Archives shape the stories we tell about the past. Blending fiction and fact, history conditions how archives are constructed and read. This course thinks past conventional modes of knowledge production to reimagine the use and interpretation of archival documents at Firestone Library, the Princeton University Art Museum and elsewhere. Students acquire their own methods by attending to questions of Indigenous sovereignty, access, archival silences, and traces of what Marisa Fuentes calls "dispossessed lives." We expand sites of knowledge production beyond the archive to the land itself. Archival reimagining shifts understanding of the past.

Studies concepts, methods, and projects that have shaped the environmental humanities (EH) as a transdisciplinary field. Compares EH approaches to environmental sciences and environmental movements while considering the field's intellectual commitments to, among others, narrative, epistemology, cultural critique, and social and ecological justice. Examines current EH collaborations and centers that address extractive capitalism and the climate crisis through variously community-based, site-specific, and public work. (These include the Penn Program in Environmental Humanities, KTH EH Laboratory, and Oregon Center for Environmental Futures.)

"Systemic racism" is a term meant to highlight structural factors that perpetuate racial inequality despite personal intentions and agency. Sociologists were among the first to identify and theorize the subject, although popular media seem blind to that fact. This seminar focuses on sociological contributions to the understanding of systemic racism. We begin with an investigation of legislative actions and economic factors perpetuating structural barriers. We then examine migration, immigration, urban development, and residential segregation. Finally, we review resistance movements and policies aimed at addressing systemic racism.