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Karina Mackenzie, Media Studies, 09
As a working professional in the entertainment industry, Karina had explored opportunities onstage and in front of the camera, but decided that there were more powerful choices to be made on the production side of the equation: choices that would enable her to have some affect in the media realm within which she was working. Thus, she began looking for a graduate program that would not only give her the technical skills necessary to create independent media projects, like shooting, editing, and designing, but a program that might also stimulate her thinking about the current state of media and entertainment: offering a chance to look at historical patterns of communication, to examine media within a social justice framework, and to look at what possibilities lie ahead for documentary as a practice.
The New School's Masters in Media Studies exceeded her expectations in being able to explore these, and many other, aspects of media. Classes in the Media Studies Department are constantly being tweaked to respond to the media environment, such as the fusing of introductory design and theory classes in order for students to more readily appreciate the practical application of design within a theoretical communication framework.
In 2007 Karina began a documentary project about Education in Uganda, and The New School curriculum allowed her to create an Independent Study Project where she could build on the theories she learned in classes such as Media & Social Justice and combine them with practices explored in Emerging Documentary Practice. The result is an on-going dialogue between producer and subject: Karina's documentary project incorporates aspects of Participatory Video (where the subjects operate the camera themselves, and thus allows for greater participation and empowerment of the subjects). The project relies on the video, editing, and web skills Karina learned in the Media Studies program, while also drawing on communication theories past and present. It is a true fusion of the academic and practical lessons she learned at The New School, a fusion that would be difficult to find at any other school across the country.