Division of Languages and Literature

Recent News

• Bard College Celebrates Student Achievements at Undergraduate Awards Ceremony
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  Bard College Celebrates Student Achievements at Undergraduate Awards Ceremony

  

  Sierra Ford ’26 receives the inaugural Betsaida Alcantara ’05 Pioneers for Progress Award. Photo by Joseph Nartey ’26
  

  Faculty, staff, and students gathered at Blithewood Manor for this year’s Undergraduate Awards Ceremony, which was held on Monday, April 28. The annual ceremony is a celebration of the incredible talent and dedication showcased by Bard students, as well as the unwavering support and guidance from esteemed faculty and staff at the College. 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. Among the awardees were students in the Bard Baccalaureate, a program for older students returning to college to finish their undergraduate degrees. 
  
  The event featured remarks and award presentations from key figures, including President of the College Leon Botstein, Dean of the College Deirdre d'Albertis, Dean of Studies and Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs David Shein, and Bard Alumna Cara Parks ’05. A special highlight of the evening was the announcement of a newly established award in memory of a beloved Bardian, Betsaida Alcantara ’05, by the Class of 2005, family, friends, and loved ones who knew her. The inaugural Betsaida Alcantara ’05 Pioneers for Progress Award, in memory of Betsaida Alcantara '05 (1983–2022), who exemplified the best of Bard's hope to inspire people to be passionate agents of change, pioneers for progress, and advocates for justice for those most in need was given to Sierra Ford ’26 who has demonstrated strong leadership skills, a commitment to public service, and support for open societies.
   
  The presentation of awards was a moment to acknowledge and celebrate the exceptional academic achievement, leadership, and commitment demonstrated by Bard students. It was a testament to their hard work and perseverance, which defines the spirit of Bard College and serves as an inspiration to us all.
  
  Many of the undergraduate awards are made possible by generous contributions from Bard donors. Thank you to all our supporters for believing in the value of a college education, and for investing in the future of Bard students.
  

  Learn more about the Dean of Studies Office
  

  Learn more about Bard’s Scholarship, Awards, and Prizes
  

  
  Post Date: 04-30-2025
  
• “Rebuilding the World Through Queer Video Games:” Bo Ruberg ’07 for YES Magazine
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  “Rebuilding the World Through Queer Video Games:” Bo Ruberg ’07 for YES Magazine

  

  Bard College alum Bo Ruberg ’07.
  

  In an article for YES Magazine, Bo Ruberg ’07, Bard alum and professor of film and media studies at UC Irvine, reflects on the role that video games hold in building worlds for marginalized people and communities. For Ruberg, the relationship between the physical world and the virtual space accessed within video games is complex, and the latter is no less real for being speculative, given that it offers players a chance to inhabit and interact with realities that are different from our own. “Through video games, I theorize a practice that I term queer worldbuilding,” Ruberg writes. “Queer worldbuilding is not the same thing as building worlds that feature queer stories or communities, though such worlds themselves have immense value. Instead, queer worldbuilding describes the practice of constructing new worlds through methods, frameworks, and tools that can themselves be understood as queer.”
  

  Read More About Bo Ruberg’s Exploration of Queer Worldbuilding
  

  
  Post Date: 04-22-2025
  
• NYT Opinion: “This Is How Universities Can Escape Trump’s Trap, If They Dare,” Writes M. Gessen
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  NYT Opinion: “This Is How Universities Can Escape Trump’s Trap, If They Dare,” Writes M. Gessen

  

  Bard College campus. Photo by Chris Kendall ’82
  

  In an opinion piece for the New York Times, M. Gessen, distinguished visiting writer at Bard, asserts that the way universities can fight against the Trump administration’s attacks is to abandon concerns of rankings, endowment building, and campus amenities to “focus on their core mission: the production and dissemination of knowledge.” Gessen spoke to Bard College President Leon Botstein because he “has long practiced the approach I am advocating” and “seems to respond to every crisis by figuring out ways to teach more people”—citing the Bard Prison Initiative, Bard Early Colleges, and Bard Microcolleges as some examples of the College’s mission-driven expansion of higher education beyond traditional pathways. Botstein believes universities are essential to democracy as “portals to tolerance and the expression of fundamental equality of all human beings.” Gessen challenges other universities to: “Act like universities, not like businesses. Spend your endowments. Accept more, not fewer students. Open up your campuses and expand your reach not by buying real estate but by bringing education to communities. Create a base. Become a movement.”
  

