News & Events
Historian Jill Lepore on AI and American Democracy
The Center for the American Experience invites you to join Jill Lepore, award-winning American historian, New Yorker staff writer, and professor of law and American history at Harvard University, for a conversation with CAE faculty co-director Natalia Mehlman Petrzela on the American experience and her new book, The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State. Lepore’s work has long explored how Americans understand democracy, constitutionalism, technology, and the institutions that shape public life, and this event will situate her latest book within that broader intellectual project. The discussion will range across the themes that define her scholarship and public writing, from the promises and dangers of technological governance to the evolving meanings of liberty, equality, and civic responsibility in the United States.The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State examines how modern states have increasingly relied on bureaucratic systems, algorithms, and engineered institutions to manage society, raising urgent questions about who controls these artificial structures and what they mean for democratic accountability. Drawing on her signature blend of historical depth and clear, accessible argument, Lepore traces the rise of these engineered systems and warns of their fragility when they outpace the human capacities they are meant to serve. The evening will open with brief introductory remarks by Zed Adams, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Vice President of Technology, and Julia Sonnevend, Associate Professor of Sociology and Communications and co-director of the CAE.
Reading Biomaterials Lecture
Join bio-material researcher Elena Francioni of BIO.TEXTILES for the lecture, Reading Biomaterials: Learning Through Unexpected Outcomes.Reading materials begin where experiments don’t go as planned. A material warps, cracks, becomes brittle, or behaves unexpectedly, and what looks like failure becomes a source of information. Drawing from the research of bio-material researcher and industrial designer Elena Francioni with agar and alginate-based materials, the lecture explores how observing, questioning, and testing material behavior can turn unexpected results into the next step of material development.Join Zoom here!Course Description: Bio-based Materials is a graduate-level elective course that explores the creation and application of novel material solutions. Through lectures, field trips, and hands-on activities, students gain a comprehensive understanding of the challenges and opportunities of integrating bio-based materials into design practices. The course will consider material selection, fabrication techniques, lifecycle analysis, and how materials inform constructed environments. Students will engage in design projects to demonstrate the potential of bio-based materials as innovative and sustainable design solutions.Email Jessica Thies, Part-Time Faculty of Bio-Based Materials, with any questions at: thiesj@newschool.eduIMAGES / CAPTION: © 2026 Elena Francioni / BIO.TEXTILES
Good Interventions '26 - Design Exhibition
Good Interventions is an annual exhibition of intangible design projects that address the pressing issues of our time by bringing together the power of design and social sciences. For its fourth edition, fifteen projects have been selected to be exhibited. The program is organized by the School of Design Strategies and will take place in its permanent exhibition as a portal in the Platform of Design Strategies.Designers: Alison Thomson | Andrea Wollensak | Azra Sungu | Bilge Merve Aktas | Cem Caliskan | Chuman Rachel Zhang | Diya Basu-Sen | Deborah Swinglehurst | Ece Günesen | Ethan Hoppin | Irem Tekogul | Ishita Bhardwaj | Katja Novak | Mariam Mamaladze | Mariam Mohammedamin Abdul Malek | Nina Fudge | Oriola Omololu | Parisa Mehta | Rachel Barnard | Scheepers Simon | Shemona Singh | Simone De Vivo | Shuruthi Saravanan | Srividhya S | Susanti Vijaykumar | Timo Vreux-Gerbier | Vaibhav Kapri | Yaman Çiçek | Yoon Jungmin
Good Interventions '26 Exhibition Opening
