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Morton Høi Jensen

Morton Høi Jensen

Class of 2011, 2013

Morten Høi Jensen is a writer and critic from Copenhagen, Denmark. A graduate of Eugene Lang College and The New School for Social Research, he is the author of A Difficult Death: The Life and Work of Jens Peter Jacobsen (Yale University Press, 2017) and has contributed to the New York Review of Books, the Wall Street Journal, The American Interest, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. He lives in Brooklyn.”

He is currently working on, The Master of Contradictions, a book about Thomas Mann’s novel The Magic Mountain.

Morten Høi Jensen will be our featured speaker for the 2021 Lit Studies Alumni Reading on April 20th, 2021. 

William Niedmann

William Niedmann

Class of 2015

When I started at The New School, my idea of a literature degree was vague. In fact, I thought I would leave Lang, because my first notions of a literary program depended on a “canon”—that shaky through-line in history, which seemed so crucial in literature. One semester in Lang’s department brought me away from those canonical aspirations, towards a more fragmented approach to narratives. I studied novels and plays and poems out of order. Classes were distinct from one another, but never dissonant. Each semester’s courses pronounced new historical and critical connections, and I acquired a lineage—one which calls that “canon” into question for all of its exclusions. The literature program at Lang encourages incisive, political readings of narratives throughout history, at a moment when those criticisms are so vital. In my final year, I wrote my thesis (entitled, “’Always Some Kind of Worm in the Image:’ Visuality & the American Fifties”) on a novel from 1966 by Richard Fariña. I was interested in the peripheral images of the novel; the sights that the narrator sees, but to which it does not attune itself. This project culminated years of open, but precise study.

Helaina

Helaina

Class of 2011

My experience growing up in New York City with PTSD and not knowing that’s what I was living with resulted in a lot of internal chaos for me, which catapulted me through three different high schools. And yet, I attended Eugene Lang for all four years and finally found a strong sense of community at The New School. When I arrived at The New School I felt like I was around people who were my people. There were times that a girl would just start crying in a poetry class because a teacher made a comment gently critiquing it, and kids who had absences because they needed to deal with things… so things felt very real.

I knew from a very young age that I wanted to be a writer, but I was eager to explore—so in addition to all of the journalism classes I took at Lang, I also took poetry, fiction, mixed media, literature, and other more nuanced classes like dream interpretation and philosophy. And what is now my published memoir (After 9/11) is the direct result of what began as a year-long independent study I did with a Lang professor during my senior year.

One last bit of advice for freshman: do what you gotta do, but keep yourself safe. This really is your time and it just gets better as time goes on. Take every opportunity. Write about things you don’t think you’re interested in. Go to new neighborhoods and explore. Interview crazy people in Union Square. Ride the L train at 2 am. Ask for informational interviews with journalists or authors on LinkedIn. Ask to shadow a prominent politician for a project you’re working on. Just go for it.

Rufi Thorpe

Rufi Thorpe

Class of 2006
I started at Lang as a goofy, hopelessly intense 16-year-old, on an almost psychotic high at the idea of moving to New York City by herself. Two weeks after I moved into the dorms, 9/11 happened. The world began to change just as I was discovering the world, and I read Freud and Husserl, Doris Lessing and Ovid, Aristotle and Arendt, with feverish haste, just trying to figure out what was even going on, what was the world, this violent, beautiful place? Because I have always been a kind of compulsively rebellious and diabolically curious person, I have not always been at peace with the academic institutions I have been lucky enough to attend. Lang is the sole exception to that rule. My professors found my intensity amusing, and set me new challenges. They knew exactly what kind of beastie I was and they were comfortable with it, and everything, everything changed for me. I flourished there. I won the award for Best Senior Thesis, and I was the graduation speaker. For the first time in my life, I felt that the weird way I was might be perfectly alright. After Lang, I went on to be a waitress, bartender, grad student, lover of trout fishing, traveler, teacher, mother, and published novelist, and in many ways, my life has proved to be almost impossibly wonderful, something dreamed up by that goofy 16-year-old, and I don’t think I would have had the courage to draw up such plans for myself if I hadn’t gone to Lang.

