This New School undergraduate writing initiative merges study and practice, the aesthetic and the social. The Riggio Honors Program: Writing and Democracy builds on the mission and achievements of The New School's
MFA in Creative Writing program and carries forward the New School tradition of the artist as public intellectual. Students in the Riggio program may also enroll in the
BA in Creative Writing.
Central to the Riggio program is the idea that literacy is crucial to democracy and that reading and writing skills include those associated with creative writing but extend to reading and writing about law, politics, biography, science, and technology. The program explores the
distinctive forms of argumentation, style, and persuasion associated with these forms of expression. Although students are not expected to generate explicitly political poetry or fiction, there is an emphasis on "the writer in the world."
The Riggio program curriculum consists of 32 credits of workshops (fiction, nonfiction, and poetry) and literary seminars, culminating in a thesis project, and the Writer's Life Colloquium, which involves attendance at selected public readings, literary forums, lectures,
symposia, and panel discussions.