The Program in Humanistic Studies is excited to announce new Fall 2020 courses open to students from all majors. HUM courses are broad based, interdisciplinary and often team-taught. They have no prerequisites and fulfill requirements toward the interdisciplinary Humanistic Studies certificate.
For full course descriptions and all other HUM courses, visit: https://humstudies.princeton.edu/courses/
New Fall 2020 Courses
HUM 328 / ENG 270 / ART 396
LANGUAGE TO BE LOOKED AT
Joshua Kotin (English), Irene Small (Art & Archaeology)
This seminar focuses on the intersection of language and visual art in the twentieth-century. We begin by examining modernist and avant-garde experiments in word and image and then investigate the global rise of concrete and visual poetry and text-based art movements after World War II.
HUM 335 / EAS 376 / HIS 334
A GLOBAL HISTORY OF MONSTERS
Federico Marcon (East Asian Studies, History)
This class analyzes how different cultures imagine monsters and how these representations changed over time to perform different social functions. As negative objectifications of fundamental social structures and conceptions, monsters are a key to understand the culture that engendered them.
HUM 350 / ART 302 / AMS 352
BATTLE LAB: THE BATTLE OF PRINCETON (postponed to Fall 2021)
Nathan Arrington (Art & Archaeology)
Rachael DeLue (Art & Archaeology)
Revolution! Espionage! Alexander Hamilton! George Washington! Cannon fire on Nassau Hall! This fall, think outside of the classroom and explore the past in your own backyard: Revolutionary-era Princeton and the physical remains of the legendary battle between American and British forces on January 3, 1777.
HUM 410 / VIS 410 / ART 496
INVENTING PHOTOGRAPHY (cancelled)
Anne McCauley (Art & Archaeology)
Jeffrey Whetstone (Visual Arts)
This class combines hands-on experience of nineteenth-century photographic processes with the study of surviving images and readings on cultural and scientific forces driving photographic inventions.
HUM 470 / CLA 471 / CWR 470
ANCIENT PLOTS, MODERN TWISTS
Yelena Baraz (Classics)
Jhumpa Lahiri (Creative Writing)
This team-taught capstone seminar will examine ancient plots as generative forces for new creative work. We will ask how ancient Greek and Roman plots are appropriated, reused, and reimagined by modern and contemporary writers.
Humanities Sequences this Fall
HUM 216 – HUM 217 (LA, HA)
INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACHES TO WESTERN CULTURE I: LITERATURE AND THE ARTS, HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION
Denis Feeney (coordinator, Classics)
Yelena Baraz (Classics)
Daniel Heller-Roazen (Comparative Literature)
Benjamin Morison (Philosophy)
Eileen Reeves (Comparative Literature)
Melissa Reynolds (History)
Humanistic Studies 216-219 is an intensive yearlong exploration of the landmark achievements of the Western intellectual tradition. With a team of faculty drawn from across the humanities and social sciences, students examine pivotal texts, events, and artifacts of European civilization from antiquity forward.
HUM 233 / EAS 233 / COM 233 (EM)
EAST ASIAN HUMANITIES I: TRADITIONS AND TRANSFORMATIONS
Martin Kern (East Asian Studies)
Brian Steininger (East Asian Studies)
An introduction to the literature, art, religion and philosophy of China, Japan and Korea from antiquity to ca. 1400. Readings focus on primary texts in translation and are complemented by museum visits and supplementary materials on the course website.
HUM 247 / NES 247 (EM)
NEAR EASTERN HUMANITIES I: FROM ANTIQUITY TO ISLAM
Eve Krakowski (Near Eastern Studies)
Deborah Vischak (Art & Archaeology)
This course focuses on the Near East from antiquity to the early centuries of Islam, introducing the most important works of literature, politics, ethics, aesthetics, religion, and science from the region.
