FIRST YEAR SEMINAR: READING THE CITY: ARCHITECTURE, LANDSCAPE, AND URBAN LIFE. The great cultural critic Walter Benjamin once said that while Paris stands before us as a grand stage set, its phenomenal beauty "conceals another Paris, the real Paris, a nocturnal, spectral, imperceptible Paris." In this course we examine the city that surrounds us through its visual and material worlds. Like Benjamin, we want to understand the grand stage the city presents to us, while also peeking behind the curtain, looking under the hood, and opening the black box to see how it all works. This is what we call 'reading' the city, a process by which we build an understanding of urban life through careful study of its architecture, landscape, technologies, spatial form, networks and systems. In this process, we consider three mutually constitutive conditions: 1) the material city that we encounter with our senses, 2) the city as it is represented in visual artifacts such as photography, film, and advertising; and 3) the city that we carry around in our own minds that shapes how we relate to the whole. Students engage in short creative writing, mapping, diagramming, and photographic assignments to build up a portfolio of work about everyday urban life in New York.

FIRST YEAR SEMINAR: URBAN NATURE REPORTING: HOW TO INTERVIEW AN OYSTER: WRITING AND REPORTING ON NATURE IN THE CITY. Manmade cities are built on, and in, the natural world. Humans are part of nature, too, and yet we commit so many acts against nature (and ourselves) that we might qualify as “unnatural”… What is “nature”? New York City is teeming with it. Fungal gnats flit about our houseplants and drown in our teacups. Roaches scuttle beneath our drains. Mice procreate in the basement, tiny pink babies suckle at their mothers’ teats. Dogs sniff the fire hydrants, colonies of cats bicker on the streets. Raccoons scavenge for leftovers in trash bins. Hawks swoop down on ubkucku rats and pigeons. Owls silently patrol moonlit parks. Deer dart in front of cars in Staten Island. Millipedes nestle in roadside ditches. Jellyfish wash up on the beaches. Grasses rustle along the marshes. Turtles sun themselves on pond stones, and beneath the water’s surface, carp and catfish root around in the mud like limbless hogs. Seasons change, leaves generate and fall. Ivy clings to a wire fence. In this course, we shall explore New York’s natural world during a series of field trips around the city. We will read about urban nature, and we will embark on our own writing and reporting projects about the non-human life that arrived here after European occupation, and the life that has existed on this land for centuries upon centuries.

FIRST YEAR SEMINAR: ICONIC EVENTS IN INTERNATIONAL MEDIA. This course examines the media coverage of news events that have attracted large international audiences. These exceptional news events interrupt the flow of time, and provide us with uplifting or traumatic experiences and memories. The course's case studies include Russia's invasion of Ukraine, 9/11, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Eichmann trial, and others. We will examine the events’ journalistic coverage and their global social remembrance.

FIRST YEAR SEMINAR: IDENTITY POLITICS AND THE WAR ON WOKE. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), critical race theory, gender ideology, cultural marxism: This heated string of terms now seeds the turbulent terrain on which some of our nation’s latest, and indeed most polarizing, culture wars are presently being waged. As objects of desire and derision in what has been called the “War on Woke,” the controversies surrounding these terms–as well as the people and forms of knowledge they have come to represent–at once reactivate longstanding debates about the place of identity and difference in US democracy, while indexing new recompositions in the balance of political forces and structures of feeling that shape both our everyday lives and the field of struggle into which we might intervene to make our lives better. Our goal in this seminar is to construct a history of the present War on Woke by analyzing and assessing histories and theories of struggle over identity in modern US political culture. We will map a range of critical paradigms and social movement tendencies that have galvanized activists and intellectuals since the 1960s, when “identity” first emerged as a powerful site and sign of collective mobilization, political organization, and cultural production. What is identity, and what are its contributions to an emancipatory political horizon? How can the complex and contested legacies of identity politics help us to arrive at a strategic interpretation of the War on Woke? Readings may include: Wendy Brown, Judith Butler, The Combahee River Collective, Melinda Cooper, Paisley Currah, Jodi Dean, Lawrence Grossberg, Stuart Hall, Colleen Lye, Geo Maher, Dylan Rodriguez, Chela Sandoval, Nikhil Pal Singh, Frank Wilderson, and Zahi Zalloula.

FIRST YEAR SEMINAR: CULTURE AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT. This seminar examines ways that how people think, feel and behave varies in different cultural contexts. The seminar challenges the universalism which dominates psychology and that is seen in everyday understandings of human development. Among the initial questions that will be examined are what is culture and why is it downplayed in understanding human development. Drawing from interdisciplinary work, the course will analyze research which shows that basic psychological processes, like emotion, morality, motivation, and mental health, take qualitatively distinct forms in different cultural contexts. Consideration will also be given to social policy implications of a cultural perspective.

