2019
F2019 Research Methods Workshop: Data Visualization & Mapping with Jeff Himpele, Anthropology ~ Friday, November 8, 2019 - 300 Wallace Hall from 11am-1pm. All PU students and faculty welcome. RSVP required. More information including free online software needed, click here.
2019 CLASS DAY CELEBRATION, Program in Urban Studies - Graduates and guests are invited to the class day celebration on Monday, June 3. Reception at the School of Architecture at 4:30pm followed by the ceremony at 5:15pm. Come and celebrate! URB Thesis prize winner announced at 5:30pm!
2019 Urban Studies Senior Thesis Colloquium, Wednesday, May 8, 9am-2pm - 300 Wallace Hall. Breakfast and lunch available. RSVP to [email protected]. Click here for colloquium schedule.
2018
F2018 Research Methods Workshop Friday, November 9, 2018 from 9am-noon, Carl Fields Center, 58 Prospect Ave, MPR - Room 105 (aka 1985 Room & Cafe). (room change from 104) Click here for workshop schedule. RSVP required [email protected]
ACADEMIC EXPO: September 10, 2018 - 10 AM – 2 PM Frick Chemistry Lab Atrium - Freshman - LOOK for the Urban Studies Information table, ask your questions and pick up a breakfast treat!
2018 CLASS DAY CELEBRATION, Program in Urban Studies - Graduates and guests are invited to the class day celebration on Monday, June 4. Reception at the School of Architecture at 4:30pm followed by the ceremony at 5:15pm. RSVP with number of guests to Val Smith.
2018 Urban Studies Senior Thesis Colloquium, Wednesday, May 9, 9am-2pm - 300 Wallace Hall. Breakfast and lunch available. RSVP to [email protected]. Click here for colloquium schedule.
2017
Urban Studies Research Methods Workshop on Friday, November 10 from 9am-Noon, Carol Fields Center, 58 Prospect Avenue, MPR, Room 104. Breakfast items available. All Princeton University students and faculty are invited. RSVP to [email protected]. Click here for workshop schedule.
CLASS DAY CELEBRATION, Program in Urban Studies - Graduates and guests are invited to the class day celebration on Monday, June 5. Reception at the School of Architecture 4:30pm followed by the ceremony at 5:15pm in 1879 Hall Tower Room.
Urban Studies 2017 Senior Thesis Colloquium - Wednesday, May 10, 2017 from 9am-2pm - 300 Wallace Hall 9am-2pm. All students, faculty and presenter guest welcome! Breakfast items and lunch available. Please RSVP to [email protected]. Click here for colloquium schedle.
2016
Friday, November 11, 2016 - 9am-Noon, Fifth Annual Urban Studies Research Methods Workshop, Carl Fields Center, MPR. Click here for schedule.
Fall 2016 Colloquium Series of the Center for Migration and Development. Stellar group of young and more established scholars offering presentations about timely and significant subjects. Click here for schedule.
Fall 2016, the Mellon Forum for Research on the Urban Environment will focus on The Nature of Cities. Click here for schedule.
Urban Studies Senior Thesis Colloquium - Wednesday, May 4, 2016 from 9am-2pm - 300 Wallace Hall. Breakfast and lunch available. RSVP to [email protected]. Click here for Colloquium schedule.
World Premiere of Paris, Ni Hao, a documentary film about Chinese immigrants in Paris. This 40-minute film explores the evolving and sometimes tense relationship of eight first and second-generation Chinese immigrants with their adoptive city and how they must redefine themselves to thrive in their new surroundings. One of the film’s main characters, Rui Wang, will join Sharon and Purcell after each screening for a discussion focused on cultural displacement, immigration, and human rights. Paris, Ni Hao will premiere - Wednesday, April 20th, at 8:00 p.m. and Saturday, April 23rd, at 2:00 p.m. in McCormick Hall 101, adjacent to the Princeton University Art Museum. Admission is FREE, but space is limited, so please RSVP. Read more.
2015
Friday, November 13, 2015 - 9am-Noon, Fourth Annual Urban Studies Research Methods Workshop, Carl Fields Center, MPR. The Workshop is especially suited for planning sustained projects such as JPs, and undergrad or grad thesis research, but it is also useful at any stage, such as identifying last-minute material, or looking ahead to choose courses based on research methods. Although the content of presentations will emphasize urban-focused research, the methods are universal.Open to all Princeton University students and faculty. Breakfast items will be available. Click here for schedule details and RSVP information.
