2017-18 Courses

Fall 2017

Theory, History, and Practice of Textiles: The Andes
Subject associations
ART 419 / LAS 399
How many minutes of your day are spent with some form of textile touching your skin? And yet, what do you really know about them? This seminar will introduce you to the theory, history and practice of making textiles through the lens of the ancient Andes. You will experiment extensively with technologies human societies have used for spinning, dyeing, and weaving in an art historical laboratory setting, and use these experiences to shed insight on the collection of ancient Andean textiles in the Princeton University Art Museum. You and your classmates will collaboratively design, weave, and complete a tapestry over the course of the semester.
Instructors
Andrew James Hamilton
Contemporary Latin America in Literature and Visual Arts
Subject associations
COM 353 / LAS 352
This course is an introduction to contemporary Latin American literature & visual arts with a transatlantic perspective. Placing special emphasis on the changing relationships between aesthetics & politics, it analyzes different genres & artistic styles that emerge with new forms of imagining the relations between culture & politics, from the 1960s to the present. Readings will include critical texts on minor literature's, transatlantic connections, new social movements as well as literature dealing with situationism, romance reportagem, indigenous movements, testimonio, zapatism, etc. Texts will be available in the original & translation.
Instructors
Susana Draper
Colonial Latin America to 1810
Subject associations
HIS 303 / LAS 305
This course begins with the origins and consolidation of the Aztec, Inca and Iberian polities and ends with the severance of colonial ties. It combines an overview of the political economy of the region over three centuries with a study of how social groups interacted among themselves and with imperial rule over time through accommodation and conflict. We pay special attention to comparisons and contrasts -- centers and frontiers of settlement, urban and rural life, indigenous and African populations, religion and transgression, Portuguese and Spanish models of rule -- and to long-term processes and implications of environmental change.
Instructors
Vera Silvina Candiani
Precolonial Africa
Subject associations
HIS 314 / AFS 313
The course explores the rich history of the African continent before colonial occupation during the 19th century. It concentrates on people and civilizations indigenous to Africa, focusing on ancient civilizations as well as on the expanse of Islam and the Atlantic slave trade. Travelers' accounts, epics, and archaeological evidence reveal diversity of African culture.
Instructors
Emmanuel H. P. M. Kreike
Languages of Africa
Subject associations
LIN 260 / AFS 262
About 2000 of the world's 6000 to 7000 languages are spoken in Africa. The diversity that characterizes these languages is exceptional, but very little is known to non-specialists. In this course, we will learn about the languages of Africa: the diversity of their linguistic structures (including famous features that are found nowhere else, e.g. click consonants), their history and the history of their speakers (from ca 10,000 BP to the (post) colonial period), and their cultural contexts, among other topics. This course has no prerequisites, and is open to anyone with an interest in African languages or the African continent.
Instructors
Florian Lionnet