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Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Jules Feiffer entertained a standing-room-only crowd by reading aloud from many of his cartoon panels — complete with imitations of the accents of various political figures — during a discussion of his life and work at the James Stewart Film Theater Dec. 2.

Feiffer, affecting Bill Clinton’s Southern drawl, Lyndon Johnson’s Texas twang, and Henry Kissinger’s German inflections, elicited laughter from the crowd through a discourse of his popular comic strips “Sick Sick Sick” and “Feiffer,” which ran for more than 40 years in the Village Voice.

Fascinated with comic strips as a child, Feiffer loved “the sense of immediacy” in cartooning and how it “displays what’s going on in a character’s head.”

“Psychoanalysis played a big part in the cartoons I did,” he explained.

Inspired by early animators like Winsor McCay and Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Feiffer described how he would “go to the library, look up great cartoonists, and figure out who [he] would steal from.”

By Angela Wu ’12

A talk by controversial author and activist Nonie Darwish scheduled for Nov. 18 was canceled after the student groups sponsoring the event, Tigers for Israel (TFI) and Whig-Clio, withdrew their sponsorship the previous day.

Darwish, a former Muslim who converted to Christianity after moving to the United States, has been criticized for her harsh condemnation of Islam. In her recent book, Darwish writes that “Islam has annihilated every culture it has invaded or immigrated into.”

Tigers for Israel president Addie Lerner ’11 said the group withdrew support when it learned the full extent of Darwish’s views. “TFI was not going to associate itself with a speaker who had such negative views of Islam as a religion,” Lerner said.

Laura Hankin ’10, right, sings “I Could Have Danced All Night” in the Princeton production of My Fair Lady. Hankin is playing the lead role of Eliza Doolittle for her theater program senior thesis, and fellow senior Shawn Fennell plays Professor Henry Higgins. Suzanne Agins ’97, a lecturer in theater in the Lewis Center for the Arts, is directing the production, with book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe.

The show premiered Nov. 13, and three shows remain, Nov. 19-21 at McCarter Theatre Center’s Berlind Theatre.

(Photo by Frank Wojciechowski/Courtesy the Lewis Center for the Arts)

Jackson Greenberg ’12 plays at a recent Shape Machine show. (Courtesy Jackson Greenberg ’12)

By Katy Pinke ’10

A new jam band has been rapidly gaining popularity and acclaim in Princeton’s independent music scene. Shape Machine, born out of a summer collaboration between music majors Jackson Greenberg ’12 and Matt Wong ’10, debuted last month and will perform for students and alumni at University Cottage Club Nov. 14.

Greenberg’s primary instrument is the vibraphone, but he is also fluent on piano and drums. He began writing jazz music in high school, moved to sound design and scores for theater, and writes everything from film scores to pop songs. He has performed in international festivals with esteemed musicians and jazz ensembles, and he’s studied under well-known musicians and composers, including Orrin Evans and Alan Menken. (Audio samples of Greenberg’s work are available at myspace.com/jacksongreenberg.)

Wong began as a jazz guitarist, playing gigs throughout high school. He has backed a wide range of musical acts. Last fall, for example, he accompanied an opera-singing duo at the Mercer County Italian American Festival.

“The sound of Shape Machine is not only a byproduct of exposure to a lot of different sounds,” Wong said. “It is also a collaboration. When we came to campus in the fall, we contacted all of the musicians we knew who might be interested in our idea and held auditions.”

By Brittany Urick ’10

Retired Canadian Sen. Roméo Dallaire spoke about conflict prevention and peacekeeping in a Nov. 9 lecture at Dodds Auditorium. Dallaire highlighted serious threats but seemed to express optimism for the future when mentioning the U.N.’s efforts to reform conflict resolution strategies. He also praised the ever-growing worldwide NGO community, which he called “the conscience of humanity.”

Dallaire, a former lieutenant general who served as force commander of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) during the 1994 genocide, is intimately familiar with the daunting challenges that weak peacekeeping mandates can pose. He refused to abandon his post during the genocide despite the refusal of the U.N. and the international community to intervene to halt the violence.

David Lieb ’03, left, and Andy Huibers ’92 of Bump Technologies. Lieb will be on campus for a Nov. 12 panel discussion at the Friend Center. (Courtesy Bump Technologies)

Two of the Princetonians highlighted in PAW's Nov. 4 story about alumni and students who have developed iPhone applications will participate in a Nov. 12 discussion of "iPhone apps: The new high-tech gold rush?" in the Friend Center Auditorium at 5:30 p.m.

David Lieb ’03 of Bump Technologies, the startup that created the popular Bump app for sharing contact information, and Matthew Connor ’11, an undergraduate who has developed an app that helps diabetics manage their health, will join two other panelists -- Sharon Fordham, chairwoman of Skyworks, which develops games for the iPhone, and Ken Kay, CEO of ici, a publishing, social-networking, and blogging platform for mobile devices.

The event is sponsored by the Keller Center for Innovation in Engineering Education, Jumpstart New Jersey Angel Network, and Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP.

Cyclists from UBikes cross the Brooklyn Bridge on their Oct. 25 ride. (Courtesy UBikes)

A dozen Princeton students, staff members, and friends of the University’s bicycle co-op made an ambitious ride through New York and New Jersey Oct. 25. The group, led by UBikes program manager Sean Gleason ’09 and Ph.D. candidate Jeffrey Domanski, helped to bring a new fleet of bikes to campus for use in a faculty and staff bike-share program.