Tuesday, September 15, 2015 - 9th Annual Humanities Colloquium, 1:30-4:20 PM, 219 Aaron Burr Hall. Click here for schedule details.
Thursday, September 24, 2015 - Urban Studies Film Series, "Bombay Velvet", 7:00pm, Princeton Garden Theatre. In collaboration with the Program in Urban Studies, a film series co-organized by the Princeton-Mellon Initiative and hosted by the Princeton Garden Theatre will premiere with the feature-length film Bombay Velvet based on Gyan Prakash's book Mumbai Fables. A reception will precede the film screening. From India, this period crime drama about an ordinary man who dreams of making it big. Set in 1960s Bombay, "Bombay Velvet" is adapted from historian and Princeton University and Urban Studies Professor Gyan Prakash’s book Mumbai Fables.
For ticket information, please click here.
Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - Urban Studies Senior Thesis Colloquium - Carl Fields Center MPR-Room 104 beginning at 11am. Lunch noon-1pm - RSVP for lunch to [email protected].
Thursday, April 23 & Saturday, April 25 - Join us for the world premiere of SPECKS OF DUST, a documentary film that follows the fight against human trafficking in Varanasi, India. Directed by Azza Cohen '16, Urban Studies Certificate junior and Shaina Watrous '14, the film follows the lives of the extraordinary individuals who have dedicated their lives to helping others find justice. The three main characters of the film, Ajeet Singh, his wife Santwana Manju and their daughter Barish, will be at each premiere along with the filmmakers to host a discussion on the themes of human rights, advocacy, and humility. We promise it will be a very special evening!
Thursday, April 23: 7:30pm at McCormick 101, Princeton University Art Museum
Saturday, April 25: 7:30 pm at James M. Stewart '32 Theater, 185 Nassau Street
FREE tickets available at Frist Ticket Center
2014
F2014 Third Annual Urban Studies Research Methods Workshop
S2014 NYC Student Walking Tours – Last spring, both Urban Studies Certificate students and URB-interested students had the opportunity to attend two historical walking tours of New York City, led by Kara Schlichting of Big Onion Tours. On April 5th, students toured the Upper East Side and walked down to Wall Street. On April 19th, students explored SoHo and the East Village. The Program covered the cost of the trip. After the tours, some students took time to reflect on their experiences.
2014 Film Series
Tues, Feb 11, 7pm - Betts Auditorium
Rock the Boat
2008. USA. Film by Thea Mercouffer. 54 min. An informal discussion will include Linda R. Cox, Executive Director of the Bronx River Alliance; Jenny Price, Barron Visiting Professor of the Environment and the Humanities at Princeton University, and Alison Isenberg, Professor of History, Co-Director, Urban Studies Program.
When avid boater George Wolfe decides to paddle the entire 52 miles of the concrete, laughable Los Angeles River, he and a band of ragtag locals change the course of the river forever. They help beat back a challenge to the Clean Water Act, and they wage a local battle with national significance. This film tells the incredible story of the expedition, the story of the embattled waterway, and the story of Los Angeles' past, present and potential future. Event is free and open to the public.
Wednesday, March 26,12:15 - Bowl 002, Robertson Hall
"Modeling Consensus: The Kerner Commission Response to Urban Rioting in Newark" (precirculated paper)
Colloquium with Professor Mark Krasovic, Assistant Professor Department of History, Graduate Program in American Studies,
Associate Director of Institute on Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience, Rutgers University-Newark
Commentator: Julian Zelizer, Professor of History and Public Affairs Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University. RSVP's required.
Tues, April 8, 7pm - 100 Jones Hall
Edificio Master
2002 Documentary. Stories of the daily lives, dramas, frustrations and dreams of residents in a massive 12-story building in Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro. Winner of Awards at the Havana Film Festival, the Brazilian Cinema Great Prize, Gramado Festival, and others. Directed by Eduardo Coutinho. 110 min. Screening and conversation with Bruno Carvalho.