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    May 5, 2016

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    We are thrilled to see coverage of the release of Lang’s student-run literary magazine, Eleven and a Half, in The New School Free Press, the student-run newspaper of Eugene Lang’s Journalism+Design program.  Here’s what they had to say: “Eleven and a Half, The New School’s student-run literary magazine, that functions as a class in the fall, has just published this year’s edition- a darker, gloomier issue than in previous years.

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Morton Høi Jensen

Morton Høi Jensen

Class of 2011, 2013

Morten Høi Jensen is a writer and critic from Copenhagen, Denmark. A graduate of Eugene Lang College and The New School for Social Research, he is the author of A Difficult Death: The Life and Work of Jens Peter Jacobsen (Yale University Press, 2017) and has contributed to the New York Review of Books, the Wall Street Journal, The American Interest, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. He lives in Brooklyn.”

He is currently working on, The Master of Contradictions, a book about Thomas Mann’s novel The Magic Mountain.

Morten Høi Jensen will be our featured speaker for the 2021 Lit Studies Alumni Reading on April 20th, 2021. 

William Niedmann

William Niedmann

Class of 2015

When I started at The New School, my idea of a literature degree was vague. In fact, I thought I would leave Lang, because my first notions of a literary program depended on a “canon”—that shaky through-line in history, which seemed so crucial in literature. One semester in Lang’s department brought me away from those canonical aspirations, towards a more fragmented approach to narratives. I studied novels and plays and poems out of order. Classes were distinct from one another, but never dissonant. Each semester’s courses pronounced new historical and critical connections, and I acquired a lineage—one which calls that “canon” into question for all of its exclusions. The literature program at Lang encourages incisive, political readings of narratives throughout history, at a moment when those criticisms are so vital. In my final year, I wrote my thesis (entitled, “’Always Some Kind of Worm in the Image:’ Visuality & the American Fifties”) on a novel from 1966 by Richard Fariña. I was interested in the peripheral images of the novel; the sights that the narrator sees, but to which it does not attune itself. This project culminated years of open, but precise study.

Helaina

Helaina

Class of 2011

My experience growing up in New York City with PTSD and not knowing that’s what I was living with resulted in a lot of internal chaos for me, which catapulted me through three different high schools. And yet, I attended Eugene Lang for all four years and finally found a strong sense of community at The New School. When I arrived at The New School I felt like I was around people who were my people. There were times that a girl would just start crying in a poetry class because a teacher made a comment gently critiquing it, and kids who had absences because they needed to deal with things… so things felt very real.

I knew from a very young age that I wanted to be a writer, but I was eager to explore—so in addition to all of the journalism classes I took at Lang, I also took poetry, fiction, mixed media, literature, and other more nuanced classes like dream interpretation and philosophy. And what is now my published memoir (After 9/11) is the direct result of what began as a year-long independent study I did with a Lang professor during my senior year.

One last bit of advice for freshman: do what you gotta do, but keep yourself safe. This really is your time and it just gets better as time goes on. Take every opportunity. Write about things you don’t think you’re interested in. Go to new neighborhoods and explore. Interview crazy people in Union Square. Ride the L train at 2 am. Ask for informational interviews with journalists or authors on LinkedIn. Ask to shadow a prominent politician for a project you’re working on. Just go for it.

Rufi Thorpe

Rufi Thorpe

Class of 2006
I started at Lang as a goofy, hopelessly intense 16-year-old, on an almost psychotic high at the idea of moving to New York City by herself. Two weeks after I moved into the dorms, 9/11 happened. The world began to change just as I was discovering the world, and I read Freud and Husserl, Doris Lessing and Ovid, Aristotle and Arendt, with feverish haste, just trying to figure out what was even going on, what was the world, this violent, beautiful place? Because I have always been a kind of compulsively rebellious and diabolically curious person, I have not always been at peace with the academic institutions I have been lucky enough to attend. Lang is the sole exception to that rule. My professors found my intensity amusing, and set me new challenges. They knew exactly what kind of beastie I was and they were comfortable with it, and everything, everything changed for me. I flourished there. I won the award for Best Senior Thesis, and I was the graduation speaker. For the first time in my life, I felt that the weird way I was might be perfectly alright. After Lang, I went on to be a waitress, bartender, grad student, lover of trout fishing, traveler, teacher, mother, and published novelist, and in many ways, my life has proved to be almost impossibly wonderful, something dreamed up by that goofy 16-year-old, and I don’t think I would have had the courage to draw up such plans for myself if I hadn’t gone to Lang.