In a 1963 wide-ranging feature published in LIFE magazine, James Baldwin praised the virtues of reading.

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read,” said the influential American writer. “It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive.”

The Humanities Council partnered with New Jersey bookstores to purchase books for Baldwin Circles participants. 

Photo by Sebastian Quiroz '20

This academic year, members of the Princeton University community have been reading and connecting with each other by exploring works by Baldwin himself. More than 200 faculty, graduate students, staff and postdoctoral researchers joined Baldwin Circles, a cross-disciplinary initiative organized by the Humanities Council. The innovative program also included public events with authors, artists, musicians, community leaders and others that connected the campus circles with the broader public.

When dreaming up the project, Esther Schor, chair of the Humanities Council and the John J.F. Sherrerd ’52 University Professor, was inspired by her own bookshelf. She had just finished reading “Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own,” by Eddie Glaude Jr., the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor, and was motivated to create programming around Baldwin’s life and legacy. 

“I’d been thinking for some time about a community reading project, and with Baldwin’s centenary last summer, I thought it was the perfect time,” Schor said.

During his lifetime, and in the decades since his death in 1987, Baldwin’s work has influenced generations of readers, artists, scholars and activists. His indelible writings examine topics such as racism, identity, religion, violence, sexuality and Black life in the United States and abroad.

“Baldwin asks so much of readers,” said Schor. “He asks us to be capacious in our concerns and to think in a 360-degree way about the most urgent issues of our day.”

Conveners from every corner

Launched on Aug. 2, 2024, on what would have been Baldwin’s 100th birthday, the project invited interested participants to serve as conveners for reading groups of six to eight people. Importantly, no experience with Baldwin was necessary to lead or join a Baldwin Circle.

Schor said that the Humanities Council hoped for at least a dozen volunteers. More than 35 people stepped forward.

Conveners emerged from all corners of the University, with humanists, social scientists, artists and journalists from academic departments signing up alongside deans, directors, coordinators and other staff from administrative departments such as the Office of the Dean of the College, University Advancement, Campus Life and Communications.

Kinohi Nishikawa (center right), associate professor of English and African American studies, speaks to staff about archival items related to Baldwin housed in the Princeton University Library's Special Collections. 

Photo by Brandon R. Johnson

“I knew that [the project of] reading Baldwin would be wonderful, but I had no idea exactly how wonderful,” Schor said of the initial reaction to the program.

To make Baldwin’s texts more accessible, the Humanities Council created a website with free resources, and partnered with New Jersey bookstores, including Labyrinth Books in Princeton, and Source of Knowledge in Newark, to purchase books for participants of the program. Everyone received a copy of James Baldwin’s “Collected Essays” volume from the Library of America, and each group was able to select up to two additional books for the year.

Fall convener trainings provided an outline for each Baldwin Circle, but groups were granted a wide latitude of choice — in readings, in format and in scope. Conveners were encouraged to host at least two meetings per semester, and to recruit readers from more than one department on campus.

Some circles adopted a thematic focus for the year, zeroing in on specific dimensions of Baldwin’s work. Topics included the interplay between Baldwin’s prose and politics, depictions of Harlem, and Baldwin’s experiences as an expatriate in France and Turkey.

Building community through Baldwin

When Duncan Harrison Jr., assistant director of regional affairs in the Office of Community and Regional Affairs, heard about the Baldwin Circles, he reached out to his colleagues to help him organize a group around the theme of “creating just communities.”

David Brown, associate director of the Pace Center for Civic Engagement, and Nicole Moen, associate director for outreach and communication in the Office of State Affairs, were quick to combine forces as co-conveners of a circle.

Princeton staff and members of the Trenton Community Street Team partnered for a Baldwin Circles meeting around the theme of “creating just communities.”

Photo courtesy of the Office of Community and Regional Affairs

“We wanted to come together as a group to talk about community: What does that look like through the eyes of Baldwin? Where are we now, and what can we do together to help solve some of our current social ills?” Harrison Jr. said. “Many of the things that Baldwin talks about in a lot of his works are the same things we continue to see play out on a day-to-day basis.”

The group was also eager to include community partners in their meetings; they invited members of the Trenton Community Street Team and HomeWorks Trenton to join them for a screening of the documentary “To Fulfill the Unfulfilled, To Answer the Unanswered: The Revolutionary James Baldwin” and for a lunch meeting to discuss Baldwin’s non-fiction works “The Fire Next Time” and “No Name in the Street.”

"An eye-opening experience" 

Allison Bloom, lecturer in the Humanities Council and Program in Linguistics, was thrilled when she was asked to join a Baldwin Circle conducted entirely in American Sign Language (ASL).

