Please consult the New School Course Catalog for a full course list. Fall 2024 courses include:
Creative Publishing an Critical Journalism, GPUB5001
Natasha Lennard, Associate Director, Creative Publishing and Critical Journalism, and Leah Prinzivalli, Part-Time Lecturer
An introduction to the master’s program in creative publishing and critical journalism, this course provides focused training in 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 become versed in the concrete fundamentals of working as a journalist in 2024. They will be prepared to pursue a variety of writing and editing tracks in their future careers and have insights and feedback from working professionals 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. *Open only to CPCJ students in the MA and BA-MA program.
Design and the Future of Publishing: Design and Practice—The Practice of Publishing, GPUB5002
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 on 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 to create conceptual publishing projects.that cross design and publishing through an analysis of contemporary books, magazines, and periodicals on both printed and digital platforms.
Profile Writing and Long-Form Workshop: The Master Key, GPUB5104
Jazmine Hughes, Part-Time Faculty
In this class, taught by award-winning magazine journalist Jazmine Hughes, students acquire the key skills and capacities required for long-form feature and profile writing: insight, empathy, and the art of asking just one more question. Students examine the work of celebrated contemporary writers—Allison P. Davis, Vinson Cunningham, Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, Hilton Als—while considering the practices and shifting purposes of these forms of writing in contemporary media landscapes. In this reporting- and writing-intensive course, students write, draft, and develop a profile or essay of magazine length, on their own chosen subjects and receive edits and consistent feedback.
Current Trends in Media Research, GPUB6211
Julia Sonnevend, Associate Professor of Sociology and Communications
This course covers 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 read literature from multiple disciplines including sociology, communication studies, political science, and psychology while also discussing case studies in depth.
Public Seminar Internship, GPUB6993
James E. Miller, Professor of Liberal Studies and Politics; Faculty Director of Creative Publishing and Critical Journalism
In this internship, students acquire skills 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 is supported by colleagues and collaborators around the globe. This course is open to Creative Publishing and Critical Journalism majors only.
Cultural Criticism, GPUB 5112
Melissa Monroe, Part-Time Assistant Professor
This course focuses on the elements that constitute a strong writing style and on the way writers concerned with political and cultural issues use various structural and rhetorical techniques to entertain and outrage, provoke and inspire. We look closely at texts by a variety of cultural critics, including Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, Barbara Ehrenreich, Cathy Park Hong, Joseph Mitchell, George Orwell, Zadie Smith, Susan Sontag, and Virginia Woolf, focusing on the relationship between form and content, analyzing why authors make the stylistic choices they do, and asking how these choices help determine readers' responses. We also focus on putting these lessons into practice: Students will write several essays, and we will often look at samples of student writing in class.