Welcome, Class of 2028! The Lewis Center is your Pathway to the Arts. This page offers information for incoming first-year students interested in pursuing the arts while at Princeton.
A Welcome Message from Chair Judith Hamera
Find Your Path to the Arts
Connect with Lewis Center faculty, students and staff in-person at the Academic Expo on August 26 from 1-4 p.m. at the Frick Chemistry Lab Atrium. Faculty, current students and staff will be at the Lewis Center table and will also provide an information session earlier that day at 10:15-11 a.m. in Princeton Neuroscience Institute, PNI A32, located across Streicker Bridge from Frick.
Contact Us
We’re here to help! In case you miss the Expo or an info session for a program that interests you, don’t hesitate to reach out to a staff program administrator with any questions you might have:
- Program in Creative Writing: Erin West, erin.west@princeton.edu or Esther Leaming, eleaming@princeton.edu
- Program in Dance: Cindy Rosenfeld, cr17@princeton.edu
- Program in Theater & Music Theater: Joe Fonseca, jfonseca@princeton.edu
- Program in Visual Arts: Kristy Seymour, kseymour@princeton.edu
- Princeton Atelier: Mindy Solis, ms2958@princeton.edu
Don’t miss a thing! Sign up for LCA emails to hear about all of the important events happening this fall.
Fall 2024 Courses
Lewis Center for the Arts courses are offered in Creative Writing, Dance, Theater & Music Theater, Visual Arts (including film/video), and through the interdisciplinary Princeton Atelier. Minors are awarded in the areas of Creative Writing, Dance, Theater & Music Theater, and Visual Arts, as well as degrees in the Practice of Art track offered by the Department of Art and Archaeology in collaboration with the Program in Visual Arts. Review a list of FAQs about Lewis Center courses and minor programs or download an LCA advising guide (PDF). You will also find additional courses offered by other departments that may be crosslisted with the arts, as well as Freshman Seminars taught by LCA faculty.
Creative Writing
Creative Writing Courses
Students receive feedback from professor emeritus Joyce Carol Oates in a fiction workshop. Photo by Denise Applewhite
Welcome, Class of 2028! We can’t wait to see you in workshops in the Program in Creative Writing. Every fall, we reserve 3 of 10 sought-after spaces in each introductory workshop for first-year students like you so that you can immerse yourself right away in the craft of creative writing by taking a small class with some of the most acclaimed writers in the world.
Michael Dickman, Katie Farris, Aleksandar Hemon, A.M. Homes, Ilya Kaminsky, Jack Livings, Jenny McPhee, Lynn Melnick, Joyce Carol Oates, Ed Park, Kirstin Valdez Quade, Patricia Smith, Lynn Steger Strong, Lloyd Suh, and Monica Youn are among the award-winning faculty teaching introductory workshops open to first-year students. Graduating Princeton seniors often tell us they regret not taking creative writing courses sooner in their undergraduate careers. Don’t delay what may be the best classroom experience you have at Princeton!
Introductory CWR courses are open enrollment but fill quickly. Advanced classes require departmental permission to enroll. Explore fall 2024 creative writing courses and review all course enrollment info. If you’ve always wanted to study creative writing but have never written creatively before, just jump in and try it out: introductory classes are designed for motivated beginners.
Questions about the program? Email Program Manager Erin West: erin.west@princeton.edu.
Dance
Watch a video introduction to the Program in Dance:
Dance Performance Opportunities & Courses
Princeton students perform during the 2023 Princeton Dance Festival. Photo by Larry Levanti
Want to perform? Students in the dance course DAN 328 “Princeton Dance Festival: Choreography & Performance” will perform in the Fall 2024 Festival at the Berlind Theatre (Nov. 22-24, 2024). Mandatory dance placement class (all students who attend will be placed in a section of the course) will be held on Monday, September 2 at 3 p.m. in the Hearst Dance Theater at the Lewis Arts complex. Let your advisor know you want to take a dance course!
DAN 328 meets 3 times each week: Mondays/Wednesdays at 4:30 p.m., plus a choreographic precept on Fridays (10 a.m. or 1:30 p.m., depending on class year and placement by faculty). On Mondays/Wednesdays, you will rehearse and learn repertoire to be performed in the Princeton Dance Festival; the Friday precept will offer instruction in choreography. You will have separate instructors for each component. Please email Cindy Rosenfeld at cr17@princeton.edu with any questions, or review Princeton Dance Festival FAQs.