The group, whose theme was “Nobody Knows My (Sign) Name” — a play on the title of a 1961 Baldwin essay collection — was led by Timothy Loh, Cotsen Postdoctoral Fellow in the Society of Fellows and lecturer in the Humanities Council and anthropology. Members came from both the Deaf and hearing communities and included faculty from Princeton’s ASL program and a research physicist from the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.

One of the Baldwin Circles was conducted entirely in American Sign Language (ASL). Here, the group welcomes guest speakers with applause in ASL.

Photo by Timothy Loh

The circle explored Baldwin’s essays “Notes of a Native Son” and “My Dungeon Shook” together with essays about race, disability and linguistic identity, such as “Touch the Future” by DeafBlind poet John Lee Clark. 

“I have never participated in a reading group where ASL is used and accessible, especially one with members of the Deaf community,” Bloom said. “The experience has been very eye-opening for me, and I am learning more and more about James Baldwin and his work.”  

Baldwin Circles in action

The project quickly grew beyond its original audience of faculty, staff, postdoctoral researchers and graduate students. Two alumni groups held virtual Baldwin Circles in the fall and six residential colleges organized spring semester dinner discussions for undergraduate students, led by faculty facilitators.

Reading circle conversations — held in campus conference rooms, classrooms and even on the racquetball courts in the University’s new Meadows Neighborhood — fueled ideas for further collaborations, field trips and public events. Many of these large-scale efforts were organized by conveners and their groups, with support from various academic departments and campus offices.

Artist Kara Walker delivers a public lecture titled “Working the Negative Space" as part of the Baldwin Circles project.

Photo by David Dooley/Fotobuddy

Events included: 

• A conversation between Glaude, who discussed his bestselling 2020 book “Begin Again” and Baldwin’s still-relevant political and social insights, and Brian Eugenio Herrera, associate professor of theater in the Lewis Center for the Arts.

• A daylong visit from artist Kara Walker, including lunch with undergraduate students about artmaking and a public lecture about her groundbreaking work.
• A concert at McCarter Theatre with Meshell Ndegeocello, whose album was inspired by Baldwin’s writing. The concert was followed by a talkback with Patricia Smith, professor of creative writing in the Lewis Center for the Arts.
• An afternoon reading with author and playwright Darryl Pinckney, who shared a new, unpublished essay on Baldwin’s quiet hope and enduring legacy.
• A trip to Princeton University Library’s Special Collections to explore Baldwin’s archived treasures, including letters between Baldwin and Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, who was Princeton’s Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Humanities, Emeritus. The visit to the archives was led by Kinohi Nishikawa, associate professor of English and African American studies, and Jennifer Garcon, librarian for modern and contemporary special collections.
• A free showing of “If Beale Street Could Talk” at the Princeton Garden Theatre.
• A screening of the newly-restored documentary “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” followed by a conversation with filmmaker Pat Hartley; Carolyn Rouse, the Ritter Professor of Anthropology; and Erika Kiss, director of the University Center for Human Values Film Forum.
• A conversation, moderated by Loh, about the intersection of Baldwin’s work and the fields of Black disability studies and Black Deaf studies, featuring Deaf scholar Rezenet Moges-Riedel and Kelsey Henry, the Cotsen Postdoctoral Fellow in Race and Ethnicity Studies in the Society of Fellows and lecturer in the Humanities Council and African American studies. 

Concluding a "Year of Baldwin"

The culminating event of the project, “Baldwin in New Jersey: An Immersive Humanistic Experience,” was a collaboration with the Program for Community-Engaged Scholarship and the Princeton Public Library.

The packed gathering, which was part of the humanities-focused U.S. Being Human Festival, featured historians Beverly Mills and Elaine Buck, co-founders of the Stoutsburg Sourland African American Museum, Trenton community organizer Darren “Freedom” Green, and musician and producer Wise Intelligent. Together, they reflected on Baldwin’s writings about his experiences with racism in New Jersey, when he worked in Belle Mead, laying train tracks for the military, as a teenager in 1942.

“In here [these things are] easy to discuss,” Green said during the event. “The real magic is when we leave this room and have the hard conversations and do the work.” 

As the University’s “Year of Baldwin” draws to a close, and dozens of books, plays, poems, essays and films have been discussed, Schor hopes that these shared experiences have sparked new personal and intellectual connections and created space for challenging dialogue.  

“We started with the conviction that we can have difficult and nuanced discussions, and this was the spirit in which we came to know one another over the course of the year,” Schor said. “I hope that the Baldwin Circles project has helped to deepen these conversations, and that they will continue long after the project is over.” 

Esther Schor (at podium), chair of Princeton’s Humanities Council, introduces the Baldwin Circles project at a welcome reception last fall.

Photo by

Tori Repp/Fotobuddy