William Griffith

I’m a Comparative Literature major with a certificate in Humanistic Studies.

Role(s) held in the Humanistic Studies Program:

Certificate Student, Humanities Mentor, Behrman Society

Activities on campus:

I am an active member of the Princeton University Climbing Team and lead singer of a campus band.

Why I decided to study the humanities:

I’ve known for many years that I wanted to go into the humanities. I was raised to be an avid consumer of all things arts and culture (especially music, art, and literature), but never knew what I would specialize in. I never wanted to be taking courses in just one field of study. I’ve always found my academic interests pulling me in multiple directions. In more ways than one, the Program in Humanistic Studies gave me the scholarly tools and showed me the path to designing a highly interdisciplinary course of study in the humanities at Princeton.

Independent work:

My interdisciplinary approach has been most important for my independent work on recorded popular music, which combines approaches from literary analysis, music theory, music production, queer theory, and semiotics.

HUM Sequence fall break trip:

I went to Rome in my sophomore year and was so enamored with the art and architecture that I saw that afterwards I thought I was going to be an Art and Archaeology major right up until a week before I declared. The trip has significantly enriched the art and architecture courses I took in my sophomore and junior years, providing a deep, vital connection to objects which most of my peers only got to experience as images on lecture slides.