The School of Design Strategies is pleased to announce the opening of the fourth edition of Good Interventions, an annual exhibition dedicated to intangible design projects that address the pressing challenges of our time.This year’s edition will feature 15 projects, representing the work of over 30 designers whose practices span diverse disciplines and geographies. Together, these projects demonstrate how design—combined with the insights of the social sciences—can uncover alternatives, forge connections, and propose new possibilities for shaping our collective future.From reimagining systems of care to creating platforms for collaboration and dialogue, each project embodies design’s potential as both a critical and imaginative force. Visitors to the exhibition will have the opportunity not only to discover these interventions but also to meet the participating designers in person, exchanging ideas and expanding conversations across communities.Hosted within the permanent exhibition portal at the Platform of Design Strategies, Good Interventions affirms the School’s commitment to supporting bold, socially engaged design that sparks reflection and inspires change. Designers: Alison Thomson | Andrea Wollensak | Azra Sungu | Bilge Merve Aktas | Cem Caliskan | Chuman Rachel Zhang | Deborah Swinglehurst | Ece Günesen | Ethan Hoppin | Irem Tekogul | Ishita Bhardwaj | Katja Novak | Mariam Mamaladze | Mariam Mohammedamin Abdul Malek | Nina Fudge | Oriola Omololu | Parisa Mehta | Rachel Barnard | Scheepers Simon | Shemona Singh | Simone De Vivo | Shuruthi Saravanan | Srividhya S | Susanti Vijaykumar | Timo Vreux-Gerbier | Vaibhav Kapri | Yaman Çiçek | Yoon JungminFriday, October 23rd3:00 pm - 5:00pmWollman Hall B50065 W 11th StOr Zoom
RUFF CUTS 2 - FALL 2026
This event will be on campus. Registration is required. We are excited to announce the second RUFF CUTS of the Fall 2026 Semester, which will take place on Friday, October 23, 2026 from 6:00 pm – 10:00 pm at Room UL102 in the University Center, 63 Fifth Avenue. About RUFF CUTS Ruff Cuts is a monthly student-run series in which current students and alumni screen and discuss works-in-progress films. Presenters receive feedback on their work from the audience in attendance made up of fellow students as well as faculty members and invited film professionals. We usually screen an average of 7-10 films on a first come, first served basis. Deadline: Please submit your works-in-progress to ruffcuts@newschool.edu by Wednesday, October 21, 2026.Presented by the School of Art, Media, and Technology's MA Media Studies Program at Parson's School of Design.
Process Pamphlets: Issues 6-9 Launch & Conversation
In conjunction with Parsons Offset Art Book Fair, Process Pamphlets will launch four new issues. Join us for the launch of issues 6-9 from Zoë Pulley, Andrew & Marite Kuus-Hill, No Ideas (Devin Washburn and Philip DiBello), and Kelli Anderson. The event will feature short talks followed by a panel discussion.#6: Zoë Pulley makes an installation for The Armory Show#7: Andrew & Marite Kuus-Hill start an art book fair in Canada#8: No Ideas designs Erik Carter’s Design Harder, the inaugural publication from Book Ideas#9: Kelli Anderson writes, designs, and funds Alphabet in Motion: How Letters Get Their ShapeThe process of design is often hidden. Process Pamphlets asserts that it should be more visible. Each issue of Process Pamphlets presents a single project from start to finish. Through emails, sketches, screenshots, drafts, and a first-person running narration, each issue aims to transparently show how things are made in the world; how people find work, initiate projects, organize, communicate, collaborate, negotiate, experiment, make, iterate, edit, distribute, document, and share.Issues 1-5 can be read and ordered on processpamphlets.comProcess Pamphlets are designed and edited by Ben Denzer (Assistant Professor of Communication Design) and are published as open editions at Parsons CD.
Offset Art Book Fair 2026
Parsons Communication Design is thrilled to announce the 2026 Offset Art Book Fair, hosted in partnership with Draw Down Books.Free and open to the public, The Offset Art Book Fair offers a space for students and recent alumni of The New School to share their printed work. The fair facilitates the exhibition and vending of zines, books, and other print ephemera, supporting independent publishing & zine-making culture. The fair will be prefaced on Friday, October 23, 6-8pm by Process Pamphlets: Issues 6-9 Launch & Conversation in the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Auditorium at Parsons. All events are free and open to the public. Please note: Registration for the Offset Art Book Fair is free but requires a timed ticket entry (11am, 1pm and 2:30pm). Advance ticket registration is required due to limited capacity in the building. External visitors to The New School must register in advance. For more information contact offsetartbookfair@gmail.com.
THE NEXT CHAPTER: BBA Book Exchange
Join us for an exchange of books, ideas, and possibilities in partnership with Housing Works at Housing Works Bookstore & Cafe located at 126 Crosby Street. The HW Cafe will be open.
