The Center for the American Experience (CAE) at The New School invites you to a special evening featuring biographer and public servant Walter Isaacson in conversation with CAE Co-Director and historian Natalia Mehlman Petrzela on the theme of “American Stories,” the narratives about individuals, ideals, and experiences through which a nation comes to understand itself. The Mannes Orchestra, led by maestro David Hayes, will perform Charles Ives’s Variations on “America,” a work that takes a shared national symbol and reinvents it, playfully, in several keys at once.
We will also mark the launch of CAE—a nonpartisan home for bold scholarly, creative, and civic engagement with the nation’s past, present, and place in the world. At a moment of deep polarization, CAE is dedicated to fostering pluralism, dialogue, and fearless debate.
Join us in celebrating the many voices, sounds, and stories that shape the American experience.
Presented by the Center for the American Experience and College of Performing Arts at The New School.
Walter Isaacson is the Leonard Lauder Professor of American History and Values at Tulane University and a longtime public intellectual, journalist, and author. He has led major media and policy institutions, including TIME, CNN, and the Aspen Institute, and he has written bestselling biographies of figures such as Steve Jobs, Leonardo da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, and Elon Musk. In 2023, he received the National Humanities Medal.
Natalia Mehlman Petrzela is Professor of History at The New School and a historian of contemporary American politics and culture. She is the author of Classroom Wars and Fit Nation, and her work bridges scholarship, public writing, and media commentary. She also serves as faculty co-director of the Center for the American Experience and has led major public-history projects, including the NYC DOE’s Jewish American Hidden Voices curriculum.
Led by maestro David Hayes, Mannes Orchestra has been hailed by The New York Times as an orchestra whose quality is “a revelation,” and for its “intensity of focus.” The orchestra performs a multitude of concerts each season at venues including Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, David Geffen Hall, John L. Tishman Auditorium at The New School, Carnegie Hall, and performances with Martha Graham Dance Company at New York City Center, and Mannes Opera at The Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College.
The iconic American composer, Charles Ives, the son of a Union Army bandmaster, wrote Variations on "America" at seventeen. Written for organ, it sets the tune known as "My Country, 'Tis of Thee," which was then the de facto national anthem of the United States, through a series of ingenious variations: a snappy figural variation, a sinuous barbershop setting, a jaunty cavalry march, a "midway" polonaise, and a scherzo. The work is playful but not satirical — Ives was interrogating and celebrating the tune in equal measure, pulling it apart with the same irreverent love he had for all American vernacular music.
The piece reflects qualities that would come to define Ives's musical language: fearless curiosity, independence from convention, and an ear for the collision of sounds drawn from everyday American life. The two interludes, added around 1909–10, are especially striking for their bitonal writing, a technique that foreshadows the bold harmonic experiments of his mature works. Though brief, Variations on "America" offers an early glimpse of a composer who would help redefine the possibilities of American music.
Variations on "America" invites the question: What does it mean to take a shared national symbol and subject it to radical reinvention? In an era when questions of national identity and cultural pluralism remain contested, Ives's insistence that America could contain multitudes — even multiple keys at once — feels especially poignant.
The Center for the American Experience at The New School is a faculty-led initiative that brings together design, the performing arts, the social sciences, and the humanities to examine the complex past, present, and future of the United States and its place in the world and in our lives. CAE is dedicated to interdisciplinary scholarship, creative practice, innovative pedagogy, and bold civic engagement.
Guided by the complementary perspectives of a historian and a media sociologist, CAE explores the ideas, histories, myths, cultures, and debates that have shaped American life. At a moment defined by political polarization, challenges to democracy, and profound changes in how information is created, shared, and understood—from social media to artificial intelligence—the Center examines the forces shaping American culture, public life, and democracy. By connecting perspectives across disciplines and communities on campus and beyond, the Center embraces the multiplicity of the American experience.
Building on The New School's longstanding commitment to cultural pluralism—a theory articulated by philosopher Horace Kallen, one of the university's earliest faculty members—CAE brings diverse perspectives into conversation not to sharpen divisions, but to cultivate understanding, discover common ground, and imagine new possibilities.
Through public programs, exhibitions, performances, and collaborative research, CAE convenes scholars, artists, students, and the broader public to explore the American experience and its enduring questions together.
Be sure to visit CAE's Events Page to see the full roster of our events and subscribe to our mailing list.
Visit The New School's Livestream and YouTube channels to watch select university events live and recorded.
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