Julia Foulkes, Author at Public Seminar

Education

New York is the Place

How the city has defined The New School

January 31, 2019 • by Julia Foulkes

The 1918 proposal to create a “new school” ended with a rousing declaration of the innovation of the idea, the significance of the moment, and, most of all, the importance of New York. The proposers believed that this city -- “the greatest social science laboratory in the world” -- would attract scholars ...

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When SPURA and Visual Urbanism Meet

An interview with Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani

January 29, 2019 • by Julia Foulkes and Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani

Contested City: Art and Public History as Mediation at New York’s Seward Park Urban Renewal Area, a new book by Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani, charts the long, dispiriting, and complicated history of the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area (SPURA) on the Lower East Side of New York. Over five years, Bendiner-Viani walked ...

Education

What Does It Mean to Educate Adults?

The Case of the New School

November 6, 2018 • by Julia Foulkes

There is much in question about the future of higher education, but one trend is clear: the average age of undergraduates is rising. As a college degree replaces a high school degree as the basis for more jobs and the possibility of economic stability, more people are starting or returning ...

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The Majority Finds Its School

The lessons of Gerda Lerner

October 11, 2018 • by Julia Foulkes

In the fall of 1962, Gerda Lerner offered a pioneering course in women’s history at the New School, titled “Great Women in American History.” Such a course may have occurred at Radcliffe College in the 1930s, and perhaps at other women’s colleges, but Lerner’s course at the New School was ...

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New School Histories Vertical

Announcing a new vertical for Public Seminar

July 9, 2018 • by Mark Larrimore and Julia Foulkes

Editors: Mark Larrimore and Julia Foulkes A school for the present. In 1918, the New Republic-based creators of what would become the New School for Social Research* called for a re-thinking of what higher education could be. Universities were hamstrung by backward-looking legacies and structures, both institutional and intellectual. Education needed to ...

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Redesigning The New School Histories Website

An announcement

July 8, 2018 • by Julia Foulkes, Mark Larrimore and Wendy Scheir

We are delighted to announce that we have re-designed the New School Histories website. The site features a more compelling design, a tagging system that brings together materials about particular topics, and an expanded search function -- all thanks to the website developer Katerina Vaseva, a New School alum. People is a collection ...

Redesigning The New School Histories Website

Education

On James Baldwin and The New School

What It Means to be a Progressive University

December 28, 2017 • by Julia Foulkes

And it is the local experts who field questions about Baldwin. The most recent request was from the university’s marketing and communications department to confirm that he had, in fact, been a student. The Baldwin estate had agreed that the university could quote him on its website but the estate ...

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Creating City People, Not Just Maintaining Buildings

New York City’s Cultural Plan

July 27, 2017 • by Julia Foulkes

Last week the city released its much-awaited cultural plan. The Department of Cultural Affairs undertook an unprecedented year-long process of surveying New Yorkers about arts and culture in New York, about what worked and what did not in the city’s creative life. Not surprisingly, equity and inclusion were repeated refrains: ...

Creating City People, Not Just Maintaining Buildings

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Homesteading the Lower East Side

A Review of Amy Starecheski, Ours to Lose

June 7, 2017 • by Julia Foulkes

Amy Starecheski, Ours to Lose: When Squatters Became Homeowners in New York City (University of Chicago Press, 2016) The Lower East Side has long been an object of fascination for those who study New York. It has been a location for bohemia, from the early 20th century to the Beats and ...

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Seeing Rikers, Closing Rikers

Making Incarceration Visible

April 11, 2017 • by Julia Foulkes

A year ago the New School hosted the opening of States of Incarceration, an exhibition created by hundreds of students and people directly affected by incarceration. Organized through the Humanities Action Lab, a consortium of 20 universities, the exhibition details the history of imprisonment in the U.S by a close ...

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Fighting Over and On the Streets of New York

A Review of the ‘Whose Streets? Our Streets!’ Exhibition

January 17, 2017 • by Julia Foulkes

“Whose Streets” features the work of thirty-eight independent photojournalists who documented -- and participated in -- protests in New York from 1980-2000. The issues ranged from housing, abortion rights, housing, queer activism, AIDS, education and labor, police brutality, race relations, the war and environment -- there were a lot, and ...