The group met before dawn, taking the 5:12 a.m. train to Penn Station, and did not arrive back on campus until after dark, starting at the Worksman Cycles factory in Queens, pedaling over the Brooklyn Bridge to a ferry terminal in Manhattan, and continuing on into rural New Jersey before getting a lift from a University van for the last leg of the trip.

Climbing the hills of New Jersey’s eastern highlands on heavy-duty three-speed bikes proved more time-consuming than the group expected, Gleason explained.

“We knew we were trying something absolutely crazy, and crazy’s what we got,” he said. The ride was meant to demonstrate the benefits of sustainable, local choices, like the one UBikes made when it purchased 100 new bikes from Worksman.

The last week has been a busy one for Princeton in Go Cross Campus, the Ivy League’s virtual turf war and strategy game. Old Nassau pushed Brown off its footholds on Long Island, invaded the coasts of Massachusetts and Maine, and prevented Yale from storming the shores of New Jersey. But to win the annual competition, Princeton will need to add more troops, according to Dan Humphrey ’12, the group’s “quartermaster.”

So far, more than 700 Princeton students and alumni are participating in Go Cross Campus (GXC to the initiated), which includes teams from each of the eight Ivy League schools. The object of the game is to seize territory on a map of New England, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. (Alumni can sign up at ivy.gocrosscampus.com.)

This year’s tournament began Oct. 10 and should run into December (last year’s competition took 61 days). Princeton won the inaugural tournament in 2007 but fell to Penn in 2008.

(Click photo to enlarge)

About 160 alumni and current members of the Princeton Footnotes harmonized on stage at Richardson Auditorium Oct. 10 in celebration of the a cappella group’s 50th anniversary.

The reunion included three-quarters of the original Footnotes and representatives of Princeton classes ranging from 1961 to 2013. After a day of rehearsals, alumni took the stage in ensembles of about 20 members, grouped by class year, and performed for 15 minutes — the traditional length of a set in a multi-group arch sing.

At the end of the concert, all of the singers gathered for a set of Footnotes favorites (video of the finale is included below). Afterward, clusters of alumni performed impromptu concerts in archways around campus, said John Preston ’11, who helped plan the weekend’s events.

By Brittany Urick ’10

On Oct. 12, a cast featuring Princeton students staged a reading of “The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later,” a play that assesses the impact of Matthew Shepard’s murder on the Wyoming community that the crime made famous.

Eleven years ago, Shepard was beaten, tied to a fence, and left to die by two fellow University of Wyoming students who targeted him because he was gay. The performance provided a lens through which to examine a current issue: the debate in Congress over legislation that would broaden the definition of violent federal hate crimes to include those committed because of a victim’s sexual orientation or gender identity.

The play is a compilation of interviews conducted by members of the Tectonic Theater Project when they revisited Laramie a decade after Shepard’s murder. The work raises questions about memory and what it means to move on from tragedy.

By Katy Pinke ’10

Molecular biologist and author Sean Carroll delivered the annual Louis Clark Vanuxem Lecture at the Friend Center Oct. 7, introducing some of the subjects covered in his new book, Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species. Carroll, a University of Wisconsin professor of molecular biology and genetics and an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, explained that in his book, which chronicles the adventures of leading explorers of the natural sciences over the past 200 years, he wanted to celebrate those scientists who “walked where no others had walked, saw what no one else had seen, and thought what no one else had thought.”

Carroll’s talk centered around the life work of three famous figures — Alfred Wallace, Henry Walter Bates, and of course, Charles Darwin — and the overlap of their work to “uncover the origin of the species.” He stressed the uncompromising efforts of each, not only when confronting the trials of arduous traveling expeditions to the Galapagos or up the Amazon, but also during a time when discoveries they were making completely diverged from creationist scientific discourses of the day. “Their discoveries really formed the first golden age of evolutionary biology,” Carroll explained.

The bottle designed by Alyce Tzue ’10; message: ” … You are here for a reason. You just have to figure out what that reason is.” (Courtesy The Bottle Project)

By Katy Pinke ’10

On Sept. 16, the night before the first day of classes this fall, Princeton freshmen set out with maps in hand in search of bottles. “The Bottle Project,” a collaboration between the Student Design Agency (SDA) and the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students (ODUS), gave alumni the chance to impart words of wisdom to the Class of 2013 through 13 messages in bottles scattered around north campus.

Thirteen volunteers from the SDA each designed a message in a bottle over the summer, inspired by pieces of advice offered by Princeton alumni. On the eve of the bottle search, the designers placed their creations in favorite spots; some bottles hung from trees, others in hard-to-reach places like the center of the Woodrow Wilson School fountain.

The idea arose out of an ODUS initiative to find an effective means by which alumni could inspire and guide incoming freshmen as they start out at Princeton. Hoping to carry out this reach-across idea in a meaningful way, Dean Thomas Dunne came to the SDA before the end of the last school year. At first, Dunne and the student designers discussed the use of posters, a medium employed often by the agency in its work providing numerous student and administrative bodies with design services. But instead, the concept evolved into a more imaginative and interactive experience.