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Cultural Reporting
& Criticism

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A Commitment to Thoughtful Analysis and Deeper Investigation

The Cultural Reporting and Criticism program at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute is for writers who are driven to interrogate the world around them. Here, you will produce work that examines aspects of our culture with the support of deep research, an understanding of history and lines of influence, a critical and questioning eye, and a belief in the power of good writing.

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The Only Program of Its Kind

Part journalism, part creative writing, part critical analysis, the Cultural Reporting and Criticism program is unique in the United States. It draws writers from all backgrounds and areas of expertise who come here to challenge their ideas about thinking and writing, move beyond the surface of stories, and develop a distinct voice. The curriculum is individualized to each writer, and it draws upon the vast academic opportunities at NYU.

Our Curriculum

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Faculty

Katie Roiphe

Katie Roiphe

Professor | Cultural Reporting and Criticism Program, Director


Katie Roiphe is the author of several books, including The Violet Hour, Uncommon Arrangements, The Morning After: Sex, Fear and Feminism, and In Praise of Messy Lives. Her articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Harper’s, Vogue, Esquire, Slate, and Tin House, among many other places. She has a Ph.D. in literature from Princeton University.

Eliza Griswold (Photo by Kathy Ryan)

Eliza Griswold

Distinguished Journalist in Residence


Eliza Griswold is a contributing writer to the New Yorker and the author of 2019 Pulitzer Prize-winning Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America, a 2018 New York Times Notable Book and a New York Times Critics’ Pick, and The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam, which won the 2011 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize. Her translations of Afghan women’s folk poems, I Am the Beggar of the World, was awarded the 2015 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, and her original poetry won the 2010 Rome Prize from the American Academy of Art and Letters in Rome. She has held fellowships from the New America Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, Harvard University and the Harvard Divinity School. Her second book of poems, If Men, Then, will be published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, in 2020. Griswold is a contributing writer at the New Yorker and a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.

(Photo by Kathy Ryan)

Kate Bolick

Kate Bolick

Adjunct Faculty | CRC 2002


Kate Bolick is the author of Spinster: Making a Life of One’s Own, a contributing editor for The Atlantic, and host of “Touchstones at The Mount,” an annual literary interview series at Edith Wharton’s country estate. Her writing appears in Elle, The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, The New Republic, Slate, and Vogue, among other publications. Previously, she was executive editor of Domino, and a columnist for The Boston Globe Ideas Section. She received an MA from NYU’s Cultural Reporting & Criticism Program in 2002.

Johnny Dwyer

Johnny Dwyer

Adjunct Faculty


Johnny Dwyer is a reporter and the author of The Districts and American Warlord. He was a staff writer at LIFE Magazine where he reported domestic and international stories including the war in Iraq and Hurricane Katrina. He has also reported for The New York Times, The Intercept, Foreign Policy, ProPublica, LA Weekly, Esquire, Rolling Stone, TIME, and others. He covers criminal justice, national security, and human rights.

Joshua Jelly-Schapiro

Joshua Jelly-Schapiro

Adjunct Faculty


Joshua Jelly-Schapiro is a geographer and writer whose books include Names of New York, Island People: The Caribbean and the World, and (with Rebecca Solnit) Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas. He is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books, and his work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Harper’s Magazine, among many other publications. At NYU, he is a scholar in residence at the Institute for Public Knowledge, and teaches courses in Journalism and Liberal Studies.

Daniel Smith

Daniel Smith

Adjunct Faculty


Daniel Smith is the author of the books Muses, Madmen, and Prophets and Monkey Mind, a New York Times bestseller. His articles and essays have appeared in The Atlantic, Harper’s, the London Review of Books, The New Yorker, and The New York Times Magazine, among other publications. A former staff editor at The Atlantic, he has taught at Bryn Mawr and The College of New Rochelle, where for ten years he held the Critchlow Endowed Chair in English. He is currently at work on a book about the negative emotions.

Michael Miller

Michael Miller

Adjunct Faculty


Michael Miller is an editor at Bookforum magazine. He began his journalism career at the Village Voice, where he was a research assistant, a copyeditor, and an editor at the Voice Literary Supplement. He has also worked at Spin and Time Out New York, where he was an editor and the lead book critic from 2005 until 2010.

 
Students studying in common area

The Need for Deeper Analysis Has Never Been Greater

As our world becomes more connected and complicated, writing that takes the time to explore and examine culture in context has never been more valuable. There’s no typical path for our graduates, who find success publishing memoirs, managing magazines, and writing opinion pieces. Recent graduates have gone on to work at the Fader, Slate, and the New York Times Magazine; publish in Harper’s Magazine and The Paris Review; and put out books with Farrar, Straus and Giroux and W. W. Norton & Company, to name just a few.