Spark Showcases the Achievements and Creativity of The New School
Each spring, all of the colleges, centers, institutes, and labs at The New School showcase the innovative research, writing, and creative projects happening at the university. Spark, the annual university-wide celebration, presents the work of students at all levels—undergraduate, graduate, and certificate—and alumni, faculty, and staff through readings, symposia, performances, and presentations. An initiative of the Provost’s Office, this celebration, running from early March through the day of Commencement, provides an opportunity for the entire New School community to come together and celebrate this outstanding work.
“Spark provides us with a space to recognize and reflect on the creative spirit and intellectual rigor of our scholars, creators, and practitioners who are at the forefront of their industries and disciplines,” says Dr. Renée T. White, provost and executive vice president for Academic Affairs. “It’s a wonderful feeling to see the university community come together to celebrate and uplift one another and the incredible creative energy and intellectual rigor that defines The New School.”
2025 Spark Award Winners
The Spark Awards were launched this year to celebrate the students, alumni, faculty, and staff who are using their groundbreaking research, work, and creative practice to make an impact on campus and beyond. Eight honorees were selected from more than 180 nominations, which were evaluated on several criteria: the impact their work has on campus, in New York City, and beyond; their ability to inspire and nurture others through their vision and leadership; their capacity to foster community on campus; and their ability to employ an inclusive approach that encourages collaboration and builds connections.
The 2025 honorees are the All for NarWELL team; Donna Weng Friedman; the Food Pantry team; Grace Kelly, MA Political Science ’25; Molly Davy and Shannon Finnell, both MFA Photography ’18; (Pepi) Yi Qing Ng, BFA Design and Technology ’25; Spitting Image Art Book Fair; and the UnderstandingFAFSA.org team.
2025 William Phillips Lecture Featuring Salman Rushdie
The acclaimed author Salman Rushdie delivered the 2025 William Phillips lecture, a talk titled “Blasphemy Is a Victimless Crime.” Rushdie is the author of 22 novels including Midnight’s Children (a Booker Prize winner), The Satanic Verses, Shame, The Moor’s Last Sigh, and Quichotte; the short story collection East, West; the memoir The Jaguar Smile; three collections of essays; and other works. The talk was followed by a discussion with Luis Jaramillo, an assistant professor of writing, that covered a wide range of topics, including creatives’ sources of inspiration, the reason religion is a recurring feature in Rushdie’s work, and the prophetic qualities of good novels.
NSSR’s Three-Minute Thesis Challenge
The Three-Minute Thesis Challenge, presented by The New School for Social Research (NSSR), is an academic research communication competition that helps graduate students build effective presentation and communication skills. The event asks students to whittle down what could be an hours-long presentation of their research projects into a three-minute discussion of a single PowerPoint slide. This presentation is delivered with no electronic media, no props, and no notes. Presentations are evaluated on the basis of content, comprehension, engagement, and communication. The challenge helps students refine their skills in conveying the breadth and significance of their thesis research project to a non-academic audience.
Eugene Lang College’s Dean’s Honor Symposium
Eugene Lang College’s annual Dean’s Honor Symposium carries forward the tradition of celebrating the liberal arts while teaching students how to present their scholarly research. Now in its tenth year, the symposium draws students from all parts of Lang and challenges them to bring their projects together with the work of others from different disciplines and present them under a single theme.
More than 30 students participated in this year’s program, which consisted of projects presented in a poster session and panel sessions. Students applied to the symposium during the fall semester. Those selected were matched with faculty advisors, who guided them in mastering academic discourse and scholarly presentation.
New School New Books 2025
Now in its third year, New School New Books, hosted by the Vera List Center for Art and Politics (VLC) is a three-day reading event featuring faculty authors from all five colleges and a number of centers and institutes at the university. This year, presentations by the featured authors—Michael A. Cohen, Pablo Helguera and Noah Fischer, Luis Jaramillo, Theodore Kerr, David T. Little, Romy Opperman, Dominic Pettman, Kristin Reynolds, Kamala Sankaram, Sara Serpa, and McKenzie Wark—were grouped into thematic clusters that included “Time, Space, and World Building,” “Planetary Politics,” and “Telling Stories.”
This year’s event included the launch of the VLC’s latest book, As for Protocols, and was presented in conjunction with the Spitting Image Art Book Fair, a community exhibition and tabling event with a focus on artists’ books, zines, chapbooks, and print ephemera, led by students from Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts and Parsons School of Design.
New School New Books 2025 is co-presented with the Creative Writing Program and the Office of Equity and Belonging with support from the Provost’s Office and the New School Libraries.
BFA Design History and Practice Symposium: Wild Archives—Material Metamorphosis
Wild Archives—Material Metamorphosis is an exhibition of multimedia installations at La MaMa Galleria by student artists in the BFA Design History and Practice program at Parsons’ School of Art and Design History and Theory. Their work questions established barriers between organic and artificial, archive and innovation, and heritage and imagination. Through diverse media including bio-art, printmaking, video installation, cross-cultural analysis, and archival activation, the artists examine the way autonomy and power affect and transform cultural artifacts and natural matter. The exhibition runs from April 29 to May 4, 2025.
The featured artists will present their research and practice at a symposium at La MaMa Galleria on May 2, 2025. Zishan Ugurlu, a professor of theater at Eugene Lang College and director-in-residence at La MaMa Theater, will give the introduction.