Grace Coddington in conversation with Sara Moonves and William Norwich
Join legendary Vogue editor Grace Coddington for an exclusive evening celebrating her most memorable fashion imagery from the past decade, in conversation with W editor-in-chief Sara Moonves and former Vogue editor, author, and novelist William Norwich. Parsons' Gromek Institute and Phaidon present Grace: Now. Join us and legendary Vogue editor and international style icon Grace Coddington for an evening celebrating her most memorable fashion imagery from the past decade. Grace Coddington is a fashion legend. Known for both her extraordinary talent and fierce dedication to her work, Coddington has produced some of the industry’s most indelible images and cultural moments. In celebration of the publication of Grace: Now (Phaidon), join us for an evening exploring Coddington’s career, creative process, and the stories behind the images. Grace: Now is the third volume in Coddington’s career-spanning series of fashion portfolios. Dedicated to her latest chapter as an independent creative, the book features collaborations with thirteen influential photographers – including Annie Leibovitz, Craig McDean, Peter Lindbergh, Steven Klein, Steven Meisel, David Sims and Jamie Hawkesworth – produced over the past decade for the world’s leading fashion publications, including American Vogue, W, British Vogue and Document. It also features many of her drawings that have appeared on the walls of a San Vicente restaurant, on cups and cards, and as part of a collaboration with Louis Vuitton.
Book Release: Josh Scannell's The Carceral Surround and David Bering-Porter's Undead Labor
Please join Parsons Media Studies and Eugene Lang Culture and Media in celebrating the release of R. Joshua Scannell and David Bering-Porter’s highly anticipated new books, The Carceral Surround and Undead Labor. Offering novel treatments of the media, technological, and cultural infrastructures of contemporary racial capitalism, Scannell and Bering-Porter provide important theoretical frameworks for understanding how we have arrived at the current moment of polycrisis. Scannell and Bering-Porter will be in conversation with Dominic Pettman, University Professor of Media and New Humanities, to critically think through the deadly stakes of the present, and the open possibilities for new futures. This discussion, presented by the Department of Culture and Media, Parsons Media Studies, and Critical Themes, is the inaugural event of Media Studies at the New School, an ongoing series highlighting cutting-edge faculty and student research into contemporary media and culture.R. Joshua Scannell, The Carceral Surround How digital technologies entrench state power—and a new vision for resistanceAs law enforcement agencies deploy increasingly advanced technologies to suppress dissent, hunt migrants, and target marginalized communities, The Carceral Surround offers a powerful new theory of police and prison power in the digital age. Making sense of the rapid expansion of digital carceral infrastructure in a nation that claims to value freedom and individual rights, R. Joshua Scannell moves beyond familiar debates over privacy to show that understanding digital policing requires confronting the political and racial logics that sustain police power.Drawing on digital media theory, science and technology studies, critical race and ethnic studies, and carceral theory, The Carceral Surround reveals how twenty-first-century policing is less about managing crime than about governing possibility. Carceral power now operates across every register of daily life through predictive analytics, risk modeling, and algorithmic systems that track, sort, and preempt. From social media archives and facial recognition software to satellite mapping and radiation sensors, Scannell charts how seemingly disparate media converge into an environment of control that links technocratic governance to the maintenance of racial hierarchy and capitalist order.Tracing today’s technoauthoritarian regime from the NYPD’s assault on Black Lives Matter protesters in 2020 to the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition’s campaign to end predictive policing contracts, The Carceral Surround is a rare hybrid of critique and refusal, illuminating the digital logic of US authoritarianism while imagining pathways for collective resistance beyond its grasp.David Bering-Porter, Undead LaborHow the zombie represents capitalism’s fantasy of limitless laborMuch more than just an enduring figure of horror entertainment, the zombie is a uniquely modern symbol representing capitalism’s most brutal demands on human life. Examining the push to extract surplus value from human bodies in ways that exceed their natural limits, David Bering-Porter shows how this notion of the undead is both integral to and symptomatic of capitalism’s endless cycle of growth and consumption.Bering-Porter demonstrates how the zombie has long been deeply intertwined with issues of race and exploitation, from its origins in the slave plantations of colonial Haiti to its traces in the continuing evolution of artificial intelligence systems, serving as capitalism’s ideal worker: one that never rests, never stops, and never dies. Featuring close readings of Marx alongside films such as I Walked with a Zombie, The Blob, and Night of the Living Dead, the book traces the concept of undead labor as it manifests across various historical epochs, providing insight into the manifold ways that capitalism has sought to transform living beings into instruments of limitless production.As he weaves together critical race studies with an analysis of popular culture and media, Bering-Porter interrogates racialized capitalism and its fantasy of labor beyond all limits. By highlighting how the zombie is borne of the same ideology that has given rise to contemporary burnout culture and environmental collapse, Undead Labor uncovers the capitalist system’s relentless death drive with the hope that it finally may be put to rest.
