🐯 Princeton Study of America unofficial reading list 2026
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Freshman level
Comparative Perspectives on Power, Resistance & Change AMS/ASA/LAO/NAI 101 (fa26)
- The US War with Mexico: A Brief History with Documents by Ernesto Chavez
Sophomore level
Intro. to Law & Public Policy in African American History AMS 231 (fa26)
- Reconsidering Reparations: Why Climate Justice & Constructive Politics Are Needed in the Wake of Slavery & Colonialism by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò
- Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life by Fields & Fields
- When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in 20th-Century America by Ira Katznelson
- America, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries by Eddie S. Glaude Jr.
Identity in the Spanish-Speaking World LAO 250 (fa26)
- I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala by Rigoberta Menchú
- Love After Death by Pedro Calderón de la Barca
Jews Across the Americas AMS 257 (fa26)
- Like a Bride by Rosa Nissán
- Like a Mother by Rosa Nissán
- God of Vengeance by Donald Margulies
- The Implacable Urge to Defame: Cartoon Jews in the American Press, 1877-1935 by Matthew Baigell
- Jews Across the Americas: A Sourcebook, 1492–Present by Brodsky & Leibman
The Makeover AMS 296 (fa26)
- A Gesture Life by Chang-rae Lee
- Ornamentalism by Anne Anlin Cheng
- Ordinary Disasters: How I Stopped Being a Model Minority by Anne Anlin Cheng
Gender, Sexuality & Migration ASA 297 (fa26)
- Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery by Siddharth Kara
- Intimate Migrations: Gender, Family & Illegality among Transnational Mexicans by Deborah A. Boehm
- High-Tech Housewives: Indian IT Workers, Gendered Labor & Transmigration by Amy Bhatt
- The Trafficker Next Door: How Household Employers Exploit Domestic Workers by Rhacel Salazar Parreñas
- The Qualities of a Citizen: Women, Immigration & Citizenship, 1870-1965 by Martha Gardner
Junior level
American Literature: 1930-Present AMS 340 (fa26)
- ✔️ The Road by Cormac McCarthy
- American Pastoral by Philip Roth
- ✔️ Maus: A Survivor’s Tale by Art Spiegelman
- ✔️ Beloved by Toni Morrison (my highlights)
- Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
- The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
- Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
- As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
- The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
LANDBACK! Indigenous Rematriation & Restitution NAI 360 (fa26)
- Allotment Stories: Indigenous Land Relations under Settler Siege by Justice & O’Brien
Curatorial Time: Historic American Art & its 21st Century Audiences AMS 362 (fa26)
- Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collections by James Christen Steward
- Whitney Museum of American Art: Handbook of the Collection by Dana Miller
- Toward Joy: New Frameworks for American Art by Stephanie Sparling Williams
Senior level
Musical Theatre & Fan Cultures AMS 440 (fa26)
- Fandom in Musical Theatre by Jessica Hillman-McCord
- John Proctor is the Villain by Kimberly Belflower