Named after the residential building where it was filmed, Edifício Master isn’t set in the Copacabana of postcards, sunny beaches, or the ocean’s wide-open horizon. It is rather the Copacabana of claustrophobic modern buildings, of surveillance cameras and dreary corridors. We are here in the familiar metropolis of anonymity and excessive stimuli, where individuals find different ways of coping, be it through painting, poetry, playing the keyboard, singing, dating, and above all, talking. “The stories of the Edifício Master” Coutinho has said, “seem to have a greater need of being told.” Tender, moving, and surprising, this is one of the best regarded films by one of Latin America’s most accomplished directors. Event is free and open to the public.
Wednesday, April 9, 5:00pm - Bowl 002, Robertson Hall, Lower Level, Woodrow Wilson School
"Whose Coast Is It? Access, Planning & Resiliency on the NJ & California Beaches"
Discussion with Paul Lewis, Guy Nordenson, Jenny Price, Princeton University.
Beaches represent some of America’s most valuable land and fragile environments. On the eastern seaboard, commercial, recreational, and resort developments alongshore have been proven unsustainable by Hurricane Irene and Superstorm Sandy. Across the country, private development, illegal and misleading signs, and hidden rights of way have made accessing Malibu’s beaches one of greater Los Angeles’s most pressing public space problems. The issues of property rights, government oversight, urban design, and community activism converge alongshore. Join the Urban Studies program for a discussion of the physical policy, social and ideological structures that impact coastal resilient design strategies and social justice activism in New Jersey and California.
2013 Film Series
Feb 26-May 7 – Tuesdays at 7:00 PM, Betts Auditorium, (Except where noted*) School of Architecture, Princeton University. Click here for a printable version of the full film series.
Tues, Mar 26, 7 PM
Ecumenopolis: City Without Limits
2011. Turkey, Germany. directed by Imre Azem. 88 min. Introduced by Molly Greene, Princeton University
Istanbul’s population is set to double by 2030 and the city must respond. Ecumenopolis speaks with investors, city-dwellers, experts and community leaders as they grapple with the deep transformations coming to the city.
Tues, Apr 2, 6 PM and 7:30 PM*
The Pruitt Igoe Myth
2011. USA. directed by Chad Freidrichs. 79 min.
“After Pruitt Igoe: New Prospects for Affordable Housing”
A conversation with Joseph Heathcott (The New School) and Timothy Henkel (Pennrose Properties) Moderated by Purcell Carson, Princeton University. In 1955, the new Pruitt-Igoe public housing project demonstrated that America could house even its poorest citizens. Less than twenty years later, it was demolished. The film explores the debate surrounding the project. *special time
Tues, April 9, 7pm
Gut Renovation
2012. USA. directed by Su Friedrich. 81 min.
Screening followed by discussion with Friedrich, Professor of Visual Arts, Princeton University. A 2005 re-zoning law forced Su Friedrich out of her Brooklyn home of 20 years and transformed the neighborhood. Her film is a witty, personal—and angry—response to what happens when gentrification comes to town.
Tues, April 16, 7 pm
Decade of Fire: How the South Bronx was Burned
Work-in-Progress. USA. Directed by Gretchen Hildebran & Vivian Vazquez. Screening and discussion with the directors. Moderated by Alison Isenberg, Princeton University During ten years of Vivian Vazquez’s childhood, an epidemic of fire destroyed her neighborhood. In this documentary in progress, Vazquez returns to those streets, those times, and her neighbors, to ask why.
Tues, April 23, 7 PM
Greetings from Asbury Park
2008. USA. Directed by Christina Eliopoulos. 79 min. Screening followed by discussion with the director. A documentary of progress and eminent domain, told through the eyes of the director’s 91-year old great aunt, who is losing her home and garden to make way for luxury condos by the beach.
Tues, April 30, 7 PM
La Sierra
2005. USA. Directed by Scott Dalton and Margarita Martinez. 84 min. Introduced by Robert Karl, Princeton University A small neighborhood in Medellin, Colombia, La Sierra is ruled by young men affiliated with the country’s paramilitary armies. The film traces a year in the lives of three young residents and their experiences of war, death, and love.
Tues, May 7, 7 PM
The Trenton Project
Critique Works-in-progress screening of student films from URB202, Documentary Film and the City Together, these short films about home, housing and urban development in Trenton create a mosaic portrait of the city and its hopes for the future.
Mon, May 20, 6 PM*
The Trenton Project: Final
*special time & location
Final Public Screening of URB 202 Student Micro-Documentaries ArtWorks, 19 Everett Alley, Trenton NJ.
Events are free and open to the public.