Latest Publications from Tisch Faculty

Je n'étais pas censée être talentueuse

By Karen Finley - Art & Public Policy

Karen Finley is a feminist artist, performer, and poet from New York. Her work, multifaceted and cathartic, is a violent and lucid anti-patriarchal charge, irradiated by punk energy and acid humor. A collection of her early writings, this collection reveals the DNA of her work, which from the very beginning has given voice to the silenced: those swept away by the AIDS epidemic as well as those who have been victims of sexist and sexual violence. A pioneer on issues of rape culture, trauma, and mental health, Karen Finley, translated for the first time in France, strikes with her incendiary language and her formidable insight.

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Producing and Directing the Short Film and Video

By David Irving - Undergraduate Film & TV

Producing and Directing the Short Film and Video, Sixth Edition is the definitive book on producing and directing short films for the serious film student or beginner filmmaker. Its unique two-fold approach looks at filmmaking from the perspectives of both the producer and director and clearly explains how their separate roles must work together to create a successful short film or video. Through extensive examples from award-winning shorts and insightful interviews, you will learn about the common challenges these filmmakers encountered during each step of the filmmaking process—from preproduction to production, postproduction and distribution—and the techniques they used to overcome them.

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Dramatherapy and the Bereaved Child-Telling the Truth to Children During Difficult Times

By Stephanie Omens - Department of Drama

This book addresses the needs of children experiencing the hospitalization or death of a caregiver or loved one to comprehend and cope with tragedy with the assistance creative non-fictions and dramatic play. Based on the author’s two-decade-long clinical practice and an extensive career working with bereaved children and their families as a dramatherapist and child life practitioner, this book demonstrates how storytelling and dramatherapy can be used to tell the truth to children in these difficult circumstances. Through vivid and candid case examples, the author demonstrates the developmentally normative, dramatic, and psychotherapeutic principles that inform her work. She shares stories for children that are carefully constructed to help children understand the truth of what they are facing rather than shielding them from reality. Attuned to the children’s direct experience, these stories take care to respect the culture and context of the death, and the histories of the people involved. The book, accessibly written, will provide guidance, insight, and comfort for professionals, clinicians, and grieving children and their families.

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Conversations with Women Showrunners

By Marygrace O'Shea - Undergraduate Film & TV

Featuring over forty interviews with America’s leading showrunners, this book provides unique perspectives and insights into the TV industry, and demystifies the craft, backbone, skill, strategies, challenges, and persistence it takes to succeed in Hollywood and internationally. Marygrace O’Shea’s conversations with women showrunners are part master craft lesson, part backstage pass, part career guide from the geniuses who create the best TV. The book shines a light on what it truly means to be a showrunner working in the industry today, and reveals how to navigate a career and a future in the global marketplace. Interviews include Angela Kang (The Walking Dead), Aline Brosh McKenna (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend), Barbara Hall (Madam Secretary), Charlotte Brown (Rhoda), Chris Nee (Doc McStuffins), Elizabeth Berger (This is Us), Gloria Calderón Kellett (One Day at a Time), Ilene Chaiken (The L Word), Liz Meriwether (The New Girl, The Dropout), Liz Tigelaar (Tiny Beautiful Things, Little Fires Everywhere), Marta Kauffman (Friends, Grace and Frankie), Tracy Oliver (Harlem, Awkward Black Girl), Sierra Teller Ornelas (Rutherford Falls), and many more. Ideal for professional and aspiring television writers, as well as students of screenwriting, film and TV, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in the art, craft and business of creating television.

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The Drama Review

Editor: Richard Schechner Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, USA

TDR is scholarly, accessible, and dynamic with a global appeal. Each article is tightly focused, but the effect of the whole is of a broad range of topics. TDR is at the cutting edge of performance studies. TDR supports progressive political and social movements and ideas. TDR is inclusive and interdisciplinary. Written by and for scholars and artists—and their students—TDR is where leaders and future leaders of performance studies go for performance texts, performative writing, editorials, reviews, and articles about the performing arts, performance in everyday life, politics, popular entertainment, business, and sports.

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Women & Performance

Managing Editors: Buffy — Artist / Writer Annie Sansonetti — New York University

Women & Performance was founded in 1983 by graduate students in the Department of Performance Studies at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. After self-publishing for 23 years, Women & Performance was acquired by Routledge/Taylor & Francis. Since its inception the journal has operated as a feminist collective. For us, being a feminist collective entails a fair and ethical distribution of labor, a nonhierarchical and collaborative editorial structure, and a review process that hopes to diverge from what is extractive and transactional in traditional academic publishing.

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Dear Inheritors

by Kathy Engel - Art & Public Policy

A book of poems, a letter to the world, poems that are both intimate and addressing big social/political realities.

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Covid Vortex Anxiety Opera Kitty Kaleidoscope Disco

by Karen Finley - Art & Public Policy

COVID Vortex Anxiety Opera Kitty Kaleidoscope Disco meditates on the extraordinary time of loss, isolation, and bizarre rituals of the Covid era and its aftermath. First performed at sold-out theaters in New York, where the Village Voice compared Karen Finley to Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso, this vivid suite of poems invokes a maelstrom of feelings that will make you laugh and cry, sometimes on the same page. In COVID Vortex Anxiety Opera Kitty Kaleidoscope Disco, Finley processes the pandemic in all its complexity–from the collective coping strategies during isolation and loss to the absurd new habits we acquired, from handwashing to wiping down groceries to decorative double masks and zoom dance parties. The New York City hotspot echoes an earlier AIDS era; that rage and sorrow remain part of the City’s DNA. During COVID, tragic historic events such as the police murder of George Floyd and the continued brutality on Black and brown bodies, challenged the nation. Revolution took to the streets. The reversal of Roe v Wade and the criminalizing of trans peoples’ bodies, mental health realities, houselessness, essential workers’ rights, and social isolation brought desperate conditions. Finley reflects on these traumas, asking how do we employ love despite the hate, to encourage humanity despite proliferating violence? On the fifth anniversary of the pandemic lockdown, COVID Vortex Anxiety Opera Kitty Kaleidoscope Disco looks back while also looking forward, offering art as salvation, and the deep belief in the power of words, compassion, and humor to transcend the harsh realities of today.

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Close Encounters of the Third Kind

by Dana Polan - Martin Scorsese Department of Cinema Studies

A monographic study of the film -- production history, reception, close analysis.

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Kamala: Her Historic, Joyful, and Auspicious Sprint to the White House

BY DEBORAH WILLIS - DEPARTMENT OF PHOTOGRAPHY & IMAGING - AND KEVIN MERIDA

"Kamala" is a beautiful tribute to Kamala Harris’s remarkable rise from District Attorney in California to her historic presidential run in 2024. Curated by Deborah Willis and Kevin Merida, this visually captivating book features nearly 150 vibrant photographs that capture the joy, challenges, and triumphs of Harris’s campaign. Rather than following a strict timeline, the book is thematically arranged into sections like “Family & Early Life,” “The Ascent,” and “Powerful Rooms.” Each section offers a unique perspective on Harris’s multifaceted life and career, complemented by insightful essays that place this pivotal election in context. It’s an essential read for anyone intrigued by American politics, women’s history, and the significance of representation. Regardless of the election’s outcome, this book celebrates Harris’s indomitable spirit and the groundbreaking nature of her campaign. It’s a perfect keepsake of this trailblazing event and is perfect for fans, political enthusiasts, and anyone inspired by a woman who dares to break barriers and make history.

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