The Nusayri-'Alawis, the syncretistic Shiite sect currently prominent in Syria, are some of the only survivors of the heterodox cults of Early Islam. For theological and precautionary reasons they are forbidden from sharing their beliefs with outsiders. As a result,…

International organizations and governments throughout the developing world have long provided agricultural extension services to farmers with the hopes of raising agricultural productivity and reducing rural poverty. These programs train farmers in modern agronomic techniques through instruction and demonstration, sometimes…

In numerous animal groups, individuals within the group often wish to impose
their preferences and guide the group in a certain direction. Conflicting preferences are
common in these situations and, in order to maintain group cohesion, collective decisionmaking
needs to…

Although we represent other people in terms of both what they look like and how they behave, these two aspects of person knowledge have rarely been studied together. While vision scientists have focused on the processing of faces and bodies,…

With the advancement of technology, we are able to collect, store, and transmit an ever-increasing volume of data. However, our ability to extract useful patterns from this massive amount of data is still lagging behind. Machine learning and signal processing…

My dissertation centers on the meaning of dreams as interpreted by literati in the late Ming (1368-1644), viewed through the lens of the 1636 encyclopedia Forest of Dreams. This thirty-four-juan tome is the largest extant Chinese dream encyclopedia and includes…

This dissertation, based on roughly eighteen months of fieldwork in two laboratories at Princeton University, examines how practitioners of synthetic biology orient themselves vis-à-vis organic systems, by both engaging with and displacing biological knowledge. It also explores experimental methods in…

This dissertation examines the administration of Islamic family law in the British Straits Settlements and the Netherlands Indies through the lens of Arab merchants in colonial courts from 1860 till 1942. During this period, Arab communities tended to seek justice…

ABSTRACT









Population size has been a matter of concern for rulers and states for centuries. Fears of over- and under-population led to extensive political debate and the implementation of numerous policies…

This dissertation investigates "geological" literature in the 19th century, and aims to describe a poetics of the earth sciences. Focusing on the work of Adalbert Stifter (1805-1868), whose literary experiments translate and transform scientific knowledge, the dissertation argues that the…