Great Expectations: A Novel
2025-02-19 18:00 - 19:30 (America/New_York) | Labyrinth Books, 122 Nassau Street, Princeton, NJ, 08542, United States
Vinson Cunningham in Conversation with A.M. Homes
A historic presidential campaign changes the trajectory of a young Black man’s life in this “coming of age story that captures the soul of America” (The Washington Post), the debut novel from The New Yorker staff writer and Pulitzer Prize finalist Vinson Cunningham.
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, NPR, Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, Town & Country, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Electric Lit, Current, WBEZ
When David first hears the Senator from Illinois speak, he feels deep ambivalence. Intrigued by the Senator’s idealistic rhetoric, David also wonders how he’ll balance the fervent belief and inevitable compromises it will take to become the United States’ first Black president.
Great Expectations is about David’s eighteen months working for the Senator’s presidential campaign. Along the way David meets a myriad of people who raise a set of questions—questions of history, art, race, religion, and fatherhood—that force David to look at his own life anew and come to terms with his identity as a young Black man and father in America.
Meditating on politics and politicians, religion and preachers, fathers and family, Great Expectations is both an emotionally resonant coming-of-age story and a rich novel of ideas, marking the arrival of a major new writer.
Vinson Cunningham is a staff writer and critic at The New Yorker and a Pulitzer Prize Finalist. He co-hosts the podcast “Critics at Large” and his writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, The Fader, Vulture, The Awl, and McSweeney’s. A former staffer on Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign and in his White House, Cunningham has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, the Yale School of Art, and Columbia University’s School of the Arts. A.M. Homes’ most recent book is The Unfolding. Her many previous works include This Book Will Save Your Life, winner of the 2013 Orange/Women’s Prize for Fiction, the short-story collection Days of Awe, and the bestselling memoir, The Mistress’s Daughter. She is a Professor in the Lewis Center for the Arts’ Program in Creative Writing.
This event is cosponsored by the Program in Journalism, the Humanities Council, and Labyrinth Books.

Lunch Talk: Uncovering corruption in the 2020s
2025-02-20 12:00 - 13:20 | 16 Joseph Henry House
Investigative reporting has always been linked to the belief that shining sunlight on wrongdoing will lead to positive change. But in an increasingly relativist culture where shame is in short supply, how do we practice journalism that undergirds, rather than undermines the truth? Andrea Bernstein (Journalism) will be in conversation with Razia Iqbal (SPIA). They will also discuss the January 6 pardons, and the journalistic and legal work done to report on the truth, and where journalists go from here.
Lunch talks are open to University faculty, students, and staff. Space is limited. RSVP required here.

The Humanities Council’s Program in Journalism invites faculty, graduate students and staff to participate in its spring lunchtime talk series, where distinguished visiting journalists and writers discuss their work and pressing issues of the day with University faculty from a variety of disciplines.
These events—typically informal discussions of recent writing —offer intimate looks inside the work of colleagues and an opportunity for dialog across disciplines. Lunch will be provided.

Lunch Talk: Writing from the Podium
2025-02-27 12:00 - 13:20 | 16 Joseph Henry House
So much of the writing we hold in high esteem, especially in the Anglophone world, is more or less directly descended from public speech—developed out loud and for the purpose of persuading (and, just as importantly, entertaining) an audience. From the essay to the pamphlet, the op-ed to the “feature” and the critical review, our nonfiction tradition has drawn from the techniques and attitudes of oratory, tending to be coaxing and argumentative, urgent and (often irritatingly) insistent. The implications of this heritage can be found in the sentences, styles, and voices of writers and journalists such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, James Baldwin, Joan Didion, Toni Morrison, and Zadie Smith. Vinson Cunningham (Journalism) will be in conversation with Professor Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (African American Studies), to discuss the relationship between oratory and nonfiction prose, and to share some techniques for making this correspondence pay dividends on the page.
Lunch talks are open to University faculty, students, and staff. Space is limited. RSVP required here.

The Humanities Council’s Program in Journalism invites faculty, graduate students and staff to participate in its spring lunchtime talk series, where distinguished visiting journalists and writers discuss their work and pressing issues of the day with University faculty from a variety of disciplines.
These events—typically informal discussions of recent writing —offer intimate looks inside the work of colleagues and an opportunity for dialog across disciplines. Lunch will be provided.