Visualization and Power: Learning from the Past to Design the Future We Need
This talk will take us back over two hundred years in order to show how data visualization was—and remains—a tremendous form of power. Beginning with two historical examples, the line graphs of British trade data included in William Playfair’s Commercial and Political Atlas (1786) and "Description of a Slave Ship" (1789), created and circulated by a group of British antislavery activists, we will explain how the act of visualizing data has always involved more than just turning numbers into visual form. What forms of information are captured by the data? Whose knowledge does the data represent? What experience does the designer bring to the visualization process? For what purposes, and for whose goals? By describing how our project team has explored these questions in our own major visualization project, Data by Design (MIT Press, 2026), we will show not only how issues of ethics and justice have always been present in the field of data visualization, but also how they continue to offer lessons to those of us who view and design visualizations today.Lauren Klein is Professor of Data & Decision Sciences and English at Emory University, where she also directs the Digital Humanities Lab and the Atlanta Interdisciplinary AI Network. Her research brings together computational and critical methods to explore questions of gender, race, and justice, both in early America and today. Klein is the author (with Catherine D’Ignazio) of the award-winning Data Feminism (MIT Press, 2020), and the editor (with Matthew K. Gold) of Debates in the Digital Humanities (Univ. of Minnesota Press). Her next book is Data by Design: Visualization and Power from Abolition to the Dawn of Data Science (MIT Press, 2026).Tanvi is a design technologist working at the intersection of data, aesthetics, and the humanities. She is currently an Art Director at Apple and co-author of Data by Design (MIT Press, 2026). She has previously worked at Pentagram, Public Policy Lab, and Spotify. She lives in Harlem, NY, with her two cats, Yuchi and Bubbles. More at tanvi.network.
Sextech Lab Screening Series: Cactus Pears (2025), in conversation with Fania Noel & Sandeep Bakshi
Join us for a screening of the film Cactus Pears (2025, dir. Rohan Kanawade), followed by a conversation with Fania Noël and Sandeep Bashki.Moderated by Dr. Sedef Ozoguz, Assistant Professor of Liberal Arts in Psychology.Light refreshments will be served.Presented by SexTech Lab in collaboration with the Philosophy Film Club and Ruff Cuts, the screening series is an interdepartmental, cross-disciplinary initiative that engages with film as an intellectual and cultural work to be discussed, debated, and thought with. The series draws on New York City’s extraordinary density of critics, journalists, artists, filmmakers, and public scholars in our orbit, bringing them into dialogue with internal experts at The New School, moderated by students across departments and programs. Each event pairs a screening with dialogue that approaches cinema through historical, philosophical, political, and psychological lenses, showing how public debate, academic inquiry, and applied industry insight can sharpen one another.Underpinned by The SexTech Labs' focus on intimacy, technology, and equity, the series will be curated each term around university-wide themes of Democracy and Culture, Technology, City Initiatives, and Climate and Environmental Justice, ensuring the program remains coherent, timely, and institutionally relevant.Fania Noël is a Black feminist sociologist and writer. She is currently a Visiting Research Scholar in Political and Social Theory at the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY) and will soon join New York University’s Remarque Institute as a Fellow. Her research examines Black leftist politics, cross-racial coalition spaces, and racialized gender in France, as well as gendered racialization representation in popular visual culture. Her forthcoming book, In the Name of the Dead Black Wife: Absenting, Blackness, and Gender in Contemporary Science Fictions, will be published by the University of Illinois Press. It examines how mainstream science fiction mobilizes and excises Black women within post-racial imaginaries, positioning them in ways that disavow racial violence while sustaining Blackness as a structuring force and facilitating