Media and Culture Concentration and Affiliated Faculty

Sumita Chakravarty

Associate Professor, Media Studies

What does it mean to be a responsible citizen of the world today? As scholar, teacher, program chair and curriculum builder, I am deeply committed to fostering a more nuanced understanding of our global culture, and to identifying the power and potentialities of media for human development.



Robin Hayes

Robin J. Hayes is Assistant Professor of Management at Milano.  She is a scholar and filmmaker who was the first person at Yale University to earn a combined doctorate in African American Studies and Political Science. With the help of a scholarship from the A Better Chance (ABC) program, she graduated from the prestigious St. George’s School in Newport, Rhode Island at the age of 16. After completing her bachelor’s degree at New York University with honors, she supervised a legal clinic for homeless families at the Urban Justice Center and facilitated human rights delegations and aid shipments to Cuba, Nicaragua and Chiapas, Mexico as a national coordinator of the Inter-religious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO). She produced and directed, Beautiful Me(s): Finding our Revolutionary Selves in Black Cuba, a documentary film that explores how African Americans and AfroCubans can learn from one another about building community, forging coalitions and openly discussing racism. In addition to publishing scholarly articles in Souls: a Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society and Maroon: the Yale Journal of African American Studies, Hayes has given lectures about her work on the politics of the African diaspora at the University of California-Berkeley, University of Chicago, University of Southern California, Indiana University, the University of Washington-Seattle and Middlebury College among others. Currently, she is finishing a book manuscript and related documentary film titled, African Liberation, Black Power and a Diasporic Underground. Hayes has held residential fellowships at Williams College and Northwestern University and received support for her research from the Ford Foundation. She comes to her position at The New School from Santa Clara University, where she was Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies and Political Science. With funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, she was a Scholar-in-Residence at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Sean Jacobs

Sean Jacobs, a native of Cape Town, South Africa, holds a Ph.D. in Politics from the University of London and a M.A. in Political Science from Northwestern University.

He is working on a book on the intersection of mass media, globalization and liberal democracy in postapartheid South Africa. He is co-editor of Thabo Mbeki's World: The Politics and Ideology of the South African President (Zed Books, 2002) and two other books. His most recent scholarly articles have appeared in Politique Africaine (2006) and Media, Culture, and Society (2007). He has contributed to the Guardian's Comment is Free site. He founded Africa is a Country

Previously he taught African Studies as well as communication studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

He worked as a political researcher for the Institute for Democracy in South Africa



Jesal Kapadia

Part-time Lecturer, Media Studies

Tony Karon

Tony Karon is a New York-based South African journalist, currently a senior editor for the online edition of TIME magazine, where he has worked since 1997. Besides his editing duties, he writes regular analytical commentary on the Middle East and the wider 'arc of instability' at TIME.com and also for The National in Abu Dhabi, and more occasionally for Haaretz in Israel, the Sunday Times in South Africa and other outlets. He also maintains his own commentary site, Rootless Cosmopolitan. He has also done extensive TV punditry on CNN, MSNBC and Press TV (Iran).

Born and raised in Cape Town, he graduated from the University of Cape Town with a BA (Honours) degree in 1982, worked in anti-apartheid activist media in South Africa, and later for the Mail & Guardian Weekly and the Cape Times. Arriving in New York late in 1993, he worked variously for such magazines as Spin and George, as well as four Britain's Channel Four TV network -- and even briefly at Fox News. He is currently at work on a book project on nationalism and Jewish identity.



Nina L. Khrushcheva

Nina L. Khrushcheva is Associate Professor in the Graduate Program of International Affairs at The New School and senior fellow of the World Policy Institute. She is also an editor of and a contributor to Project Syndicate: Association of Newspapers Around the World. After receiving her Ph.D. from Princeton University, she had a two-year appointment as a research fellow at the School of Historical Studies of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and then served as Deputy Editor of East European Constitutional Review at the NYU School of Law. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Dr. Khrushcheva’s articles have appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Nation, The Wall Street Journal, International Herald Tribune, Financial Times and other international publications. She is the author of Imagining Nabokov: Russia Between Art and Politics, and is currently working on a book “The Lost Khrushchev: A Family Journey into the Gulag of the Russian Mind.”

Annie Kwon

Annie K. Kwon is an architect who researches and practices through large-scale building and island typologies, performance and teaching. She holds a Bachelors of Architecture and Bachelors of Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design and a MS in Advanced Architectural Design from Columbia University. Her international portfolio includes the comprehensive master plan of Bahrain Bay, an artificial island off the coast of Manama as a designer with Skidmore Owings and Merrill New York, and designer for EMBT's award-winning entry for the Central European Bank Competition in Frankfurt. She has worked with James Turrell on the Roden Crater project and most recently, completed design and construction of his studio in New York City. Her interdisciplinary work includes collaborating with Benedetta Tagliabue in the scenography design for the Merce Cunningham Dance Companys internationally touring performance, Nearly 90, that premiered in April 2009 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in collaboration with Sonic Youth, John Paul Jones of Led Zepplin. She is a professor of architectural design and theory at Pratt Institute and Parsons School of Design. Her work has been featured in A+U: Tall Buildings, Abstract of Columbia University and The New Premises of the European Central Bank released by Birkhauser Boston. Annies multi-media collaboration with Paul D. Miller, The Nauru Elegies: A Portrait in Sound and Hypsographic Architecture recently opened at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney and the Experimenta Biennial 2010 in Melbourne. Annie is the founder of Kwonix, an architectural design group based in New York City.

