This spring semester, the University introduced 186 new undergraduate courses, many of which delve deeply into highly-specialized subjects, from observational astronomy to African mythology to psychedelics and plant intelligence. The number of new courses offered this spring has increased compared to the fall semester, which saw fewer than 140 new classes.
The Department of English has the most new courses with 20 new offerings, followed by Freshman Seminars (FRS), African American Studies (AAS), and Latin American Studies (LAS), which have introduced 16, 15, and 15 new courses respectively.
“I was honestly kind of shocked to see just how many classes there were, and slightly disheartened because I won’t be able to take all these classes,” Arnav Ratna ’28 said. Ratna chose to enroll in his freshman seminar, despite five other class options for the same time.
Professors that teach the new classes emphasized their relevance and significance in light of today’s environmental and political challenges.
“As wildfires decimate a major American city, and the impacts of climate accelerate around the globe, it’s increasingly unclear how we’ll outlive fossil fuels,” Visiting Professor Bethany Wiggin wrote. This semester, Wiggin is teaching ENV 476/URB 476: (Out)living Fossil Fuels: Histories and Futures of Energy Transitions, which focuses on energy history and fossil fuel use in the mid-Atlantic region.
“I think teaching and learning about the challenges and successes of past energy transitions or intensifications is now more timely than ever,” Wiggin explained.
Andrea Bernstein, professor of journalism, is teaching JRN 445: Investigative Journalism: Uncovering Corruption in the 2020s for the first time this semester. On Wednesday, the first day of the class, Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) received an 11-year prison sentence for accepting bribes and influencing criminal cases.
“Corruption is swirling around us; our job in this class is to learn how to understand it, document it, and bring it to light,” Bernstein wrote to The Daily Princetonian. “There’s a real opportunity, now, [at] this moment in time, to use carefully-documented, fact-based investigative journalism to shine a light on wrongdoing.”
While some new courses may not explicitly relate to or work directly with current events, students and professors highlighted the fresh perspectives they provide for understanding the modern world.
Visiting Professor Gauri Viswanathan is teaching the new course ENG 327: Aldous Huxley: Major Works, which offers a chronological study of Huxley’s works.
“I proposed teaching this course because I think Huxley speaks with great urgency to some of the most pressing issues of our time: social engineering and technological control; behavioral conditioning in planned societies of the future; the challenges of overcoming divisions and forging world unity in times of war,” Viswanathan wrote to the ‘Prince.’
Twyla Colburn ’27, who is taking the new Huxley course, was “excited” to explore the underpinning ideas of Huxley’s novels with Viswanathan.
Colburn is an associate Podcast editor for the ‘Prince.’
“I think it’s interesting to be able to engage with this sort of full spectrum of perspectives that [Huxley] has and be able to engage critically with these points of view that he has — some of which are a little outlandish,” Colburn said.
Professor of English Jeff Nunokawa, who teaches ENG 452: Capitalism, Character, and Community in Four Victorian Novels, examines in his class how notions of gender, sex, and anxieties about foreigners influence perceptions of wealth.
Nunokawa described 19th-century Victorian literature as emerging during the “age of capital,” a time marked by rapid economic transformation and an intense drive to produce, consume, and monetize — what he referred to as “the price tagging of the world.”
“Much of [the literature] gives us incredibly important insight into the ways that money, the need for money, the hunger for money, and the capitalist economy more generally infiltrates and defines zones of our human interest quite above and beyond the economy,” Nunokawa told the ‘Prince.’
“It is an incredibly important topic that can’t be overstudied,” he continued.
In Assistant Professor Rachel Saunders’ course, ART 327/EAS 327: Handscroll to Anime: Visual Storytelling in Japanese Art, students unravel traditional Japanese narratives both figuratively and literally, engaging in discussions about text and imagery while working hands-on with paper scrolls.
Saunders expressed that “one of the motivations for doing the class is to provide a space where we have an hour and 20 minutes twice a week where we’re creating a space to experience narrative time on its own without that kind of anxiety — and we can put all our attention into these objects.”
Saunders also highlighted the course’s relevance in deconstructing a media environment abundant with images.
“Pictures are everywhere, and they’re flooding our consciousness and our experience all the time, every day, and yet, we don’t have much rigorous training in dealing with them,” she told the ‘Prince’ in an interview.
A number of new classes this spring semester also incorporate hands-on, experiential learning elements, such as field trips, local partnerships, or direct engagement with primary sources.
Professors Branka Arsic-Wills and Sarah Rivett teach AMS 325: Pacific Archives and Indigenous Cosmologies, which includes a spring break trip to Alaska, while students enrolled in Wiggin’s course will visit energy-intensive neighborhoods across New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Saunders’ class on Japanese literature recently examined 12th-century scrolls housed in Firestone Library’s special collections.
“When I was scrolling through the seminars, I was impressed with them,” Ratna said. “There was a very nice variety of courses to choose from.”
Sena Chang is a staff News writer for the ‘Prince’ from Tokyo, Japan. She typically covers campus and community activism, the state of higher education, and alumni news.
Please send corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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