As The New School marks its centennial this week, Public Seminar is joining the celebration by launching a new website.
Everything you have always found at Public Seminar is still here. But we’ve redesigned the site to let you let you slow down, if you want to. Public Seminar’s commitment to discussing the pressing issues of our contemporary world also now includes a commitment to contemplation, to doing more with less, and at the same time, doing more with more. While we will still publish every day (check out the column to your left for new essays, letters and podcasts), we will also now produce a weekly issue every Wednesday, one that highlights the best work we have to offer, and that you can return to throughout the week to read at your own pace.
For that reason the new site builds in the capacity for reflection, a core value at Public Seminar that has sometimes been undermined by the sheer volume of good articles we publish, as well as the way that a blog platform pushes content off the page.
Every weekly edition will include an essay that will explore what we have chosen for you, why, and how the week’s content speaks to our contemporary condition.
You may see us publishing fewer pieces, but they will be essays that you will want to contemplate longer.
Most importantly, we will put essays in dialogue with each other. Many will be new, but we are also committed to reviving and refreshing older content that seems newly relevant to the moment.
Essays will be grouped on our front page as “issues,” themes in contemporary life that we believe our readers will want to reflect upon more deeply, but they will also be collected in “seminars,” thematic, edited collections of articles that represent ongoing intellectual commitments at Public Seminar.
So welcome to the first weekly edition of Public Seminar – as the New School marks its own new beginning.
