The Division of Languages and Literature offers majors in the areas of literature; written arts; and foreign languages, cultures, and literatures. All students in the division are encouraged to study languages other than English; foreign language instruction currently offered includes American Sign Language, Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Spanish, Yiddish, and ancient Greek and Latin. Interdisciplinary majors are also offered in Asian studies, classical studies, French studies, German studies, Italian studies, Middle Eastern studies, Russian and Eurasian studies, and Spanish studies (see Interdivisional Programs and Concentrations).
Photo by Karl Rabe
Our Programs
The Division of Languages and Literature includes the following academic programs:
Foreign Languages, Cultures, and Literatures
Literature
Written Arts
Matthew Mutter, Division Chair; Associate Professor of Literature
Foreign Languages, Cultures, and Literatures
Literature
Written Arts
Matthew Mutter, Division Chair; Associate Professor of Literature
Coursework and Requirements
Discover More
Bard Translation and
Translatability Initiative
BTTI encourages curricular initiatives that promote translation, particularly from a multicultural or multidisciplinary perspective, and aims to bring together scholars, teachers, writers, and artists from the United States and other countries. BTTI also works with Bard faculty members to elicit new interdisciplinary insights, develop new curricula, strengthen communication, and stimulate experimentation among the College’s four divisions and across its network of international liberal arts and graduate studies programs. Among other events throughout the academic year, BTTI hosts an annual translation symposium at Bard.
Languages and Literature News and Events
Featured News
Adhaar Noor Desai Receives Modern Language Association Prize
“This beautifully written, tremendously researched book raises important questions and offers a timely and thoughtful celebration of the art of composition (and discomposition).”
Adhaar Noor Desai Receives Modern Language Association Prize
Adhaar Noor Desai, associate professor of English at Bard College.
Post Date: 12-17-2024
Recent News
-
Bard College Student Jessica Zoll ’26 Receives Fund for Education Abroad Spring 2025 Scholarship
Bard College Student Jessica Zoll ’26 Receives Fund for Education Abroad Spring 2025 Scholarship
Jessica Zoll ’26, a Bard College student majoring in literature, has received a scholarship from Fund for Education Abroad (FEA) for the spring 2025 semester. Zoll is one of 71 undergraduates from around the country selected by 92 volunteer reviewers, and with FEA’s Education in Ireland Access Partner Scholarship, she will attend University College Cork in Ireland.Jessica Zoll ’26.
“As a first-generation college student and American, I never imagined that studying abroad or earning a scholarship to cover my entire €7,400 tuition would be within reach, but that changed when I came to Bard,” said Zoll. “My support system here is incredible, and it's through this community that I’ve been introduced to opportunities that align not only with my academic goals, but also with my personal interests. I study Victorian literature, but didn't think studying in a place so rich in 19th-century history was feasible. Through the Fund for Education Abroad's Inclusive Ireland Access Partner Scholarship, I’ve been awarded the chance to study at University College Cork—the city is steeped in Victorian history, and the courses are too! I feel incredibly fortunate and excited for this next step in my academic journey. This really feels like a win for not just me, but for my entire family.”
The Fund for Education Abroad provides scholarships and ongoing support to students with financial need who are underrepresented among the US study-abroad population. Of the 71 scholars awarded this application cycle, 93% identify as students of color; 28% identify as LGBTQ+; 23% identify as male, 70% as female, and 7% as genderfluid or nonbinary. Characteristic of FEA scholars, 94% are first-generation college students, 30% are current or former community college students, and 37% have never left the United States. Currently studying in universities and colleges in 27 states, the new FEA Scholars will attend programs in over 25 countries across five continents.
Since its inception in 2010, FEA has awarded over $3.7 million in scholarships to 1186 undergraduates, and supports students before, during, and after their study abroad experience with scholarships and programming.
“We are honored to have the support of so many who are striving to make study abroad more accessible,” said FEA Program Manager Joelle Leinbach. “As we look ahead to 2025, FEA will continue to put access and equity first as we consider further improvements to our application process and expand our ranks of volunteer reviewers.”
Post Date: 12-17-2024
-
Marina van Zuylen On Teaching Baudelaire
Marina van Zuylen On Teaching Baudelaire
Marina van Zuylen, professor of French and comparative literature at Bard, appeared in a session hosted by the Teagle Foundation as part of a workshop series on methods to strengthen general education. Van Zuylen speaks about how she has taught Charles Baudelaire’s “The Bad Glazier” throughout the years, and how those teaching approaches have shifted as the needs of her students have changed over the past 20 years. “This is a wonderful text because it introduces us to so many questions,” said van Zuylen. “For me this text was a perfect example of art as an escape… It’s an escape because, it’s also a text about maybe the quality of desire, the quality of when we act for reasons that we don’t ourselves understand and this is something that is so exciting about literature. Only in literature, maybe, can we get this sense that characters act in a way that is forbidden in real life.”Marina van Zuylen, professor of French and comparative literature at Bard.
Post Date: 12-16-2024
-
Bard College and Six Faculty Awarded New York State Council on the Arts Grants
Bard College and Six Faculty Awarded New York State Council on the Arts Grants
Six Bard College faculty members have been named as recipients of grants from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) for 2025. NYSCA Support for Organizations grants were awarded to Erika Switzer, assistant professor of music and director of the Postgraduate Collaborative Piano Fellowship at Bard, Lucy Fitz Gibbon, visiting faculty in vocal arts at the Bard College Conservatory of Music, Sarah Hennies, visiting assistant professor of music, and Suzanne Kite, distinguished artist in residence, assistant professor of American and Indigenous Studies and director of the Wihanble S’a Center for Indigenous AI at Bard. Additionally, Bard College received a Support for Organizations Award for 2025 in the amount of $40,000. NYSCA Support for Artist grants were awarded to DN Bashir, assistant professor of theater and performance at Bard, and Ann Lauterbach, professor of languages and literature.The NYSCA grants are intended to increase access to arts funding and recognize the substantial economic and social impact of New York state’s arts and culture sector.Clockwise from top left: Erika Switzer, Suzanne Kite, Lucy Fitz Gibbon, DN Bashir, Sarah Hennies, and Ann Lauterbach.
