Current Courses

Please consult the New School Course Catalog for a full course list. Spring 2021 courses include:

• Creative Publishing & Critical Journalism, GPUB 5001
  Jon Baskin, Instructor and Associate Director, Creative Publishing and Critical Journalism, and Natasha Lennard, Part-time Faculty
  
  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, Mathew Arnold, Oscar Wilde, Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, George Orwell, Guy Debord, C. Wright Mills, Roland Barthes, Susan Sontag, and Bernard Williams; with site visits to The New York Times, Vice, Penguin/ Random House, Gawker Media, Dissent &c. 
  
  
• Design & The Future of Publishing: Design & Process- The Practice 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 towards creating conceptual publishing projects.that cross design and publishing through an analysis of contemporary books, magazines, and periodicals across both printed and digital platforms.
  
  
• The Personal and the Political, GPUB 5176
  Melissa Monroe, Part-time 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.
   
  
• Multimedia Publishing, Production and Writing Lab: Basic Skills, GPUB 6001
  Maya Binyam, Part-time Lecturer, and Natasha Lennard, Part-time Faculty
  
  This course provides focused training for key skills for careers in journalism, media, and publishing in 2-3 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 2020. 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 in on areas of the field they’d like to develop beyond this course.
  
  
• Public Seminar Internship, GPUB 6993
  
  In this internship students learn and assist in the production and publication of Public Seminar, an independent project of The New School Publishing Initiative. Public Seminar is produced by New School faculty, students and staff, and supported by colleagues and collaborators around the globe.