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.”

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.

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