Want to perform in Princeton Dance Festival but can’t take a dance course? Audition to be in a guest choreographer’s work! You may audition for all 3 opportunities but would only be cast in one. Guest Choreographer Auditions will be held Saturday, September 7. Works will include a ballet piece by Matthew Neenan, a contemporary work by Yue Yin, and a hip-hop work by Rennie Harris. Weekly rehearsals for all pieces will be Tuesdays/Thursdays from 4:30-6:20 p.m.
- Sept. 7 from 11 AM – 1 PM — with Matthew Neenan in Murphy Dance Studio
- Sept. 7 from 2-4 PM— with Yue Yin in Murphy Dance Studio
- Sept. 7 from 5-7 PM — with Rennie Harris in Murphy Dance Studio
- Register for Guest Choreographer Auditions
Want to perform in Senior Choreographic Independent Projects?
Seniors will hold workshops to introduce prospective cast members to their choreographic processes. Senior choreographic projects offer a great opportunity to perform during the spring 2025 semester in interesting new works exploring a wide range of genres, ideas and techniques. Be prepared to move, meet other dancers, and have fun!
- Sept. 3 + 5 at 4:30-6:20 p.m. in Hearst Dance Theater
- Open to all interested students, no registration required.
- Read more about senior choreographic projects
Students taking intro dance courses in hip-hop and breaking show off their moves during an end of semester showing. Photo by Jon Sweeney
Take a Dance Course
In addition to the Princeton Dance Festival course DAN 328, the courses listed below are open to first-year students, pending availability. View all fall 2024 dance courses
- DAN 211/AAS 211 — The American Experience and Dance Practices of the African Diaspora
- DAN 205 — Choreopoem
- DAN 215 — Introduction to Dance Across Cultures
- DAN 301 — Body and Object: Making Art that is both Sculpture and Dance
Weekly Drop-In Classes
Just want to take a class or two, or maybe try something new? Attend co-curricular (non-credit) drop-in, free, dance classes. View the dance co-curricular class offerings and schedule. The fall class schedule starts Monday, September 9.
If you have any questions before you come to campus, please feel free to reach out to professor Tina Fehlandt at fehlandt@princeton.edu.
Theater & Music Theater
Princeton Playhouse Choir members perform solos from the “Princess and the Frog Medley” during a concert held in Wallace Theater. Photo by Resonance Vision
The Program in Theater & Music Theater welcomes all new students, beginners and experienced alike, to explore theater and collaborate with award-winning professional theater artists and scholars in the classroom, rehearsal studio and onstage! Performing roles, production, design and musical opportunities are available to all first-year students in a diverse student-initiated season of classic, contemporary, musical and student-created pieces. No experience is required. Join us at our Try On Theater Days to get started on September 3 from 6-8 PM (annual theater community day) and September 4 + 5 (casting and design/production workshops) in the second-floor theater studios at the Lewis Arts complex. The Princeton Playhouse Ensembles, a choir and orchestra focused on music for the theater and open to all, will hold auditions September 2-6.
Students considering a minor are encouraged to explore all sides of theater making and can begin working towards student show support requirements in their first year. Keep an eye out for theater workshops including fall co-curricular classes open to all on performance, design, and production.
There is no application, audition or portfolio to begin pursuing a minor in theater and music theater — all students are accepted into the program.
Hear from Jane Cox about opportunities in theater in the video below:
Theater & Music Theater Courses
Student & community cast members in the Public Works adaptation of The Winter’s Tale perform at McCarter Theatre Center in November 2023. Photo by Larry Levanti
The Program in Theater & Music Theater offers courses in performance, directing, writing and composing for theater and music theater, design, technology in live entertainment, dramaturgy, theater and music theater scholarship, history and criticism, and special topics. First-year students who are committed to theater are encouraged to take THR/MTD 101, a mandatory course for the minor, and an introduction to many different kinds of theater making from a collaborative and multicultural perspective. View fall 2024 theater & music theater courses. Most available courses are open enrollment.
Questions about the program? Email Program Associate Joe Fonseca: jfonseca@princeton.edu
Visual Arts
Students at work during the VIS “Haptic Lab” course. Photo by Jon Sweeney
The Program in Visual Arts encourages you to immerse yourself in the process of making. Whether it is a film, sculpture, photograph, painting, or design project, our faculty of contemporary artists will guide you through the conception, creation, and exhibition of your works of art. Our 200-level courses are all geared toward first-year students and require no previous art making experience. Learn the skills and strategies to explore and express your life experience through art. View fall 2024 visual arts courses.