 http://www.kwonix.com/



L.H.M. Ling

L.H.M. Ling (PhD, MIT) is an Associate Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs (GPIA), Milano School of International Affairs, Management, and Urban Policy, The New School in New York City.  Her research focuses on developing a post-Westphalian approach to world politics through the notion of "multiple worlds" or worldism.  Dr. Ling is the author of three books: Postcolonial International Relations: Conquest and Desire between Asia and the West (Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), Transforming World Politics: From Empire to Multiple Worlds (Routledge, 2009), co-authored with Anna M. Agathangelou (York University), and The Dao of World Politics: A Post-Westphalian Approach (Routledge, forthcoming).  Additionally, Dr. Ling is developing a textbook, Learning World Politics: People, Power, Perspective, Volume I: Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, to introduce Other worlds in IR/world politics, and a book of experimental pedagogy titled, Play on Worlds: A Performative Pedagogy for International Relations.  Both are for advanced undergraduates and entry-level graduate students. From 2008-2010, Dr. Ling was a Faculty Fellow with the India China Institute (ICI) at The New School.  She is working on a manuscript with other ICI Fellows titled, Rethinking Borders and Security, India and China: New Connections for Ancient Geographies.  Dr. Ling's articles have appeared in various journals and anthologies.



Peter Lucas

Peter Lucas has taught at Columbia University, New York University, and The New School. His research and teaching focuses on international studies in human rights, human rights and photography, human rights and media, the poetics of witnessing, peace education, human rights education, and documentary practice. His current projects include a study of seven photojournalists for the Rio-based web portal, Viva Favela. His book, Viva Favela: Photojournalism, Visual Inclusion, and Human Rights in Brazil is forthcoming.

Lucas was awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship for 2011 for his feature-length documentary The Last Hour of Summer, about pre-dictatorship Ipanema in the early 1960s.



Bonnie McEwan

Bonnie McEwan is an adjunct faculty member at Milano.  She is the president of Make Waves (www.makewavesnotnoise.com), a company that provides marketing and communications services to nonprofit organizations. Current clients include PolicyLink and Atlantic Philanthropies.

Immediately prior to opening Make Waves, McEwan spent six years as Executive Vice President of Douglas Gould and Company, a communications consultancy that works with public interest organizations. There she led the firm’s practice in Economic and Social Justice, working with clients such as the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the Center for Reproductive Rights, the United Nations Population Fund and the Ford Foundation.

McEwan has held the top communications position with two national nonprofit organizations, Girl Scouts of the USA and the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and has been on the adjunct faculty of Milano The New School for Management and Urban Policy for 12 years. During the 1997-98 academic year, McEwan served as Acting Chair of Milano’s Nonprofit Management program.

McEwan is a published author who has served on the boards of several nonprofit groups, notably the Empire State Pride Agenda, the largest statewide lesbian and gay rights organization in the country. Her awards include a national Silver Anvil from the Public Relations Society of America.  She is profiled in the leadership book, Thriving in 24/7: Six Strategies for Taming the New World of Work, by Sally Helgesen. McEwan holds an MS degree in nonprofit management from The New School.



Nerina Penzhorn


Nerina Penzhorn is a filmmaker and video producer with dual US/South African citizenship.  Nerina has produced segments for In The Life Television and Current TV and was fortunate to be part of the team at Bill Moyers Journal until Moyers' recent retirement from his award-winning weekly PBS series.  Nerina is a freelance editor at PBS and also produces and edits videos for various non-profit organizations. Her short documentary film 'Saint Jude' premiered at Slamdance 2009.  Her first documentary feature 'Waited for' is currently screening at film festivals.


Carol Wilder

From 1995-2007, she was Chair of Media Studies and Film and Associate Dean of The New School. From 1975-1995 she served on the Communication Studies faculty at San Francisco State University, including as Professor and Chair.  She was named Professor Emerita at SFSU in 1996.  In 2007-2008 she was a Fulbright Scholar at Hanoi University.  She is author of numerous articles and essays on communication theory, politics and the media, and the rhetoric of the Vietnam/American war. Recipient of National Communication Association Book Award for Rigor & Imagination: Essays from the Legacy of Gregory Bateson.

To learn more about the Media & Culture Concentration please contact the Concentration Chair, Professor Sean Jacobs, at Room 622. Diana Duarte is the current Concentration Associate. Please contact her with questions, suggestions or concerns.

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