Please consult the New School Course Catalog for a full course list. Fall 2023 courses include:
Creative Publishing & Critical Journalism, GPUB 5051
Natasha Lennard, Part-time Faculty
As an introduction to the master’s program in creative publishing and critical journalism, 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 2023. 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 professionals 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. *Open only to CPCJ students in the MA and BA-MA program.
Design & Future of Publishing: Design & Process - The Practice of Publishing, GPUB 5002
Nika Simovich Fisher, Assistant 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 in Creative Nonfiction, 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.
Currents Trends in Media Research, GPUB 6211
Julia Sonnevend, Associate Professor of Sociology and Communications
This course will cover some of the most pressing issues in media research in the early twenty-first century. Discussed topics include the role of Facebook in shaping international politics and culture, the power of algorithms, the digital transformation of journalism, the increasingly 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.
Profile Writing Workshop: The Master Key, GPUB 5104
Jazmine Hughes
In this class taught by New York Times Magazine journalist Jazmine Hughes, students will learn the key skills of profile writing: insight, empathy and the art of asking just one more question. Students will study the work of celebrated and contemporary profile writers -- Allison P. Davis, Vinson Cunningham, Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, Hilton Als -- while considering the practices and shifting purposes of a magazine profile in contemporary media landscapes. In this reporting and writing intensive course, students will write, draft and develop a profile, of magazine length, on their own chosen subjects, and will receive edits and consistent feedback.
Long Form Journalism Writing Workshop, GPUB 5103
Carina del Valle Schorske
This course will be taught by Carina del Valle Schorske. This class is a workshop on longform journalism, with each student expected to pitch, write, and edit a draft of 2000-4000 words on a topic of their choice, developing their essay in consultation with professors and peers, giving special attention to voice, structure, research, and narrative techniques capable of sustaining readers through extended investigations. We will read and analyze diverse examples of memorable longform journalism, including unconventional profiles by Julian Lucas and Elizabeth Hardwick, cultural criticism by Michel-Rolph Trouillot and Edgardo Rodriguez Juliá, and archival adventures by John Jeremiah Sullivan and Danielle A. Jackson. We will also be visited by working journalists who write or edit for places like The New York Times, The New Yorker, Pitchfork, and The Believer. This course will demystify the process behind magazine features and help students identify the kinds of questions that can drive their deepest thinking and writing as journalists.
Public Seminar Internship, GPUB 6993
James E. Miller, Professor of Liberal Studies and Politics, and Faculty Director of Creative Publishing & Critical Journalism
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. This course is open to: Creative Publishing and Critical Journalism majors only