A virtual guide to Leaving Academia September 23, 2020 Two distinct challenges stood in my way when I began to consider leaving academia. The first was psychological. By that point in 2015, my entire identity was bound up in my scholarly work. Read More
Focus on climate September 21, 2020 Increased heat, drought, and wildfires are sobering reminders that we must renew our commitment to climate action and build a better future. As Climate Week NYC kicks off, these offerings can deepen your understanding about the science, economics, politics and history of climate change. Read More
A long afternoon: Opposition, enmity, and Egyptian hieroglyphs September 18, 2020 In the summer of 1828, the natural scientist and physician Thomas Young spent an afternoon with Jean-François Champollion, the scholar who, six years earlier, had announced a system for reading Egyptian hieroglyphs, considerably complicating Young’s preceding efforts to do the same thing. Read More
A Series of Fortunate Events book trailer September 17, 2020 Like every other species, we humans are here by accident. But it is shocking just how many things—any of which might never have occurred—had to happen in certain ways for any of us to exist. Read More
Marc Levinson on Outside the Box September 14, 2020 Globalization has profoundly shaped the world we live in, yet its rise was neither inevitable nor planned. It is also one of the most contentious issues of our time. Read More
Our worst fears: Conspiratorial fictions and the unremitting assault on democracy September 13, 2020 Two years ago, we put the final revisions on our book about conspiratorial thinking in American politics: A Lot of People are Saying: the New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy. Read More
Roy Foster | On Seamus Heaney September 10, 2020 The most important Irish poet of the postwar era, Seamus Heaney rose to prominence as his native Northern Ireland descended into sectarian violence. Read More
Leslie Geddes on Watermarks September 02, 2020 Formless, mutable, transparent: the element of water posed major challenges for the visual artists of the Renaissance. To the engineers of the era, water represented a force that could be harnessed for human industry but was equally possessed of formidable destructive power. Read More
Despina Stratigakos on Hitler’s Northern Utopia August 31, 2020 Between 1940 and 1945, German occupiers transformed Norway into a vast construction zone. This remarkable building campaign, largely unknown today, was designed to extend the Greater German Reich beyond the Arctic Circle and turn the Scandinavian country into a racial utopia. Read More
Navigating grad school in uncertain times August 26, 2020 Even in “normal” times, grad school is fraught with uncertainty – uncertainty around whether a degree is worth it, whether you picked the right program and whether they were smart to pick you, whether you can get enough funding to keep doing your work, whether you can publish enough to get a job, and whether there even will be any jobs when you’re done. Read More
Multitasking and the pandemic parent August 24, 2020 From my third floor attic office, I can hear my wife’s muffled voice through the door to the room just off the stairs. I can’t hear what she is saying, but from its now familiar cadence, I can tell that she is in a meeting. We used to post signs when we were in meetings, but we don’t bother anymore. Read More
By Design | Porcelain: A History from the Heart of Europe August 24, 2020 Porcelain, once dubbed “white gold” after being reproduced by an eighteenth-century Saxon alchemist, may seem to us today like a quaint rarity, a beautiful relic confined to elegant china cabinets. But in Suzanne Marchand’s absorbing history, this translucent ceramic comes to life as a once-ubiquitous commodity linked to geopolitical upheaval and the global transformations of the last three centuries. Read More
Education in a changing world August 21, 2020 Colleges and universities are being forced to grapple with how to protect the well-being of their students in new and evolving ways. Perennial issues are mixing with new questions and increased urgencies. Read More
Skills for Scholars: The new tools of the trade August 18, 2020 Any discussion of scholarly tools at Princeton University Press naturally begins with a reverent nod to the printing press—for obvious reasons but also in subtler ways. Since 1911, the Press’s headquarters have been housed in a timeless Collegiate Gothic building (later named for benefactor Charles Scribner), designed by Ernest Flagg and sitting at the edge of Princeton’s campus. Read More
Wenfei Tong on Bird Love August 11, 2020 Bonds of affection can take as many forms for birds as they do for humans, and common evolutionary themes explain many ways birds, like humans, experience and demonstrate “love.” Read More