Novel Ecologies: Nature Remade and the Illusions of Tech
2025-03-04 18:00 - 19:30 | Labyrinth Books, 122 Nassau Street, Princeton, NJ, 08542, United States
Tracing the convergence of ecology and engineering over the last three decades, this book pinpoints a new environmental paradigm that the author calls Nature Remade.
Allison Carruth’s Novel Ecologies shows how the tech industry has taken up the wilderness mythologies that shaped one strain of American environmentalism over the last century. Calling this twenty-first-century environmental imagination Nature Remade, Carruth describes a distinctly West Coast framework that is at once nostalgic and futuristic. Through three case studies (synthetic wildlife, the digital cloud, and space colonization), the book shows Nature Remade to be a quasi-religious belief in venture capitalism and big tech. This paradigm thus imagines a future in which species, ecosystems, and entire planets are re-generated and re-created through engineering.
Novel Ecologies challenges the conviction that climate change and other environmental crises must be met with ever larger-scale forms of technological intervention. Against the new worlds conjured by Google, Meta, Open AI, Amazon, SpaceX, and a host of lesser-known start-ups, Carruth marshals writers and artists who imagine provisionally hopeful environmental futures while refusing to forget the histories that have made the world what it is. On this track of the book, Carruth discusses the works of Octavia Butler, Jennifer Egan, Ruth Ozeki, Tracy K. Smith, Jeff VanderMeer, and and many more. Their novels, poems, installation artworks, and expressive media offer a speculative world built on livable communities rather than engineered lifeforms.
Allison Carruth is professor in the Effron Center for the Study of America and High Meadows Environmental Institute at Princeton University. She is the cofounder and faculty director of Blue Lab, an environmental media, art, and research group at Princeton. Since 2017, she has produced original environmental documentaries and multimedia story series in collaboration with filmmakers, journalists, artists and others. She is the author of Global Appetites: American Power and the Literature of Food and coauthor with Amy L. Tigner of Literature and Food Studies. Eliza Griswold is the author of six books of poetry and nonfiction, most recently Circle of Hope: A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church. Her book Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America was awarded the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction. She writes for The New Yorker, and is the Ferris Professor and Director of the Program in Journalism at Princeton University.

The Program in Journalism Sophomore Open House
2025-03-19 16:30 - 18:00 | 16 Joseph Henry House
Join the Program in Journalism for an open house to explore the journalism minor, course offerings, internships, and study abroad opportunities.
The minor in journalism provides an interdisciplinary framework of courses through which students produce rigorous, verified journalism. They develop a strong command of the literary, ethical, analytical, and political dimensions of telling a compelling story in order to have a meaningful impact on public conversation.
For more information regarding our Minor.

Novel Ecologies: Nature Remade and the Illusions of Tech
2025-03-19 16:30 - 18:00 | Chancellor Green Rotunda
In this event, Allison Carruth will speak about her new book, Novel Ecologies, in conversation with Vinson Cunningham.
Novel Ecologies investigates a distinctly California paradigm shaped by the tech industry—what Allison Carruth terms Nature Remade. Through three case studies—synthetic wildlife, the digital cloud and space colonization—the book challenges the conviction that climate change and other environmental crises must be met with planetary-scale technological intervention. Against the world-building gambits of Google, Open AI, SpaceX and a host of start-ups, Carruth marshals the work of writers and artists who imagine provisionally hopeful futures while refusing to forget histories of power and exploitation that have made the world what it is.
Speakers
Allison Carruth is professor in the Effron Center for the Study of America and High Meadows Environmental Institute at Princeton University, where she directs the Program in Environmental Studies and leads the environmental media and climate storytelling studio Blue Lab. From 2016-2020, she was the founding director of UCLA’s Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies (LENS). While leading LENS, she was an executive producer of an environmental media collaboration featuring essays and documentary films developed in partnership with and distributed by KCET/PBS SoCal. She is the previous author of Global Appetites: American Power and the Literature of Food.
Vinson Cunningham is a Visiting Lecturer in the Humanities Council, a McGraw Professor of Writing in the Program in Journalism, and a staff writer at The New Yorker. He was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 2024 and was awarded the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism for 2021-2022. In 2020, he was a finalist for a National Magazine Award for his Profile of the comedian Tracy Morgan. He teaches at the Yale School of Art and Columbia University’s School of the Arts, and is a co-host of Critics at Large, The New Yorker’s weekly podcast about culture and the arts. His début novel, Great Expectations, came out in 2024.

