Academics
Unlike most US universities, The New School has a "student-directed curriculum", which does not require its undergraduates to take extensive general education courses. Consequently, students at Lang are encouraged to explore before focusing on a major, selecting topics that are of interest to them. The only required classes are an introductory course on New York City - taught from the perspective of the relation of philosophy to the physical - two lecture hall courses, and two semesters of Writing the Essay. These intensive writing classes - part composition class and part linguistics - have titles such as "Going Underground," "What's Love Got to Do With It?," "Comedy as Critique," and "Cruel Shoes: A Trek Through the Absurd." Students are encouraged to tailor the program to their own interests and academic goals.
Eugene Lang college hosts some of The New School's most experimental and avant-garde courses, including: "Heterodox Identities", "NYC: Graphic Gotham", "Mind-Games and Puzzle Films", "The Illusion of Color", "Punk & Noise", "Masculinity in Asia," "Queer Culture", "Theories of Mind", and "Play and Toil in the Digital Sweatshop".
Lang offers the following majors, minors, and degree programs as of 2010:
- The Arts (encompassing music, dance, theatre, visual arts and arts in context, an option to study any of the aforementioned subjects in its social context)
- Culture and Media
- Economics
- Environmental Studies
- Foreign Languages
- Liberal Arts
- Global Studies
- History
- Philosophy
- Politics
- Psychology
- Education Studies
- Literary Studies (encompassing writing, literature and journalism)
- Interdisciplinary Science
- Religious Studies
- Social Inquiry (encompassing anthropology, economics, history, political science, sociology, and urban studies)
- Urban Studies
Lang also offers the following course clusters as concentration options:
- Chinese Studies
- Civic Engagement
- Ethnicity and Race
- French Studies
- Gender Studies
- Hispanic Studies
- Japanese Studies
- Jewish Studies
- Screen Studies
The college places emphasis on interdisciplinary learning with a "student-directed" curriculum. All of its courses are seminars. Students at Lang may also cross-register for courses sponsored by other divisions of The New School, with the exception of those by The New School for Drama, which is a masters program. They are allowed to double-major and apply for the university's honors program, which is entitled "Riggio Honors: Writing and Democracy."
Read more about this topic: Eugene Lang College The New School For Liberal Arts
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“Almost all scholarly research carries practical and political implications. Better that we should spell these out ourselves than leave that task to people with a vested interest in stressing only some of the implications and falsifying others. The idea that academics should remain “above the fray” only gives ideologues license to misuse our work.”
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