A New Kind of Program
In The New School for Social Research's program in liberal studies, students are encouraged to take advantage of a faculty of renowned professors-and to learn about the fine art of writing from an equally distinguished group of journalist-researchers. An interdisciplinary program, Liberal Studies offers students the flexibility to design custom courses of study, organized around the production of an MA thesis.

What can a student write about? Almost anything. Take, for example, these recent theses:

• Exploring Single Women in Sex and the City and Beyond
• The Aura of the Brand: Nike and Postmodern Capitalism
• Ruins and Memories: Walter Benjamin's Readings of Marcel Proust
• The Pinochet Case, Universal Jurisdiction, and State Sovereignty
• Greed, God, and Gifts: Philanthropic Foundations and Their Role in American Society
• Franz Kafka and Hannah Arendt's Image of Totalitarianism
• Futurism, Fascism, and Henri Bergson's Philosophy of Time
• The Concept of Self-Government in Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln
• Jewish Identity Today: Israel and the Issue of Intermarriage
• Constructing Taste: Forecasting Services and the Sociology of Fashion
• Allegories of Laughter in Baudelaire, Freud, Bataille, and Kundera
• Biblical Imagery in Nietzsche's Zarathustra
• Tap Dancing and Hip-Hop: Two Urban Art Forms
• Anticommunism in Action: The American Jewish Committee Reacts to the Rosenberg Execution
• Arthur Danto's Interpretation of Andy Warhol
• The Body Politic in Walt Whitman's Poetry
• The American Legion and the Origins of the G.I. Bill
• Richard Rorty's Concept of the Self

In today's world, students often feel the need to think twice before committing to more graduate work. Liberal Studies offers a useful way to explore a number of different options. Some recent graduates are working as writers, painters, and musicians. One edits his own magazine. Others are working toward PhDs in a variety of disciplines, from philosophy, political science, and sociology at New School University to English at CUNY, film school at NYU, and art history at UC Berkeley.

[top]

The Curriculum
The Liberal Studies program is designed to facilitate interdisciplinary study—and an independent approach to learning. At the same time, the program provides entering students with a core curriculum.

At the heart of the experience are two courses. One is an introductory seminar required of all entering students, Modernity and Its Discontents. In this course, students are introduced to key themes and texts that can serve as a touchstone for a shared conversation, both inside and outside the classroom.

The other key course is the writing workshop, or proseminar, required of all students as they complete their liberal studies thesis. Outside the class, students are expected to work in consultation with a relevant expert in their area of interest. Inside this class, students are asked to think about the form and style of their writing. Each week, students come together to discuss drafts of work in progress, learn how to offer constructive criticism, and develop an appreciation for inquiry as a collaborative process. After each student has spoken, the instructor, joined some weeks by a different "guest editor" who is a member of the program's core writing faculty, offers professional advice on how to edit and revise each draft. The goal is to help advanced students develop and project a literary voice of their own—an aspect of intellectual production ignored in other, more conventional graduate programs.

At all times students are encouraged, with the help of an assigned faculty advisor, to explore the resources of the entire New School for Social Research, taking any number of courses in other departments and disciplines. Currently, the school offers unique educational opportunities in social theory and Continental philosophy, among other areas.

[top]

MA Requirements

• Thirty credit hours of courses must be completed with a grade average of 3.0 or better. The courses taken must include GLIB 5101, Modernity and Its Discontents, normally at the start of the course of study; and GLIB 5301, Proseminar in Intellectual and Cultural History, normally at the end of the course of study. The remaining credits (normally twenty-four) are electives, which may be taken within any department. Each student, with the help of a faculty advisor, will design a plan of study to meet his or her specific intellectual needs.
• In addition, students must complete an MA thesis that presents the results of their research project.

[top]

MA Thesis
The composition of a thesis is, distinctively, a central goal of a master of arts in liberal studies. More than a piece of original written work, the thesis traditionally has been used as an exercise in the production of knowledge and as a rite of passage that introduces a student to the community of scholars. In the case of the MA thesis in liberal studies, these traditional goals are approached through the new interdisciplinary methods and theoretical perspectives of the program. Students are invited to examine a text, era, or contemporary subject in a way that sheds fresh light on topics ordinarily confined within established disciplinary boundaries. In addition, the MA thesis gives the student the advantage of having done a significant body of work that can form a solid foundation for further doctoral-level research and writing.

[top]

Other Guidelines
The Liberal Studies program is designed to enable students to complete the MA thesis in two years of full-time work. A full-time course of study is not, however, required. Part-time students negotiate a timetable of their own, in consultation with their faculty advisor.

In their first semester at The New School for Social Research, each student is assigned a faculty advisor. The role of the advisor at this preliminary stage of study is to help students clarify their research interests and to use wisely the many different educational resources available at The New School University. There are no limits on the courses that a student may choose: every course offered by the school counts toward the thirty course credits required for the MA. Students may take any course offered by the school that they consider appropriate to their scholarly needs. Whenever possible, however, students' course work should harmonize with their prospective research projects; papers written for seminars might then be developed into a thesis.

In the second semester, students continue to meet with their faculty advisor. At this stage, advisors are expected to help full-time students formulate a focused topic for their thesis and help students select an appropriate thesis advisor.

After completing eighteen course credits and in order to continue work toward the MA, students in the Liberal Studies program are required to submit a one-page preliminary thesis proposal to the program's chair; they also are required to indicate which professor has agreed to supervise the thesis. Once this proposal has been accepted by the faculty advisor, responsibility for overseeing the student's course of study shifts to the thesis supervisor. In this phase of their research, students may also elect to take an independent study course with their thesis supervisor, in order to facilitate their research and writing. After completing twenty-seven course credits, students are required to file with the program's chair a five-page précis of the proposed thesis. While they are actively working on their theses, students also are required to attend the proseminar Intellectual History and Cultural Studies. This class functions as a workshop in which students submit their work in progress to their peers. The aim is threefold: to develop research strategies, to sharpen concepts and arguments, and last but not least, to produce a piece of polished writing that can appeal to the widest possible audience of educated readers.

The successful MA thesis is a piece of original work, representing either a new interpretation or fresh research using primary source materials, or both. Such papers normally consist of at least forty and no more than seventy-five pages. The aim in writing the thesis is to teach students how to produce scholarly work that combines analytic rigor and intellectual passion. Although the Committee on Liberal Studies does not expect anything resembling a full-length dissertation, we do urge students who plan to continue toward a PhD to regard the MA thesis as a first draft of work that can be developed into a dissertation.

[top]

Use of Liberal Studies Work to Meet PhD Program
Admission Requirements for Other Departments
The requirements for the PhD vary with each department. Students who wish to continue their studies at the doctoral level in philosophy, political science, sociology, or anthropology are free to prepare for that option by enrolling in the appropriate courses in those departments. In order to be admitted into any of these PhD programs, Liberal Studies students must meet certain requirements. Often, work done in Liberal Studies, including the MA thesis, may partially fulfill these requirements in other graduate programs. In each case, students should consult the relevant department and develop a coordinated program in consultation with members of the Committee on Liberal Studies and faculty in Philosophy, Political Science, Sociology, or Anthropology.

[top]