Erika Switzer and Lucy Fitz Gibbon will receive a grant in support of operational expenses and projects at Sparks & Wiry Cries, an organization, cofounded by Switzer and where Fitz Gibbon serves as managing editor, that curates opportunities for art song creators, performers, and scholars with innovative initiatives. These projects will include the upcoming Brooklyn premieres of Meltdown, a dramatic work for mezzo and piano trio which engages the layered stories and science of climate change through the lens of a female glaciologist, and Skymother, which weaves together the family history of composer Timothy Long (Choctaw, Muscogee Creek) with the Haudenosaunee creation story, Sky Woman.
Sarah Hennies, along with her duo partner, Tristan Kasten-Krause, a bassist and composer, will receive the grant for their new work Saccades for double bass and percussion at the Wassaic Project, an artist-run nonprofit contemporary art gallery, artist residency, and art education center. The piece is to be performed in total darkness with a single candle flame.
Suzanne Kite will receive a grant for the proposed project, Owáǧo Uŋkíhaŋblapi (We Dream a Score), her first full orchestral work for her organizational partner, the American Composers Orchestra (ACO). The piece continues Kite’s exploration of individual, collective, and societal dreaming practices, using an Indigenous AI framework. NYSCA funding supports the development of an AI app in collaboration with the Brooklyn-based design firm School. Members of the ACO and the public will submit their dreams to the app, which transforms language into Lakȟóta Visual Language symbols.
DN Bashir’s Hollow House, sponsored by JACK Arts Incorporated, follows a group of New York residents meeting at a farm-to-table restaurant in an old house in the Hudson Valley. Inspired by Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, it explores unspoken power dynamics and “the systems that hold us captive.”
Ann Lauterbach will be awarded a grant in support of her project called “The Meanwhile: Linear Ruptures and Simultaneous Narratives,” which will have a performance and possible exhibition at the Flowchart Foundation.
Post Date: 12-10-2024
-
Adam Shatz Wins American Library in Paris Book Award
Adam Shatz Wins American Library in Paris Book Award
Adam Shatz, visiting professor of the humanities at Bard College, has been named the recipient of the 2024 American Library in Paris Book Award for his book The Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon, a biography about the activist whose writings about race, revolution, and the psychology of power have shaped radical movements across the world. Now in its 12th year, the American Library in Paris award honors a title that best realizes new and intellectually significant ideas about France, the French people, or encounters with French culture. “The personal story Shatz brings to life is remarkable but the book’s real accomplishment is to illuminate the development of Fanon’s ideology, political, intellectual and profoundly personal, even emotional,” the jury wrote of the book. “Shatz has given us a Fanon for all thinkers and readers, captured with freshness and clarity and vitality—a Fanon for our present moment.”L–R: Adam Shatz and his book, The Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon.
Post Date: 12-02-2024
-
Joseph Luzzi's Translation of Dante's Vita Nuova Reviewed in Open Letters Review
Joseph Luzzi's Translation of Dante's Vita Nuova Reviewed in Open Letters Review
Asher B. Edelman Professor of Literature Joseph Luzzi’s translation of Dante’s Vita Nuova was reviewed by Steve Donoghue for the Open Letters Review. The new translation was published on December 3 by W.W. Norton’s imprint Liveright. Donoghue’s short review focuses on how Luzzi adapts Dante’s sometimes mystifying prose work. Donoghue notes that translators of the Vita Nuova have been surprised and “slightly taunted” by the work, and that “Luzzi aims for clarity without slavish stylistic imitation, [likening] his translation process to laying a transparent film over Dante’s text.” Luzzi’s “leaner” translation, he writes, is one reason readers can appreciate his updated, more modern version.Joseph Luzzi. Photo by Helena Baillie
Luzzi has taught at Bard since 2002, and his previous book Botticelli’s Secret: The Lost Drawings and the Rediscovery of the Renaissance was named one of the New Yorker’s Best Books of 2022.
Post Date: 12-02-2024
-
Bard College Celebrates Student Excellence at Annual Scholarship Reception
Bard College Celebrates Student Excellence at Annual Scholarship Reception
Bard College faculty, staff, and students gathered at Blithewood Manor for this year's Annual Scholarship Reception on Monday, November 11. This annual event honors students who have excelled in their studies and contributed to academic and campus life. The evening’s awardees, who were nominated by faculty from across the four divisions of the College, represent excellence in the arts; social studies; languages and literature; and science, mathematics, and computing.2024 Annual Scholarship Reception. Photo by Karl Rabe
“We are pleased to recognize this year’s Bard Scholars, who represent the very best of what we are and what we do,” said Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of Studies David Shein. “These students, who were selected by their faculty and deans in recognition of their contributions in the classroom and to the campus community, have demonstrated not only excellence in their work but deep care and commitment to that work and to the life of the College. We are proud of them and look forward to seeing what they will do next.”
Many of the named scholarships are made possible by generous contributions from Bard donors. Thank you to all supporters for believing in the value of a college education, and for investing in the future of Bard students.
Further reading:
Learn More about Postgraduate Scholarships and Fellowships through Bard's Dean of Studies Office
Learn More about Scholarships, Prizes, and Awards at Bard
Post Date: 11-15-2024