“Getting the Un-gettable:” A Conversation on Black-Box Reporting
2025-04-01 17:00 - 18:30 | 50 McCosh
Jodi Kantor, investigative reporter for The New York Times, and Patrick Radden Keefe, staff writer for The New Yorker, will examine strategies for “black box” reporting inside seemingly impenetrable organizations, governments, and corporations. Moderated by Eliza Griswold, director of the Program in Journalism.
This event will be livestreamed on Media Central.
Co-sponsored by Princeton Public Lectures
*Please note the location change: This event will now be held in 50 McCosh Hall.*

At the Brink: Nuclear weapons, democracy and the media
2025-04-09 16:30 - 18:00 | 016 Robertson Hall
A conversation with Kathleen Kingsbury, head of Opinion, The New York Times
The Princeton University Program on Science and Global Security, part of the School of Public and International Affairs, invites you to join a conversation with Kathleen Kingsbury, head of the Opinion section at The New York Times, on the renewed global threat of nuclear weapons, the current state of democracy and the role of journalism.
Under the leadership and direction of Kathleen, in 2024 Times Opinion began publishing At the Brink, a major series on the dangers of nuclear weapons. A year later, where are we now, and what can be done to ensure a safer world for the next generation?
This event is free and open to the public. It is organized by the Program on Science and Global Security and co-sponsored by the School of Public and International Affairs and the Program on Journalism.
Please RSVP by April 8 at this LINK.

Hard News and Soft Serve: Journalism Student / Faculty Mixer
2025-09-10 16:30 - 18:00 | Joseph Henry House Patio
Interested in journalism? Please join Professor Eliza Griswold and other faculty and staff from the Program in Journalism for an ice cream mixer. Faculty will discuss the program and students will share their experiences in journalism courses and internships.
Open to undergraduate students. RSVP here.

Lunch Talk: Reporting on Earth's Deadline
2025-09-25 12:00 - 13:15 | 16 Joseph Henry House
Basic climate science has been well understood for nearly forty years. Journalists have been steadily reporting on it for more than twenty. And yet, fossil fuels remain dominant, global greenhouse-gas emissions continue to rise, and Earth is hotter now than at any other point in human history. The climate emergency has already impacted millions of people, and the remaining years of this decade are crucial for preventing the most cataclysmic scenarios. How can journalists rise to the challenge?
Join Carolyn Kormann (Journalism) in conversation with Eliza Griswold (Journalism) on the role that climate change now plays in almost every issue and story of our time. Kormann, a leading chronicler of the pervasive challenges of the Anthropocene for the New Yorker, will talk about her work, her forthcoming book, and how she personally fights climate despair after nearly two decades of reporting on this crisis.
Lunch talks are open to University faculty, students, and staff. Space is limited. RSVP required here.
*Please note, RSVP form requires University log-in credentials

Student Workshop | How to Report on Trauma: Ethics and Skills
2025-10-07 16:30 - 18:00
Journalism students are invited to participate in this special workshop led by Dr. Kate Porterfield of the Global Center for Journalism and Trauma. In this talk, she will discuss how trauma affects humans and offer a framework for interviewing and engaging with people who may have suffered traumatic events. She will also provide concrete tips for building a well-being practice for journalism and media professionals working on trauma-facing stories.
This workshop is open to enrolled journalism students and students pursuing the journalism minor; space is limited. Register by October 2.
About Dr. Kate Porterfield:
Dr. Porterfield is a clinical psychologist who has spent the past twenty-five years working with people and communities affected by trauma. She is a consulting psychologist with the Bellevue Hospital Program for Survivors of Torture and a trainer with the Global Center for Journalism and Trauma. Dr. Porterfield regularly consults on issues pertaining to trauma and torture, including in cases at the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center, in US federal and state courts, and the International Criminal Court. Dr. Porterfield has worked extensively with journalists, attorneys, and human rights organizations on recognizing and managing secondary traumatic stress and building well-being practices. She is an engaging teacher who is committed to making trauma-informed practice accessible and practical for journalists and others who engage with vulnerable communities.

