Eugene Lang College

Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts is the seminar-style, undergraduate, liberal arts college of The New School university. It is located on-campus in New York City's Greenwich Village on West 11th Street off 6th Avenue.

Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts was founded as the Freshman Year Program at The New School in 1972 as a pre-college program for high school graduates. Three years later, in 1975, the Freshman Year Program was expanded to a full undergraduate program and renamed The Seminar College. In 1985, following a generous donation by well-known philanthropist and educational visionary Eugene Lang and his wife Theresa, the school was renamed Eugene Lang College. The college currently has an enrollment of over 1,345 students.

In 2005, the phrase "The New School" was inserted into the name of each division of The New School as part of a unification strategy initiated by the University's President Bob Kerrey; thus, Eugene Lang College was renamed Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts; students and faculty refer to it as "Lang."

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 for freshman students. 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".