The Lewis Center is designed to enrich the academic and cultural experience of all Princeton University students — whether they intend to pursue a career in the arts or simply hope to nurture, through creative coursework, their abilities to innovate and collaborate. There are course offerings for every student, whether they have no prior experience or are coming from a pre-professional performance background.
Many students find that coursework in the arts informs and enriches their departmental work, whether it’s in English, Architecture, Neuroscience or Molecular Biology. Others, who arrived at Princeton determined to excel in one art form, find that in fact their greatest aptitude is in another — for example, OBIE Award-winning playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins ’06 studied fiction until he had exhausted all the available courses, and only turned to writing drama when professors pointed out his knack for crafting dialogue.
If you’re thinking about taking a course in the Lewis Center, follow the advice of past students and do it now. There’s no better time to explore and broaden your horizons — especially first-year students, because spots are specifically held for first-years even in workshops with enrollment limits of ten.
Through their individual creative work, Lewis Center students investigate questions about themselves, others, and the events and systems that affect us all—systems like geography, politics, gender, race, the economy, the environment, and of course the wide realm of human choice and activity. This is fundamental to the formation of artists. It is also fundamental to the formation of alert, compassionate, creative, resourceful, and active rather than passive people.
Beyond courses in the Lewis Center, there are over a hundred public events each year, largely driven by the independent creative thesis work of seniors, including performances, exhibitions, readings, screenings, concerts, guest artist lectures, workshops, master classes, and other opportunities to see and make art. Join us!