Conversations from Beirut – The Biosphere of War
2025-10-22 09:30 - 10:30 | Zoom, Princeton, NJ, 08544, United States
Join the Mamdouha S. Bobst Center for Peace and Justice for this virtual conversation with Dr. Ghassan Abu Sittah, director of the Conflict Medicine Program at American University of Beirut, and Eliza Griswold, director of the Program in Journalism.
Registration is not required. The webinar link to join is here.
This program is part of the Bobst Center-American University of Beirut Collaborative Initiative.

Lunch Talk: Writing about Islamophobia in the U.S.
2025-10-23 12:00 - 13:15 | 16 Joseph Henry House
Islamophobia has been recognized as a phenomenon, and a problem, in recent decades. But this form of discrimination has a unique history and context that has been little understood. What do we mean when we talk about Islamophobia? How can we think about anti-Muslim sentiment after 9/11 and anti-Muslim sentiment today? How to cover it as a journalist?
Join Rozina Ali (Journalism) in conversation with Eliza Griswold (Journalism) for this interdisciplinary lunch talk, presented by the Humanities Council’s Program in Journalism. These talks offer insight into the work of our distinguished visiting journalists, as they discuss their work and pressing issues of the day with University faculty from across disciplines.
Lunch talks are open to University faculty, students, and staff. Space is limited. RSVP required here.
*Please note, RSVP form requires University log-in credentials

What's a Fact, Anyway?
2025-10-30 16:30 - 18:00 | Chancellor Green Rotunda
Join the Humanities Council’s Program in Journalism for this special event featuring Fergus McIntosh, Head Research Editor at The New Yorker and David Baumgarten ’06, general counsel for The Atlantic.
The pair will discuss the essential role of fact-checking, legal review, and other often hidden aspects of journalism, which are increasingly critical in today’s media landscape. Moderated by Eliza Griswold, program director, with Ferris Professors Rozina Ali of The New York Times Magazine and Carolyn Kormann of The New Yorker.
Read Fergus McIntosh’s article, “What’s a Fact, Anyway?” in The New Yorker.
This event is presented by the Humanities Council’s Program in Journalism and co-sponsored by the Princeton Humanities Initiative.

David Baumgarten is the General Counsel of The Atlantic, where he advises its journalists and executives. A proud member of Princeton’s Class of 2006, he currently serves as the Vice President of the Board of Trustees of the Daily Princetonian and as a member of the Princeton Schools Committee. He previously worked as a management consultant at Boston Consulting Group, attended Harvard Law School, practiced law at Williams & Connolly LLP, taught at UVA School of Law, and served on the Board of Directors of the Student Press Law Center.
Fergus McIntosh leads the fact–checking department at The New Yorker, where he has worked since 2015. Outside of the magazine, he has collaborated on books by authors including Jake Tapper, Andrea Bernstein, and Patrick Radden Keefe. He writes occasionally about music, politics, and the nature of facts.

Student Workshop | Fact Checking 101
2025-10-31 10:00 - 13:00
In a time when truth feels subjective, why should we care about facts? Led by Ferris Visiting Professors Rozina Ali of The New York Times Magazine and Carolyn Kormann of The New Yorker, this workshop will cover fundamentals and best practices when fact-checking news stories and magazine features. Drawing from their experiences as former fact-checkers, Professor Ali and Professor Kormann will equip students with essential tools for identifying reputable sources and verifying information to ensure accuracy in their own reporting. They will also discuss the immense value of working as checkers themselves, and the opportunities the job can yield.
Open to journalism students; space is limited. Register by October 24.
About our facilitators:
Rozina Ali is a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine, who writes about conflict, the Middle East and South Asia, Islamophobia, and immigration in the United States. She was awarded the 2023 National Magazine Award in Reporting and was a 2022-2023 fellow at the New York Public Library Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, as well as a fellow at Yale University’s Whitney Humanities Center. She is currently writing a book about the rise of Islamophobia in the U.S. This fall, she will be teaching a course called, “The Media and Social Issues: Challenging the Narrative on Race,” which will explore how the media can reinforce or dispel stereotypes about minority groups.

