From the publisher: “The New Princeton Companion” is the ultimate reference book on Princeton University’s history and traditions, personalities and key events, and defining characteristics and idiosyncrasies. Robert Durkee brings a unique insider’s perspective to the school’s dramatic transformation over the past five decades, showing how it has become more multicultural, multiracial, and multinational, all the while advancing its distinctive academic mission.
Featuring more than 400 entries presented alphabetically, this wide-ranging collection covers topics from academic departments, cultural resources, and student organizations, hoaxes, and pranks to athletic teams, the town of Princeton, and university presidents. There are entries on coeducation, women, people of color, traditionally underrepresented groups, the diversification of campus iconography, and the protest activity that helped to usher in many of these changes. This marvelous compendium also includes annotated maps tracing the growth of the campus over more than two and a half centuries, lists ranging from prizewinners of many kinds to Olympic medalists, and an illustrated calendar that highlights something that happened in Princeton’s history on every day of the year.
Now completely updated, revised, and expanded from the classic 1978 edition, The New Princeton Companion tells you virtually everything there is to know about this remarkable institution of higher learning, revealing what it stands for, what it aspires to, and how it evolved from a tiny colonial college to one of the most acclaimed research universities in the world.
Robert K. Durkee served as Princeton University’s vice president for public affairs from 1978 to 2018 and as vice president and secretary from 2004 to 2019. As a Princeton undergraduate during the campus upheavals of the late 1960s, he was an award-winning reporter and editor-in-chief at The Daily Princetonian and a columnist for Princeton Alumni Weekly.
Jill Dolan is the Dean of the College and the Annan Professor in English and Professor of Theater at Princeton University. As Dean of the College since 2015, she oversees the undergraduate academic experience, from recruitment and admission to commencement. As a scholar and teacher, she is the author of many books, including most recently, a critical study of the plays of Wendy Wasserstein. In 2011, she received the Outstanding Teacher Award from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education and the George Jean Nathan Award for dramatic criticism for her blog, The Feminist Spectator.
This event is presented in partnership with Princeton University Press.