Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences: Sophomore Research Seminars

Posted on by Alison Fortenberry
The exterior of the New South Building with fall foliage.
New South, where many first-year writing seminars and sophomore research seminars take place.

First-year writing seminars are a rite of passage for all Princeton students, introducing you to the research and writing skills you need to craft an independent research paper. But what comes next? For many undergraduates, sophomore year is a year-long pause before you actually get to apply those independent research skills in your JP. The Princeton Writing Program’s sophomore research seminars offer an alternative.

Continue reading Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences: Sophomore Research Seminars

Digital Mapping in the Humanities and Social Sciences

Posted on by Alison Fortenberry
A map of church members' residential address, racial demographic data in each census tract, and an outline of Philadelphia in 1960
This is one of the maps I generated for my project. It demonstrates that, in the 1960s, most church members lived in predominantly white areas and many lived outside of the city of Philadelphia.

In my junior paper, I explored how the racial demographics of a Philadelphia church transformed from exclusively White to predominantly Black within a few short years. I started this project in the archive, looking for any documents that could point to when and how the church’s congregation began to transform. In minutes recorded of church meetings, I identified a period of white flight, where the neighborhood around the church became increasingly non-White, and, in response, many of the church’s White members relocated to the suburbs. I knew that I could describe this congregational migration in a written narrative, but I also wanted my readers to be able to visualize it, so I turned to digital mapping. 

Continue reading Digital Mapping in the Humanities and Social Sciences