Carolyn Kormann is an award-winning journalist and author who has covered the environment, climate change, and biodiversity from all over the world. As a staff writer for The New Yorker, she’s published stories about a hurricane-weary meteorologist, survivors of the Maui wildfires, extreme-heat victims, an Oglala Lakota chef, an unusual Bolivian restaurant, lost-species hunters, virus hunters, the pandemic, thawing Siberian permafrost, giant icebergs, climate refugees, Fukushima and the future of nuclear power, plastic pollution, inventors, farmers, striking coal workers, carbon traders, energy politics, a sinking island, a Hollywood trailer director, solar eclipses, honeyguides, swimmers, artists, time, and mules. Previously, she spent years on The New Yorker’s editorial staff, as a web editor and a deputy head of fact-checking. Kormann is the author of the forthcoming book, “How to Be a Bat,” a work of natural history, scientific inquiry, and reportage, which tells the stories of Earth’s only flying mammals, their surprising impact on history, and what they reveal about our future.

Student Workshop | Digital Safety Training
2025-11-12 16:30 - 18:00
In today’s networked world, protecting yourself and your sources isn’t optional—it’s essential. Without safeguards in place, every journalist’s work is vulnerable to digital threats, including those targeting accounts and devices.

Fortunately, there are tools and tactics that will help you do your best work while keeping these critical systems safe. In this session, Davis Erin Anderson and Evan Summers from Freedom of the Press Foundation will show you how to safeguard your accounts, protect the information on your devices, and better understand the current landscape of doing the important work of journalism.
This workshop is open to enrolled journalism students and students pursuing the journalism minor; space is limited. Register by November 7.

About Freedom of the Press Foundation
Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) is a non-profit working at the intersection of human rights, journalism, and technology. A unique organization in the security and internet freedom community, FPF has pioneered a multi-layered approach to preserving and extending the privacy and security of journalists and other at-risk communities online. FPF develops security tools, provides digital security trainings, and supports advocacy campaigns in the interest of advancing transparency journalism.

Lunch Talk: Reporting and Writing on Mental Illness
2025-11-20 12:00 - 13:15 | 16 Joseph Henry House
In the name of speaking truth to power, journalists have long contributed to harmful narratives about mental health conditions and the people who seek and provide care for them. But times have changed, and in recent years there has been a general shift in mental health journalism, fueled by the arrival of a new generation of reporters who are much more comfortable with the realities of mental illness.
Even with more and better coverage, some thorny questions remain: How do you report and write on mental illness with care and compassion while also maintaining personal boundaries and professional distance? And where is the line between solutions journalism and advocacy?
Join Judith Warner (Journalism) in conversation with Erik Nook (Psychology) for this interdisciplinary lunch talk, presented by the Humanities Council’s Program in Journalism. These talks offer insight into the work of our distinguished visiting journalists, as they discuss their work and pressing issues of the day with University faculty from across disciplines.

Lunch talks are open to University faculty, students, and staff. Space is limited. RSVP required here.
*Please note, RSVP form requires University log-in credentials

ESSAY WEEK: Why the Essay Is Necessary
2025-11-21 17:00 - 18:30 | 113 Friend Center
In this public conversation co-sponsored by the Program in Journalism, Emily Greenhouse (New York Review of Books) and Ferris Visiting Professor Vinson Cunningham (The New Yorker) discuss the reasons the essay, a form named in the 16th century, continues to thrive. They will discuss the essay’s flexibility, its drawbacks, and its potential futures, thinking aloud about what makes a good essay, who their favorite essayists are, and how they have used the essay to reach large audiences.

This event is part of ESSAY WEEK, a series of events paying tribute to the richness and variety of the essayistic spirit across centuries, continents, and cultures.

Organized by Christy Wampole (French and Italian), ESSAY WEEK is presented by the Department of French and Italian with support from the Eberhard L. Faber 1915 Memorial Fund in the Humanities Council and is co-sponsored by: Department of Comparative Literature, the Department of English, the Department of German, the Program in European Cultural Studies, IHUM, Princeton Public Library, the Program in Journalism, and the Committee on Renaissance and Early Modern Studies

Lunch Talk: The Detainees of Crystal City
2025-12-04 12:00 - 13:15 | 16 Joseph Henry House
This year, President Trump invoked The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to justify mass deportations. The last time the US used this wartime law was after entering World War II. While people are familiar with Japanese American internment—most don’t know the US also rounded up Germans, Japanese, and Italians living in Latin America. The Roosevelt Administration confiscated their passports, illegally brought them to the US, and interned them in the same camps using the Alien Enemies Act. The goal? To exchange them for US prisoners of war. The biggest and the last camp to close was in Crystal City, Texas.
Join JoAnn DeLuna (Journalism) in conversation with Christina Lee (Spanish and Portuguese; Humanities Council) for this interdisciplinary lunch talk, presented by the Humanities Council’s Program in Journalism. The pair will discuss DeLuna’s recent Radio Diaries story, where she interviewed some of the last surviving internees from Latin America about their astonishing journeys.
Lunch talks are open to University faculty, students, and staff. Space is limited. RSVP required here.
*Please note, RSVP form requires University log-in credentials