FIRST YEAR SEMINAR: BIOLOGY, ART & SOCIAL JUSTICE. Using a social justice and planetary health framework, we will explore how artists and scientists use interdisciplinary inquiry, creativity, interpretation, and personal expression to propel social change. Drawing on the work of Latin American muralists, Black artist Wangechi Mutu, environmental artist Alexis Rockman, and Visual AIDS artists, we traverse history and imagine a different future. The course is modular, spanning topics such GMOs, urban health, biomedicine, genomics, immortality, and disability justice. Assignments include journal entries, essays, visual narratives, design statements, and an independent project that re-examines how we define ourselves, how we interact with one another, and how we can simultaneously promote science and social justice. We will conduct 3-4 experiments including isolating your own DNA, viewing cell regeneration in the context of a case study focused on the establishment of Henrietta Lacks' cells as a biomedical tool, and the use of microbial pigments for non-toxic painting and dyeing. At the end of the course we will assess how this course and its approach has affected your perception of learning and your ability to interpret and create visual narratives for social change.

FIRST YEAR SEMINAR: PHOTOGRAPHY IN LATIN AMERICA. This course examines the history of photography in Latin America, from the early photographic productions of the nineteenth century to contemporary conceptual practices. We begin with photographers’ representations of the local landscape and its inhabitants, we continue with the establishment of the first photographic studios, and we follow with the advent of modernist trends, such as surrealism and abstraction. We approach the strong documentary practice in the region that swings from registering the everyday life and autochthonous rituals, to chronicling political upheavals—as exemplified in the Mexican and Cuban revolutions—, to cataloguing the “disappeared” under the military juntas of Argentina and Chile. We also explore the treatment of labor in 1970s Cuban and Brazilian photo essays, the incorporation of postmodern concepts by Latin American photographers in the 1990s, and the photographic representations of narco-culture in Colombia and Mexico.

FIRST YEAR SEMINAR: LITERATURES OF PLACE. Places are spaces imbued with meaning, and thus sites of cultural contest over who defines that meaning, who tells the story of this or that place. We will read poets, novelists, and essayists who put place at the center of their work, whether that place is rural or urban, a small patch of land or a neighborhood, a city, a field a pond, a state, a nation. Some works we will read consider natural landscapes, or at least places we think are untouched by humans. Others focus on human-constructed worlds. Some writers urge us to develop a harmonious relationship with place; others understand place as fate; and still others are curious about place as a palimpsest bearing traces of past meanings and stories. Readings will be drawn from such writers as William Shakespeare, Henry David Thoreau, Toni Morrison, Annie Dillard, Octavia Butler, and Colson Whitehead.

FIRST YEAR SEMINAR: THE MAKING OF ECONOMIC SOCIETY. Why did the industrialized world experience a financial collapse and "Great Recession" in the first decade of the 21st century? What accounts for the remarkable rise of the economies of China and India? These are some of the questions that we will address in this first-year seminar in world economic history. Our focus will be on the rise of capitalism and especially the interplay of economic, political and cultural forces in social change. We begin with a discussion of economics and the different ways in which "the economic problem" has been solved at different historical moments. After a consideration of ancient, medieval and feudal economies, we look at the emergence of market economies and then of capitalism. A close analysis of the industrial revolution in Europe sets the stage for the study of capitalism in the 20th century, with its booms and busts of economic activity (including the Great Depression), the rise of the public sector and, finally, the globalization of finance and production. We look briefly at the rise and fall of socialism, and conclude with a consideration of the problems with, and possibilities for, capitalisms in the 21st century.

FIRST YEAR SEMINAR: DIY RELIGION. Since its earliest years the New School has been the site for research and reflection on religion’s place in society and what comes after it. This class explores today’s spiritual landscape, in which more and more people reject institutional and politicized “religion,” instead designing practices and forming communities of their own. Taking religious pluralism and experimentation for granted, these new formations mix and update ancient traditions. They leaven old legacies with new sciences and experiences, while also finding in them powerful resources for contemporary liberation struggles from sexuality to ecojustice. Lang students have been doing this important work since its beginnings. In honor of Lang’s 40th anniversary in 2025, this class will center conversations with alums who are putting their Lang learning into visionary and inspiring practice.

FIRST YEAR SEMINAR: HISTORY OF FEMINISM AND GENDER EQUITY IN THE U.S. This seminar will study the history of movements for gender equity in the U.S. A chronological approach will be taken, beginning in the 19th century with “the woman question,” continuing with the suffragettes who achieved the vote for women in 1920, to “second wave” feminism that unfolded alongside the civil rights movement and the sexual revolution of the late 1960s, to “third wave” feminism and up until the current moment. By the 1990s, a shift had begun to an intersectional understanding of the ways that gender identity is entwined with race, ethnicity, class, age, citizenship status, ability, religion, sexuality, and more. The course will also address current culture wars around trans rights, reproductive rights, and other gender-related topics, placing them in historical context.

