Weissman School of Arts and Sciences

Roslyn Bernstein

Email: Roslyn.Bernstein@baruch.cuny.edu
Phone: (646) 312-3930
Location: VC 7-270

 

During her career as a journalist, Prof. Roslyn Bernstein has published news and feature articles, catalogue essays and opinion pieces on education, neighborhood development, media, culture and the arts. Her published work includes stories on corporate art collections, nonprofits and startups, as well as profiles of individual artists, educators and business leaders.

She has reported from the United States, Eastern Europe, Israel and China for publications including The New York Times, Newsday, The Village Voice, New York, Parents, Contemporanea, American Banker, Artnews and the Columbia Journalism Review. She has recently been writing arts stories for Buzzine, an online culture and entertainment magazine, and for Tablet, an online magazine of Jewish news, ideas, and culture.

Professor Bernstein's latest book, Illegal Living: 80 Wooster Street and the Evolution of SoHo, is a nonfiction work focusing on the biography of the first artists' live-work building in SoHo, created by Fluxus visionary George Maciunas. Published in June 2010 in conjunction with an exhibit at the Jonas Mekas Visual Arts Center in Vilnius, Lithuania, the New York City launch of the book took place on September 21, 2010. In 2009, she published Boardwalk Stories, a collection of 14 linked tales spanning the decades 1950 to 1970. Set in the shadow of the Cold War, the boardwalk characters, many of them misfits and wannabes, share their joys and sorrows in a world where kewpie dolls and prizes are often the only consolation for lost dreams. Reviews of the book can be found on the press Web site, www.blueeftpress.com.

Keenly interested in New York City urban issues, Professor Bernstein teaches a range of courses in journalism and creative writing including Perspectives on the News, Journalistic Writing, Feature Article Writing, Creative Journalism and Journalism and the Literary Imagination. She is also on the faculty of the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.

During more than three decades at Baruch, Professor Bernstein served as the director of the undergraduate journalism program. She founded and is now the publisher of Dollars & Sense, Baruch's prize-winning magazine.  Professor Bernstein serves as director of the Sidney Harman Writer-in-Residence Program, a unique literary salon that brings a different distinguished writer to campus each semester. Since its founding in 1998, 25 Harman writers have come to Baruch, including the poets Yehuda Amichai, Agha Shahid Ali, Major Jackson and Charles Simic; the playwrights Edward Albee and Tony Kushner; the novelists Paul Auster, Anita Desai, Colum McCann, Sigrid Nunez, Joseph O'Connor, Francine Prose and John Edgar Wideman, and the authors Philip Gourevitch, William Finnegan, Jane Kramer, Mark Kurlansky and George Packer. For 2010-2011, the program's 13th year, Richard Price is on campus in the fall and Adrian Nicole LeBlanc in the spring.

A recipient of Baruch's Distinguished Teaching and Service Awards as well as the Faculty Service Award from the Baruch College Alumni Association, Professor Bernstein earned a B.A. in political science from Brandeis University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in English from New York University.

Video: Teaching Arts in New York City
A Seminar for Macaulay Honors Students at Baruch College

 

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