Information Session: Journalism Summer Seminar in Greece
2025-12-10 16:30 - 17:30 | 16 Joseph Henry House
The Humanities Council’s Program in Journalism invites students to an information session about our summer seminar JRN 350 Shockwaves: Reporting on Climate and Migration in Greece. Professor Eliza Griswold, who co-teaches the course with Professor Rachel Donadio, will discuss the course in detail and provide more information about the application process. Former participants will share their experiences from the course.
Students interested in applying to this course, which runs from June 8 – July 11, 2026, are encouraged to attend. Visit the Global Programs System brochure for more information.
Registration is appreciated but not required.

'No One is Forgotten' Conversation on: “What Art Can Do That Journalism Cannot”
2026-02-08 15:45 - 17:00 | Wallace Theater, Lewis Arts complex
Eliza Griswold, Director of Princeton’s Program in Journalism, in conversation with Professor of Creative Writing Aleksandar Hemon on “What Art Can Do That Journalism Cannot.” The discussion follows the 2:30 p.m. performance on February 8 of No One is Forgotten: An Immersive Opera Drama. This public conversation will interrogate the relationship between artists and journalists, how their word impacts or fortifies each other, and how both professions often live within one person. In collaboration with the Program in Journalism and generously supported by a Magic Grant for Innovation from Princeton’s Humanities Council.
Tickets & Details
The panel discussion is free and open to the public. Advance tickets are required for the performance of No One is Forgotten that precedes the discussion. Tickets are available through University Ticketing.
Reach University Ticketing by email at tixhelp@princeton.edu or by phone at 609-258-9220.
Directions
Get directions to the Wallace Theater, located on the Forum level of the Lewis Arts complex.
Enter the Lewis Arts complex through the main Forum level entry doors located across from the Princeton NJ Transit Station/Wawa. All other entry doors are locked on weekends.

Race, History, and Memory in the 250th Year of the U.S.
2026-02-17 17:00 - 18:30 | 50 McCosh Hall, 50 McCosh Hall, Princeton, NJ, 08544, United States
In this conversation, Eddie S. Glaude Jr. and Khalil Gibran Muhammad explore the intersections of race, history, and memory in the 250th year of the United States. Through dialogue with scholars, activists, and community members, the series examines how narratives of the past shape our understanding of the present and inform ongoing struggles for justice and equity. Join us for thoughtful discussions that illuminate the complexities of America’s history and its enduring impact.

Co-sponsored by the Humanities Council’s Program in Journalism and the University Center for Human Values.

MY AI MOM: Artificial intelligence may not replace my job. But could it replace my mother?
2026-02-19 12:00 - 13:15 | 16 Joseph Henry House
After his mother spent months recording stories and memories with an AI startup, award-winning journalist and author David Kushner (Journalism) confronted an unsettling question: could technology replicate the woman who brought him into the world? The result—an AI “digital twin” that spoke in her voice, shared her wisdom, and made him cry—illuminated both the promise and peril of giving ourselves artificial immortality. A deeply personal exploration of grief, memory, and what we risk when we let machines stand in for the people we love.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
In this interdisciplinary lunch talk, Kushner will discuss his recent story on AI “griefbots” with Arvind Narayanan (Computer Science), director of the Center for Information Technology Policy.
Presented by the Humanities Council’s Program in Journalism. Lunch talks are open to University faculty, students, and staff. Space is limited. RSVP required here.
*Please note, RSVP form requires University log-in credentials
Related reading:
David Kushner, Business Insider, “I created an AI version of my mom. What it told me freaked me out.”

Screening of PBS Documentary BOMBSHELL
2026-02-24 16:30 - 18:30
Eighty years ago, the U.S. government sought to deceive the public about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, downplaying the effects of the atomic bombs and even claiming radiation sickness was a “very pleasant way to die.” We will be screening the new PBS documentary BOMBSHELL, which tells the story of the intrepid reporters who struggled to unearth the truth.
Join us after the screening for a panel discussion with filmmakers Ben Loeterman and Gaia De Simoni, alongside Princeton historian Michael Gordin and journalist Razia Iqbal.

