars in Asia from 1899 to the present, taking the perspectives not of Americans but of the historically marginalized. Students will be challenged to rethink and reimagine war histories through voices on the ground across Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines, Okinawa, Hawaii, and Guam. foregrounding written testimonies and oral histories of women against the backdrop of war, militarism, and empire, the course will also make broader connections across the Asia pacific.

Every morning around the world, millions of people wake up and, in some form or another, pour heated water over dark brown soil-like grounds to brew coffee. Yet how many people are aware of the historical processes that spread coffee from the forests of Southwest Ethiopia across the globe? Focusing primarily on Ethiopia and its national and regional networks, this course explores the rise of coffee as a commodity with significant global intersections. During Fall Break, students in this course will travel to Ethiopia and examine the cultural history of coffee in the context of the development of the coffee industry.

Who were the Manchu people, who once ruled the mighty Qing empire (1636-1911) over China? Alternatively celebrated and villainized in Sinocentric historiography, the Manchus have become a complex symbol for imperial China's last glories and humiliations. This seminar questions the dominant narratives of racialization and cultural assimilation by exploring the formation of Manchu ethnicity over four hundred years. Using revisionist scholarship and primary sources, the course seeks to de-mystify Manchu history and culture by critically examining the ideological scaffolding of ethnic identity and its constitutive human experiences.

In premodern Europe, almost everyone believed in the literal existence of an afterlife. This class asks how thinking about Heaven, Hell, and the apocalypse shaped attitudes towards the physical world from late antiquity to the 18th century. We trace how poets and natural philosophers dealt with these realms, and ask how ideas about nature and the body in turn shaped religious views. Topics include the challenge of squaring scientific texts with Scripture; the spiritual implications of medicine, astrology, alchemy, and magic; the physics of angels; demonic possession and mental health; and whether Heaven and Hell existed in physical space.

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.