Campaign residen the P -litics - Princeton University

T
hroughout the academic year, Princeton’s staid
metal lampposts sprout colorful appendages that
capture, in microcosm, the vibrancy of campus
life. Battered by wind and rain, stapled together
in untidy agglomerations, and never the same from one week
to the next, these posters attest to the remarkable creativity
and curiosity of our faculty and students, to the eclectic
nature of their interests, and to the unique juxtaposition of
opportunities that defines a university like ours. It is true that
digital advances and environmental concerns are changing the
way we publicize events, but whatever the future holds for
conventional posters, their graphical message will remain an
important form of individual expression, public communication,
and institutional identity. For all these reasons, I thought
I would introduce you to two lampposts as they appeared on a
bright spring afternoon.
The posts in question were largely obscured by 12 different
posters, all jockeying for attention and, in places, overlapping
one another. Two
were modest affairs on
letter-size paper—one
posted by the Princeton
Scandinavian Association,
promoting its “Viking
Study Break 2.0” from
9 p.m. to midnight at
Whitman College, and
one posted by Theatre
Intime, announcing
auditions for 7 Stories
by Canadian playwright
Morris Panych, with
show dates coinciding
with Reunions. (Mark
your calendars!) But the
other posters were larger,
more elaborate, and as
different in appearance as
their themes, which ranged from a call for Princeton Preview
hosts (“Earn Your Stripes; Host a Future Tiger”), to a list
of Holy Week services in the Princeton University Chapel,
to an open invitation to “An Evening of Vinyasa Flow Yoga
and North Indian Sitar,” combining practice, discussion, and
performance.
Emblematic of Princeton’s educational mission was a poster
depicting part of Raphael’s celebrated fresco, The School of
Athens, with Plato and Aristotle front and center. This formed
the visual backdrop for the fifth annual graduate conference
in political theory, jointly supported by the Department of
Politics and the University Center for Human Values—an
opportunity for our graduate students to discuss the work of
visiting peers. The poster listed all eight papers to be given, as
well as the intriguingly titled keynote presentation by Professor
Elisabeth Ellis ’90 of Texas A&M University, “Extinction
and Democracy: Species Conservation and the Limits of
Politics.” Also tempting passersby was a poster announcing
THE PRESIDENT’S PAGE
Tales of Two Lampposts
the Lapidus Family Fund Lecture in American Jewish Studies,
to be delivered by Professor Jenna Weissman Joselit of
George Washington University. The title of her talk, “Mr.
Wyrick’s Tablets: America’s Embrace of the Ten Commandments,”
was underscored by the poster’s use of red, white, and
blue, as well as a 19th-century drawing of Moses receiving the
Tablets of the Law atop Mount Sinai.
Contrasting sharply with these examples of representational
art was a poster whose vivid hues and abstract design could
pass for an artist’s concept of the cosmos. Under the heading,
“Religion and Race,” it announced a four-person panel discussion
chaired by Associate Dean of the Graduate School Karen
Jackson-Weaver ’94 and sponsored by the Office of Religious
Life and the Women’s Center. Attendees were promised “a
dynamic and thoughtful conversation about the intersections
of religion and race from feminist and womanist perspectives.”
Race also formed the subject of another poster, this one
featuring photographs of award-winning playwrights Jorge
Ignacio Cortiñas and Young Jean Lee, the latest speakers in
the Center for African American Studies and Department
of English’s Critical Encounters Series. Entitled “‘Enabling
Violations’: Race, Theater, and Experimentation” and cosponsored
by the Programs in Gender and Sexuality Studies
and Latin American Studies, this “open conversation” reflects
the series’s aspiration to offer “a forum that bridges the gap
between scholarship and the creative arts.”
The arts made an appearance on three other posters, including
one promoting Theatre Intime’s production of Private
Lives, directed by Savannah Hankinson ’13. Nöel Coward’s
classic comedy of manners was skillfully represented by the
silhouettes of two embracing couples linked to one another by
outstretched cocktail glasses. Another poster announced the
first in a series of movie screenings and discussions with the
engaging title of “Hollywood Science Gone Bad,” hosted by
the Princeton Undergraduate Geosciences Society. Featuring
the 2004 disaster film The Day After Tomorrow and a
conversation led by Dusenbury Professor of Geological and
Geophysical Sciences Daniel Sigman, this event was vividly
captured by the Statue of Liberty in mask and snorkel, about
to be enveloped by a monstrous wave. Equally eye-catching,
albeit in a less dramatic way, was a poster advertising “Inspiration
Night” at the Princeton University Art Museum—a
“Late Thursdays” event designed to give participants an
opportunity to sketch, compose, or write in the presence of
inspirational works of art, with drawing materials and refreshments
provided. The poster was itself a creative gem, depicting
one of the museum’s best known paintings, Monet’s Water
Lilies and Japanese Bridge, spilling lilies onto a young artist’s
open sketchbook.
Remarkably, this is just a small sampling of the hundreds
of posters that adorn our campus lampposts. Next week, they
will tell an entirely different story, reminding us that life outside
the classroom is as rich as life inside it.
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