Current Courses

Please consult the New School Course Catalog for a full course list. Fall 2019 courses include:

• Creative Publishing & Critical Journalism, GPUB 5001
  Jon Baskin, CPCJ Associate Director, and Jim Miller, Professor of Liberal Studies and Politics and CPCJ Faculty Director
  
  From the dawn of the mechanical printing press, the dissemination of ideas has been tied to the means of reproducing words and texts. Since the traditional printed codex and such nineteenth century offshoots as the newspaper and magazine face an uncertain future in a brave new world of digital media, tweets, and social networking, this seminar will survey the kinds of “worlds built by words” that first flourished in the Renaissance – and may yet flourish again, should imaginative writers and innovative entrepreneurs take up the challenge of reinventing serious intellectual publishing in a post-print world. Readings include texts by Anthony Grafton, Robert Darnton, Baudelaire, Matthew Arnold, Oscar Wilde, Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, George Orwell, Guy Debord, C. Wright Mills, Roland Barthes, Susan Sontag, and Bernard Williams; site visits will be made to the New York Times, Vice, Penguin/Random House, Gawker Media, Dissent, and other publishers. This course is open to BA/MA students; please email the instructor for permission to register.
  
  
• Design & Future Of Publishing, GPUB 5002
  Juliette Cezzar, Associate Professor of Communication Design
  
  This course is specifically designed to serve as a broad foundation for students from non-design backgrounds to give form to content. This is a hands-on studio course that will begin with projects that investigate typography, book and pamphlet design, digital printing, content on the Web, and ideation. Contemporary issues that cross design and publishing are discussed through a series of readings and analysis of contemporary books, magazines, and periodicals across both printed and digital platforms. The course is limited to CPCJ students in the fall. In the spring, half of the class consists of Parsons undergraduate design students, and students work in multidisciplinary teams on creating conceptual publishing projects that cross design and publishing through an analysis of contemporary books, magazines, and periodicals across both printed and digital platforms. 
  
  
• Tempest Tossed: Podcast Practicum, GPUB 5100
  T. Alexander Aleinikoff, University Professor
  
  In this practicum, students will engage in planning, producing, and promoting the Zolberg Institute’s podcast, Tempest Tossed: Conversations on Migration and Mobility. The practicum has the twin goals of (1) providing in-depth discussions for a public audience of current issues relating to immigration and forced migration in the United States and abroad and (2) preparing students to enter the podcast world. It will be co-taught by Alex Aleinikoff, director of the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility at The New School, and Golda Arthur, senior producer of podcasts at Vox Media. Students will research and develop podcast episodes, take part in podcast production, and implement strategies for promotion of the podcast to a wider range of listeners. This semester we may focus on the topic of climate change and migration and also produce a "listening tour" of Americans' views on immigration. Open to: university graduate students; those outside of the major should seek permission from their program and the department of the course. This course is also open to Lang seniors with permission from the instructor. Lang seniors interested in taking the course should contact the instructor directly.
   
  
• Current Trends In Media Research, GPUB 5115
  Julia Sonnevend, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Communications
  
  This course will cover some of the most pressing issues in media research in the early 21st century. Topics discussed include the role of Facebook in shaping international politics and culture, the power of algorithms, the digital transformation of journalism, the increasing online presence of children, and the challenges journalists face in illiberal contexts. We will read literature from multiple disciplines including sociology, communication studies, political science, and psychology while also discussing case studies in depth.
  
  
• The Personal and the Political in Creative Nonfiction, GPUB 5176
  Melissa Monroe, Assistant Professor
  
  How does a writer shape his or her personal experience into work that speaks to issues of general political and social importance? In this course, we examine short pieces and excerpts from books by a wide range of writers who have used the first person to report on current events, engage with public figures, and reflect on social or cultural phenomena. Authors covered include, among others, James Agee, Nicholson Baker, James Baldwin, Max Beerbohm, Jenny Diski, Susan Faludi, Henry James, Margo Jefferson, Alfred Kazin, Janet Malcolm, Jan Morris, Maggie Nelson, E.B. White, Colson Whitehead and Virginia Woolf. We focus particularly on the construction of narrative voice and perspective, and on the ethical and psychological questions that arise when the author serves as a character in his or her own work. The course has a strong workshop component; students write three brief essays and one longer one, and we spend part of almost every meeting discussing effective examples of student work.
  
  
• Democratic Crisis and the Politics of Social Media, GPUB 5222
  Claire Potter, Professor of History
  
  In this course, we seek to understand the recent history of democratic crisis by examining the rise of a global digital public sphere. In the past three decades, the politics of social meda have been both aspirational and cynical. While increased communication within and across national borders, as well as the possibility of instant translation, can inspire global democratic organizing, digital communication has also fueled authoritarian and antidemocratic coalition building. The benefits of social media are not abstract: It fuels resistance movements; supports access to privileged information, local journalism, and fact checking; and powers networks that guide refugees and immigrants fleeing state violence. Yet the same apps and digital tools have also fueled the rise of nationalism, authoritarianism, surveillance, and global terror. Using Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities (1983) as a provocation, we will chart the similarities and differences between social media and its nondigital predecessors, work to understand the present terrain in which citizens manage information, and imagine principles that might guide a democratic digital public sphere.
  
  
• Truth, Deception, and Self-Deception in Politics, Philosophy, and the Media, GPUB 5610
  Jim Miller, Professor of Liberal Studies and Politics and CPCJ Faculty Director
  
  The concept of truth and the virtues of truth-telling have played a surprisingly paradoxical role in a variety of cultural settings. This seminar explores that role in literature, political theory, and the practices of modern fact-finding institutions, including journalism. Readings include Oedipus Rex, The Republic by Plato, The Prince by Machiavelli, Hannah Arendt on lying, Jonathan Schell's Time of Illusions (an account of one journalist trying to get to the bottom of the Watergate scandal in the 1970s), and philosophical works debating the value of truth, including writings by Richard Rorty and Bernard Williams. We will look in some detail at the actions of Edward Snowden and the media coverage of his NSA revelations as an example of both truth telling and of a type of advocacy journalism scornful of claims to “objectivity.” In addition, the class will be joined for several sessions by a visiting investigative journalist, who will talk about their experience in trying to discover the truth about a specific event.
  
  
• Multimedia Publishing, Production, and Writing Lab: Basic Skills, GPUB 6001
  Maya Binyam And Natasha Lennard
  
  This course provides focused training for key skills for careers in journalism, media, and publishing in two- to three-week intensive units. Topics covered include editing fundamentals, fact finding and research, op-ed writing, profiling, beat reporting, writing pitches, conducting interviews, journalistic ethics, freelance work, career preparedness, and more. Students will become versed in the concrete fundamentals of working as a journalist in 2019. They will be prepared to pursue a variety of writing and editing tracks in their future careers, and have the insight and feedback of working editor (Maya Binyam) and working journalist and author (Natasha Lennard) to help them identify strengths and weaknesses, better their practice, and focus on areas of the field they’d like to develop beyond this course.