Interested in film, video and animation?
Within the Program in Visual Arts, courses are offered at introductory and advanced levels in film and video production. Students who want an introduction to digital animation should take Animation I, and those interested in screenwriting can take beginning and advanced screenwriting courses that are crosslisted in the visual arts and creative writing programs. View fall 2024 courses in film & animation.
Questions about the program? Email Program Associate Kristy Seymour: kseymour@princeton.edu
See inside 185!
Every fall, junior and senior students open their studios at 185 Nassau to the public for Open Studios. In this video, see the artists’ spaces and works-in-progress from last fall’s Open Studios event:
Princeton Atelier
Students share their final class presentation for a fall 2023 Princeton Atelier course. Photo by Brandon Le
The Princeton Atelier offers unique interdisciplinary courses taught by guest artists and focusing on the creation of new collaborative work. A number of seats in all fall Atelier courses are held for first year students — consider one of these not-to-be-missed experiences:
- In ATL 494, learn how to create comedy for television with Baby Wants Candy comedy writer Al Samuels and comedy writer Allison Silverman (Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Late Night)
- Patty Marx (The New Yorker) and Alan Zweibel (Saturday Night Live, Laugh Lines) will teach you how to write an epistolary novel, one based on correspondence written in the form of letters or other documents, in ATL 495
- Join Paul Muldoon and Kamala Sankaram in ATL 497 as they develop Custom of the Coast, a new opera intercutting the stories of an 18th c. Irish pirate sentenced to death and an Indian-born, Irish-based dentist who died in 2012 having been denied an abortion.
- In ATL 498, learn to work in teams to write original 10-minute musicals with Greg Kotis and Mark Hollmann, the Tony Award-winning writers of Urinetown The Musical.
Visit the Princeton Atelier page to learn more about fall 2024 Atelier courses. Please contact Mindy Solis with questions: ms2958@princeton.edu.
Explore past Atelier collaborations through photos, words, and videos in the Princeton Atelier course archive.
Music
For information on programs of study and courses in music, visit the Department of Music website.
Freshman Seminars
First-year students have a unique opportunity to begin their Princeton journey with a Freshman Seminar, working closely with a faculty member and a small group of fellow students on a topic of special interest. Consider taking one of these seminars that focus on the arts, led by LCA faculty during 2024-25:
- FRS 107 — “Expanded Craft ” with Amy Yao (Fall)
- FRS 123 — “Poetry Makes History, History Makes Poetry: Reading and Writing Documentary Poems” with Kathleen Ossip (Fall)
- FRS 132 — “Drawing Up the Wall” with Daniel Heyman (Spring)
- FRS 138 — “Representation in Documentary Filmmaking” with BJ Perlmutt (Fall)
- FRS 143 — “Is Politics a Performance?” with Aaron Landsman (Fall)
- FRS 147 — “How People Change: The Short Story and Life’s Transitions” with Sheila Kohler (Fall)
- FRS 169 — “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Wisdom of Crowds” with Susanna Moore (Fall)
- FRS 173 — “Acting Against Oppression” with Vivia Font (Spring)
- FRS 174 — “Drawing Data” with Tim Szetela (Spring)
Apply for Freshman Seminars
Each Freshman Seminar requires an application. Browse fall ’24 seminars and spring ’25 seminars and review the student application process.
Course Spotlight
See what kind of movements inspire students in the visual arts course “Digital Animation.” In this popular class, students examine, design and produce motion while learning a variety of analog and digital techniques from Lecturer in Visual Arts Tim Szetela.
Don’t Miss the Fun!
Sign up for our newsletter to receive a weekly email update on arts events happening at the Lewis Center. Join your fellow Tigers at over 120 performances, exhibitions, readings, film screenings and lectures offered each year by the Lewis Center, most of them free!
Ticketed events are priced at only $10 for students and are Tiger Ticket eligible through the Passport to the Arts (link opens new window) program, which makes them free to you! Just show your TigerCard at the box office – your Tiger Tickets are credited on your TigerCard.
Virtual Tour of LCA Spaces
Lewis Center for the Arts programming takes place at multiple locations across the Princeton campus including the Lewis Arts complex, 185 Nassau Street, McCarter Theatre Center, and other venues.