Join us to celebrate two new books by New School Faculty, Lana Lin and Radhika Subramaniam. Situated between memoir, social criticism, and conceptual art, Lin’s The Autobiography of H. Lan Thao Lam narrates a 25-year queer love story through the literary form of ventriloquism that Gertrude Stein invented in her 1933 The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, and responds to the modernist classic by raising the Asian understory to the surface. Subramaniam’s Footprint: Four Itineraries probes the long history of the footprint’s manifestation in the human imagination—signifying mobility and occupation, inquiry and imperialism, absence and presence, trace, and impact—to ask if it is yet possible to tread lightly on our world.
The event will feature a conversation between the two writers and invite questions and discussion followed by a celebratory reception.
Accessibility Note
The Wolff Conference Room is wheelchair-accessible. There are wheelchair-accessible and all-gender bathrooms on the same floor as the conference room. Seating in the space can be changed as needed. Virtual attendance is not available for this event. ASL interpretation is available with advance notice.
Presented by the School of Art, Media, and Technology's MA Media Studies Program at Parson's School of Design with the Gender and Sexualities Studies Institute
New School students seeking accommodations should contact the Student Disability Services office at studentdisability@newschool.edu.
Event guests seeking accommodations may contact the event organizer by clicking the "Contact the Organizer" link at the bottom of this page.
Radhika Subramaniam is Associate Professor of Visual Culture at Parsons School of Design/The New School. With an interdisciplinary practice as curator and writer, she explores crises and surprises as they emerge in urban life, walking, art and human-nonhuman relationships.
Lana Lin is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, and Associate Professor of Media Studies at Parsons/The New School. She is the author of The Autobiography of H. Lan Thao Lam (2025), which was longlisted for the National Book Award in Nonfiction, and Freud’s Jaw and Other Lost Objects: Fractured Subjectivity in the Face of Cancer (2017). Her film, The Cancer Journals Revisited (2018), won Best Feature Documentary at the San Diego Asian American Film Festival and Favorite Experimental Film at BlackStar Film Festival. Her films, writing, and collaborative mixed media projects (as “Lin + Lam”) have addressed embodied vulnerabilities, contingent histories, and psychic and political identities and identifications.
The Masters of Art in Media Studies program of the School of Art, Media, & Technology in Parsons combines media theory, research, and production studies, preparing students to contribute to a complex and rapidly changing media landscape. Studying in the world’s media capital, New York City, our students acquire critical insights and technical skills in rigorous topical courses taught by leading scholars and creative professionals. Our alumni find careers in a wide range of fields, from media curating and communications to film and media-making to media research and scholarship to industry leadership and innovation.
The Gender and Sexualities Studies Institute is the new central intellectual home for people working in the field of gender, sexualities, and LGBTQI+ studies, providing a hub for rich and diverse forms of scholarship, creative practice, and public programming.
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