A Drama in Time is a beautifully designed large-format illustrative book. The narrative, authored by New School creative writing professor John Reed, weaves together the many histories of one of America’s most progressive universities. Founded by political dissidents in 1919, the school has become a byword for academic freedom and progressive thought. Now encompassing five schools, including Parsons School of Design, Mannes and Eugene Lang College, The New School is a center for notable designers, writers, musicians, artists and political activists.
The presentation of A Drama in Time is reflective of the change-making, status-quo pushing attitude of the school: dynamic and unexpected while remaining elegant. The stories characterize The New School, and give readers a command of The New School legacy, vision and place in culture. Each story contains a mix of a title, body copy, photos with captions, pull-out quotes by New Schoolers, and highlights from The New School archive. Founded by dissident scholars, academics and activists, The New School has been an incarnation of the New York, American and global spirit of radical iconoclasm since 1919.
The New School century arcs with the twentieth century: fascism in Europe to Fluxus in the West Village; renegade artists to L'École Libre des Hautes Études; Margaret Mead, John Cage and Hannah Arendt to the Parsons School of Design; the Dramatic Workshop to jazz, film, and photojournalism to sustainable systems; the Mannes School of Music to Students for a Democratic Society, clashing with police on Fifth Avenue in 1969. The telling of A Drama in Time is as immediate and swift as it is enduring, with events spanning the decades, quotes from a diverse array of New Schoolers, and dynamic archival visuals to tableau the journey, A Drama in Time is a vibrant, pulsing-with-passion testimonial to The New School century.