Book Talk: “When All the Men Wore Hats: Susan Cheever on the Stories of John Cheever”
2026-03-04 18:00 - 19:30 | Labyrinth Books, 122 Nassau Street, Princeton, NJ, 08542, United States
When All the Men Wore Hats is a sympathetic and illuminating account of the stories of John Cheever, and the intersecting life and work of the legendary writer John Cheever, as told by his eldest daughter.

The Stories of John Cheever, published in 1978, brought together some of the finest short fiction ever written. The collection was honored with the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and it would go on to sell millions of copies and to define the American short story and shape generations of writers. Cheever’s chronicles of modern life both emerged from a distinctly American culture and also created it—inspiring everything from Mad Men to a Raymond Carver story, from rock songs to a Seinfeld episode.
Growing up, Susan Cheever, John Cheever’s eldest child and only daughter, read what he read, heard what he heard, bantered and gossiped with him and her brothers and mother at the dinner table, and later watched her father type on the cheap yellow paper he favored. A daughter much like Susan appears in many of Cheever’s stories and a family much like theirs is at the center of his writing.
In When All the Men Wore Hats, Susan Cheever looks back on her father’s work and seeks to understand the connections between art and life. How did a bit of local gossip, a slice of Greek myth, and a new translation of Madame Bovary somehow become a brilliant gem like “The Country Husband” or “The Swimmer”? In her 1984 book Home Before Dark, published two years after her father’s death, Cheever wrote movingly about her father and the secrets he kept, but here, years later, she tells the story of the remarkable stories themselves, six of which appear in full in the book’s appendix.
Susan Cheever is the author of many books on American history, the most recent of which is Drinking in America: Our Secret History, published in 2015. She is also the author of numerous novels; My Name Is Bill: Bill Wilson—His Life and the Creation of Alcoholics Anonymous, a biography of the Alcoholics Anonymous cofounder Bill Wilson; and Home Before Dark, a memoir about her father, John Cheever. She has taught at Bennington College and currently teaches at the New School in the MFA program.
Eliza Griswold, a poet, a translator, and a contributing writer covering religion, politics, and the environment, has been writing for The New Yorker since 2003. Her books include Circle of Hope: A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church and Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America, which won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction. She is a Ferris Professor at Princeton University, where she directs the Program in Journalism.
This event is co-sponsored by Princeton University’s Program in Journalism and Labyrinth Books.

Freedom of the press? Journalism in the 'fake news' era
2026-03-05 12:00 - 13:15 | 16 Joseph Henry House
National security reporters in Washington are being threatened by the federal government for doing their jobs in ways that are reminiscent of some of the world’s most notorious authoritarian regimes. Journalists are often called “hacks” or liars” – sometimes in the middle of the White House press room. Their personal safety is increasingly at risk. With the recent arrest of Don Lemon and the FBI raid of Washington Post journalist Hannah Natanson’s home, it’s clear that we are all bearing witness to an extraordinary moment in history. The first amendment is under attack.
In this talk, veteran national security correspondent Erin Banco (Journalism) and Fara Dabhoiwala (History), author of “What Is Free Speech? The History of a Dangerous Idea,” will discuss how we got here and the potential consequences we could face as a society as a result of the further restriction of the freedom of the press.
Presented by the Humanities Council’s Program in Journalism. Lunch talks are open to University faculty, students, and staff. Space is limited. RSVP required here.
*Please note, RSVP form requires University log-in credentials

AI x Journalism: Transforming the News
2026-03-26 16:30 - 18:00 | Chancellor Green Rotunda
Join the Humanities Council’s Program in Journalism and the Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP) for this special event on how artificial intelligence is changing journalism and news.
AI is already remaking newsgathering, audience engagement, and the dissemination of fact and evidence-based journalism. In this panel discussion, experts will share how AI is already impacting all aspects of the field of journalism – from national to small local newsrooms to data analysis, gathering and checking facts, ensuring source security, and what’s to come. Panelists include:

Hilke Schellmann, Emmy Award-winning reporter and CITP Fellow
Madelyne Xiao, CITP graduate student and former fact-checker for The New Yorker
Dylan Freedman, machine-learning engineer and journalist working on artificial intelligence initiatives at The New York Times
Anjanette Delgado, Group Managing Editor for the Hearst Connecticut Media Group

The discussion will be moderated by Eliza Griswold, director of the Program in Journalism, with journalists and thinkers posing critical questions about the AI revolution.
Open to the public. This event is co-sponsored by the Princeton Humanities Initiative.

