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When Shakespeare Came to Princeton
Princeton aficionados of Shakespeare, including me, can take satisfaction that his works have been on campus for probably as long as the University has existed in Princeton, if not before.
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Elizabeth Menzies: Photographing Princeton
By Iliyah Coles ’22 Photography openly invites those who aren’t necessarily trained to recognize visual techniques. As one of those people, I find myself leaning on how a picture makes me feel. I’ve seen many photographs of Princeton’s campus, but it’s Elizabeth Menzies’s photographs that always draw me in. Any viewer can tell through her…
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West Meets East: Japanese Themes in Princeton’s Graphic Arts of the Late 19th Century
If you spend as much time immersed in the University Archives as I do, at times you will see intriguing patterns emerge. I have seen repeated examples of an unusual theme in the graphic arts associated with the College of New Jersey (as Princeton University was named until 1896) in the late 19th century and…
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Yellowface in Princeton University’s 20th-Century Triangle Club
Recently, we’ve been getting a lot of questions about the history of racism at Princeton University. As we’ve worked to help those trying to research this topic, we realized that we’ve highlighted some types of racism more than others on this blog. In order to help researchers locate materials that may assist them in constructing…
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Songs of the Freed: The Hampton and Jubilee Singers at Princeton
In the 1870s, Princeton students were exposed to a form of entertainment new to them: African American choirs. Many of the singers in these choirs, who were raising money for Black colleges, had formerly been enslaved. Their performances met with a mixed reception among Princetonians and on balance appear to have been a negative experience…
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F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Great Writer, but a Not-So-Great Student
By Iliyah Coles ’22 Many people know about the success of the infamous writer, F. Scott Fitzgerald. Some know that he attended Princeton University and even based his first novel, This Side of Paradise, on the Ivy League school. However, what many people don’t know is that Fitzgerald was not a star student. In fact,…
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Comics as Education, 1950s-1980s
By Zachary Bampton ’20 From the 1950s onward, comics and their bright colors, bold drawings, and interesting stories have captivated a young American demographic. However, their popularity drew in other eyes, too. Civic and political groups took notice of this market audience and attempted to reach them by utilizing the medium as a teaching tool.…
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Latinx Student Poetry at Princeton
By Courtney Perales ’17 with April C. Armstrong *14 and Mario Garcia ’18 Students have often used the arts and poetry to express themselves and enhance their identities on campus. Two Latinx poems I found in student publications in the archives this spring were particularly striking to me: “Lloro Por Mi Puerto Rico Perdido” in…
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Ask Mr. Mudd: “Levee Song” and Princeton’s Minstrel Shows
Q. Dear Mr. Mudd, Is it true that the University of Texas school song, “The Eyes of Texas,” has a Princeton University connection? Where did the song come from, and why don’t Princeton students sing it anymore? A. “The Eyes of Texas” is set to a tune best known today as “I’ve Been Working on…
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Bob Dylan’s Honorary Princeton University Degree
When news of Bob Dylan being honored with a Nobel Prize in Literature broke a few months ago, the Swedish Academy responsible for the award acknowledged that it might appear to be an inappropriate choice. Dylan, as a musician, might not be thought of as an author so much as a composer. “If you look…
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