We’re thrilled to share the Call for Applications for a fall course from the Cross-Reference Coalition: a new, interdisciplinary community learning project from the Metropolitan New York Library Council (METRO).
Our first course, a 10-week graduate-level class with a mix of in-person and virtual sessions, will take place on Thursdays from late September to early December and will be taught by Dr. Shannon Mattern, METRO’s Director of Creative Research and the 2025 Kluge Chair of Modern Culture at the Library of Congress.
Cultural heritage workers and graduate students affiliated with METRO’s member institutions are eligible to apply. We’re also excited to welcome applications from NYC-based artists and designers. There’s no cost to participate!
Course Description: Misfits
New York City has historically drawn those figures and incubated those fancies that simply don’t fit anywhere else. This inaugural offering from METRO’s Cross-Reference Coalition celebrates our geographic anomalies, pushes against automation’s flattening fakery, and addresses the erasure of difference and the prioritization of profitable utility in our current political climate, by examining and appreciating The Misfit. We’ll explore collection items that simply won’t fit on shelves or in boxes, objects and identities that defy classification, storage formats that condense and compress (as well as the things that leak outside!), and institutions that deliberately defy professional standards. We’ll engage with texts from archival studies, art history, and anthropology to media studies, material science, and electrical engineering. We’ll visit virtuoso boxmakers and imagine speculative deaccessioning policies and unpack compression protocols and, ultimately, work together to create a patchworked and prismatic publication of mutualistic mis-fit parts.
To learn more, check out our call for applications and program slide deck, or attend one of our information sessions on Friday, June 20th at 12pm ET or Tuesday, July 8 at 6pm ET. Applications will be accepted through Friday, July 11, 2025.