the redemption of whiteness and Black masculinity. Her work has appeared in Ethnic and Racial Studies, Kohl: A Journal for Body and Gender Research, and ASAP Review, with additional work forthcoming in Contemporary French Civilization. She received the 2025 Feminist Scholar-Activist Award from the American Sociological Association’s Sex and Gender Section. She authored several books in French on Black feminist thought and politics, most recently 10 Questions sur les féminismes noirs (Libertalia, 2024).Sandeep Bakshi (he/they) researches on transnational queer and decolonial enunciation of knowledges. He received his PhD from the School of English, University of Leicester, UK, and is currently employed as Associate Professor of Decolonial, Postcolonial and Queer Studies at University Paris Cité. He convened two research seminars, “Peripheral Knowledges” and “Empires, Souths, Sexualities,” (2019-2024) and currently co-convenes the research seminar, “Undiscipline, Decolonise, Repair”. He leads the Pôle Société Civile of the Cité du Genre Institute, Université Paris Cité. Co-editor of The Sage Handbook of Decolonial Theory (London: Sage, 2025)), Decolonizing Sexualities: Transnational Perspectives, Critical Interventions (Oxford: Counterpress, 2016), ‘Decolonial Trajectories’, special issue of Interventions (2020), and Qu’est-ce que l’Intersectionnalité? Dominations plurielles : sexe, classe et race (2021), he has variously published on queer and race entanglements in postcolonial literatures and cultures. He was a visiting fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies for Humanities at the University of Edinburgh (2021-2022) and is the co-founder and Co-Director of the Decolonizing Sexualities Network (https://decolonizingsexualities.org). He serves on the Arts and Humanities Career Advisory Group of the Wellcome Trust, London and is a member of the Board of Directors, CLAGS: The Centre for LGBTQ Studies, City University of New York.
BBA Reading Rhythms
It’s not a book club; it’s a reading party. Join us for a curated evening of reading, faculty authors and music in partnership with Reading Rhythms in the Seventh Floor Lounge of the University Center. Take the special elevator on the 6th floor of the UC to the 7th floor. Bring whatever book you are reading or want to begin reading. We’ll take care of the rest.
RUFF CUTS 3 - FALL 2026
This event will be on campus. Registration is required. We are excited to announce the third RUFF CUTS of the Fall 2026 Semester, which will take place on Friday, December 04, 2026 from 8:00 pm – 10:00 pm at Room UL102 in the University Center, 63 Fifth Avenue. About RUFF CUTS Ruff Cuts is a monthly student-run series in which current students and alumni screen and discuss works-in-progress films. Presenters receive feedback on their work from the audience in attendance made up of fellow students as well as faculty members and invited film professionals. We usually screen an average of 7-10 films on a first come, first served basis. Deadline: Please submit your works-in-progress to ruffcuts@newschool.edu by Wednesday, December 2, 2026.Presented by the School of Art, Media, and Technology's MA Media Studies Program at Parson's School of Design.
- Mayor Zohran Mamdani Joins Tishman Center’s Climate Desk Live Event to Discuss Effects of Climate Change on New York City
- New School Undergraduates Imagine a Future to Run Toward
- Unknown Migrants Exhibition Recognizes the Undocumented Individuals Overlooked by 9/11 Memorial
- Aashita Verma, MFA Design and Technology ‘26, Designs Stamp for New York City Passport Program
- Julia Sonnevend, Associate Professor of Sociology and Communications at Parsons, Named Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Communication
- Henry VI at The Public Theater Showcases Collaboration Between Parsons and Performing Arts
- The New School’s Spring 2026 Semester in Books
- Parsons Healthy Materials Lab Showcases Healthy, Climate-Positive Products and Ideas at International Contemporary Furniture Fair
- The New School’s 90th Commencement Celebrates the Achievements of the Class of 2026
- Daniel Jonas Roche, Parsons Faculty Member, Co-Writes New Book on Antifascist Architecture
- Arianna Deane, Parsons Faculty Member, Earns Recognition and Awards from Architecture Organizations with Firm A+A+A
- Evan Ajuria, Product Design ‘26, Creates Lighting Brand KAMI for Affordable, Simple Solutions