FIRST YEAR SEMINAR: SONIC FUTURES. This course examines scientific breakthroughs in music technology that had major impacts on 20th and 21st century politics and culture. For example, developments in radio not only introduced widespread broadcasting of music and entertainment to the American public, they also enabled the U.S. Military to communicate between land and sea during World War One. At the end of the 20th century, digital innovations in the storage and transmission of music reduced the cost of musical production such that artists could create albums without financial support from professional studios, yet it also led to the economic collapse of independent labels with the emergence of streaming services such as Spotify. We will study these examples of technological innovation and their impact on musical culture and sonic infrastructure, along with other case studies such as synthesizers, cochlear implants, sonography, and AI.

FIRST YEAR SEMINAR: PERFORMING POLITICS. Activists have long employed performance to achieve political goals, and performers have created great art in response to political challenges. Performance is everywhere, from the ways in which we experience our gender and racial identities to the versions of ourselves we advertise online. Professional politicians have long realized that style makes more votes than actual policy, and contemporary politics is more tightly crafted than many theatrical productions. This course investigates the relationship between politics and performance. By reading, viewing, and analyzing performance and politics theory and practice, we will explore the ways in which artists have responded to challenging political environments, as we analyze the ways in which politics is performed in the public square.

FIRST YEAR SEMINAR: BETWEEN HERE AND ELSEWHERE: NARRATIVES OF DISPLACEMENT. For German-Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt, the post-WWII period was marked by "homelessness on an unprecedented scale” and “rootlessness to an unprecedented depth.” Transnational migration is a defining feature of the modern era. Violence, persecution, poverty, and climate change have led to ongoing diasporas across the globe. In the past two centuries, over 250 million people have crossed borders in search of safe havens and economic opportunities, a migratory wave that has reshaped nations, cultural identities, and the very idea of “home.” This course studies the literature of displacement, examining contemporary immigrant and refugee narratives in a transnational context. It is attentive to cultural and historical origins, border crossings, and the precarity of statelessness. In our study of the stories that give voice, texture, and complexity to the migrant experience, we consider questions concerning human rights (the “right to have rights”), nationhood, borders, racial and sexual persecution, identity, belonging, and the notion of home. Course material includes critical essays, short stories, novels, and films. We read theoretical works by Giorgio Agamben, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Hannah Arendt and fiction by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Mohsin Hamid, Franz Kafka, Jhumpa Lahiri, Nam Le, and Viet Thanh Nguyen.

FIRST YEAR SEMINAR: SOUND BITE SOCIETY VS. LITERARY JOURNALISM. Literary journalism is a form of creative nonfiction that blends factual reporting with narrative techniques to present complex stories compellingly. It is a powerful tool, particularly pertinent today, in engaging with our mercilessly fast-paced Sound Bite Society. By combining aesthetics of literature with factual record of journalism, the genre serves as the “subtle, delicate, vivid, and responsive art of communication” needed to “break through the crust of conventionalized and routine consciousness,” as John Dewey writes in Experience and Education (1938). Forgoing such journalistic basics as who, what, where, and when, the genre includes in-depth character development, and immersive vivid storytelling. Learning about other cultures and polemical issues such as race, war and capital punishment, students will internalize a sense of authors’ social responsibility. Reading list includes J’accuse, by Emile Zola, The Execution of Troppmann, by Ivan Turgenev, Politics of the English Language, by George Orwell, Vietnam, by Mary McCarthy, Leni Riefenstahl and the Nuba, by Susan Sontag, The Fire Next Time, by James Baldwin, The Duke in his Domain, by Truman Capote, and The Republican Convention, by V.S. Naipaul.

FIRST YEAR SEMINAR: TRANS WRITERS AND ARTISTS. This seminar explores the ways that trans, genderqueer, and nonbinary artists and writers express form and embodiment in their work, and considers the ways in which this expression invites us to transform and radicalize our own artistic practices. While we are now familiar with the word “trans” as synonymous with transgender identity, the prefix itself offers incredible richness of formal meanings connected to transformation, change, liminality, and ongoing states of being that move beyond historically traditional boundaries. As we engage with the expression of artists who communicate in this state of “beyond,” we will work on both collaborative and individual projects in a joint discussion and workshop format, incorporating and expanding upon our source texts in new, transformative production. Poets, musicians, performance and visual artists we explore may include but are not limited to: Andrea Abi-Karam, Samuel Ace, Cameron Awkward-Rich, Tona Brown, Micha Cárdenas, Ching-In Chen, Vaginal Davis, Meg Day, Anaïs Duplan, Joshua Jennifer Espinoza, Rickey Laurentiis, Billy Tipton, and Wu Tsang.

FIRST YEAR SEMINAR: FICTION AND DEMOCRACY. Does democracy depend on fiction? This course examines how literature has fostered democracy in the past, with a focus on English popular fiction. The nineteenth century was a time of expanded literacy and a growing clamor for self-government after revolutions in the US, France, Haiti, and beyond. We study how well-known fiction of the era disseminated human rights and concepts of government by “the people.” This gives us a new lens on familiar genres from romance to crime fiction and fantasy. Readings include Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist, and Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, along with short critical works by such writers as Nazar Afisi, Ralph Ellison, Jaron Lanier, Kent Puckett, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Alex Woloch.