Jennifer Rittner

Assistant Professor, Strategic Design and Management, Parsons School of Design

Jennifer is a writer, communications strategist, and Assistant Professor in the School of Design Strategies at Parsons School of Design. From 2016-2021 she served on the faculty in the MFA Products of Design and MA Design Research Writing and Criticism, where she taught courses in design history for writers, design for social value, design and politics, graphic design history, and thesis research and writing. Jennifer's research considers the construction of pedagogies that critique the intersections of design and power, primarily through the intersectional lenses of race, gender, ability, and socio-economic status.

In Spring 2021 she served as Guest Editor for a special issue of Design Museum Everywhere dedicated to critiquing design in and of policing. She edited Crafted Kinship: Inside the Creative Practices of Black Caribbean Makers (2024) by Malene Barnett; served as the development editor for The Black Experience in Design (2022); and contributed an essay on the designer David Klein to Poster House Museum's exhibition catalog Wonder City of the World: New York City Travel Posters.

In addition to teaching, Jennifer has worked for a number of design and design-adjacent institutions including Pentagram, Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning, and the AIGA. As museum educator at the American Federation of Arts (AFA) in the 1990s, Jennifer led Art Access II, an initiative designed to increase museum attendance among under-served communities through education and community outreach. She earned her M.Ed. in Communication and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University where her thesis, “Space, Time, and Objects” proposed pedagogies of equity and access in the art history curriculum.