Student Workshop | Hands-On Workshop in AI for Journalists
2026-03-27 10:00 - 12:00 | Location TBD
Join New York Times reporter and machine-learning engineer Dylan Freedman, and CITP’s Madelyne Xiao and Hilke Schellmann for a two-hour workshop on AI-assisted journalism. Dylan will share detailed case studies of why and how he used AI tools for reporting challenges at The New York Times (and what not to do). Come with questions about best practices, fact-checking, and designing AI-driven workflows for your own reporting projects.
Optionally, you’re welcome to bring your laptop/tablet if you’d like to ask questions about online tools and datasets.
This workshop is open to enrolled journalism students and students pursuing the journalism minor; space is limited. Registration is required by March 16. The location will be announced to registered participants prior to the event.
Sample projects from participating panelists:

Dylan Freedman, NYT, “Chatbots Can Go Into a Delusional Spiral. Here’s How It Happens.” [link]
Dylan Freedman, NYT, “Trump’s Speeches, Increasingly Angry and Rambling, Reignite the Question of Age” [link]
Hilke Schellmann, CJR, “I Tested How Well AI Tools Work for Journalism”: [link]
Madelyne Xiao, USENIX Security, “Machine Learning for Misinformation Detection”: [link]

This event is presented by the Humanities Council’s Program in Journalism and the Center for Information Technology Policy, and co-sponsored by the Princeton Humanities Initiative.

Secret Stories of Migration: Cars, Coffins, Cash, and Other Encomiendas
2026-04-09 12:00 - 13:15 | 16 Joseph Henry House
A daughter reunites, after 20 years, with a father she never knew. A son builds his parents a mansion he will never visit. A mother waits by the side of the road for the coffin returning her son to his childhood home. These stories of migration unfold over decades and across generations, reaching far beyond today’s headlines.
Academy-award winning filmmaker Purcell Carson (Journalism) has spent the past 10 years listening to Guatemalan migrants in Trenton, New Jersey—mothers and fathers, entrepreneurs and mourners, lovers, hucksters, and dreamers. Using observational cinema, oral history, material culture, social media, and personal archives, she documents the lived realities of migration and reverse migration in the Americas.
In this interdisciplinary lunch talk, Carson will give examples from a work-in-progress, and discuss the porous borders between journalism, history, and cinema with U.S. historian Rosina Lozano (History).
Presented by the Humanities Council’s Program in Journalism. Lunch talks are open to University faculty, students, and staff. Space is limited. RSVP required here.
*Please note, RSVP form requires University log-in credentials

Mother Emanuel: Faith and Forgiveness Ten Years After the Charleston Church Massacre
2026-04-16 12:00 - 13:15 | 16 Joseph Henry House
Few people beyond South Carolina’s Lowcountry knew of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston — Mother Emanuel — before June 17, 2015, when a young white supremacist massacred nine Black worshippers at an evening Bible study. Although the shooter had targeted the first AME church in the South to agitate racial strife, he could not have anticipated the aftermath: an outpouring of forgiveness from victims’ families and a reckoning with the divisions of caste that have afflicted the South since the earliest days of European settlement.
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Kevin Sack (Journalism) spent a decade researching and writing “Mother Emanuel: Two Centuries of Race, Resistance, and Forgiveness in One Charleston Church,” which explores the remarkably rich 200-year history that brought the church to its lowest moment. During this lunch talk, he will discuss the newly published book in conversation with Judith Weisenfeld (Religion), chair of the Department of Religion and a scholar of African American religious history.
Presented by the Humanities Council’s Program in Journalism. Lunch talks are open to University faculty, students, and staff. Space is limited. RSVP required here.
*Please note, RSVP form requires University log-in credentials
Related reading:
Debbie Elliot, Andrew Craig, Samantha Balaban, NPR, “10 years after the deadly church shooting, a new history of ‘Mother Emanuel”
NYT Staff, The New York Times, “The 10 Best Books of 2025”