  Read in New York Times
  

  
  Post Date: 04-14-2025
  
• Joseph O’Neill Interviewed by the New York Review of Books on the State of US Democracy
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  Joseph O’Neill Interviewed by the New York Review of Books on the State of US Democracy

  

  Distinguished Visiting Professor of Written Arts Joseph O’Neill. Photo by Michael Lionstar
  

  Daniel Drake interviewed Distinguished Visiting Professor of Written Arts Joseph O’Neill for the New York Review of Books, speaking to O’Neill about his assessment of the state of authoritarianism and resistance in the United States. “The end of the rule of law does not mean that we automatically find ourselves in an authoritarian society,” O’Neill said, but cautioned Democrats against being “distracted by the past.” “The (dubious) strategies hatched by their consultants in response to Trump’s win—‘talk about egg prices,’ ‘work with Republicans,’ and so on—make even less sense than usual,” O’Neill said. “New strategies, new faces, and a new level of adversarial exertion will be required.”
  

  Read More in the New York Review of Books
  

  
  Post Date: 03-25-2025
  
• Writer Rick Moody to Give Reading at Bard College on March 31
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  Writer Rick Moody to Give Reading at Bard College on March 31

  

  Rick Moody. 
  

  Award-winning writer Rick Moody will give a reading on Monday, March 31, at 4 pm in Weis Cinema in the Bertelsmann Campus Center at Bard College. The event, which is cosponsored by the literary magazine Conjunctions, will be the final installment in Bradford Morrow’s Innovative Contemporary Fiction Reading Series (ICFRS) and is free and open to the public.
  
  The ICFRS, hosted by Morrow, professor of literature at Bard College and the founder and editor of Conjunctions, has run for over 35 years and welcomed numerous literary luminaries to Bard, such as Amy Hempel, Lydia Davis, Karen Russell, Jayne Anne Phillips, Joyce Carol Oates, Steven Millhauser, Can Xue, Quincy Troupe, Richard Powers, Sigrid Nunez, Brandon Hobson, Marc Anthony Richardson, and others.
  
  Rick Moody is the author of six novels, three collections of stories, and three works of nonfiction, including an essay collection about music. His most recent novel, Hotels of North America (Bay Back) is told through a sequence of online reviews and in 2015 was named a best book of the year by NPR and the Washington Post. Moody has received the Addison Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Paris Review Aga Khan Prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, and his work has been anthologized in Best American Stories, Best American Essays, and the Pushcart Prize anthology. He lives in Brooklyn, NY, and is a prolific contributor to Conjunctions, where he has been published 26 times.
  
  Post Date: 03-11-2025
  
• Bard College Appoints Roosevelt Montás to its Faculty as the John and Margaret Bard Professor in Liberal Education and Civic Life
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  Bard College Appoints Roosevelt Montás to its Faculty as the John and Margaret Bard Professor in Liberal Education and Civic Life

  

  Roosevelt Montás has been appointed as the first John and Margaret Bard Professor in Liberal Education and Civic Life at Bard College. Photo by Inbal Sivan
  

  Bard College is pleased to announce that Roosevelt Montás has been appointed as the first John and Margaret Bard Professor in Liberal Education and Civic Life at Bard College, a newly created faculty chair. Beginning in the 2025–26 academic year, Montás will serve with tenure in the Division of Languages and Literature.
  
  At Bard, Montás will teach in the undergraduate college and lead research for the advancement of liberal education. Montás’s research and teaching focus on the importance of liberal education and the study of great books—texts of major cultural significance that grapple with fundamental human questions—to prepare students for lives of purpose and to promote the formation of citizens for a democratic society. At a critical moment in the state and future of higher education and the role it plays in our nation’s democracy, Bard College remains a leader in its commitment to the power of liberal education in civic participation.
  
  “In the face of the disintegration of general education curricula across higher education, Bard has remained committed to small seminars that bring students and teachers together around common readings to discuss fundamental issues facing us as individuals and as a society,” said Montás. “I am thrilled to join Bard’s faculty in this commitment, and to add my efforts to its tradition of bringing this form of education to communities beyond its own campus.”
  
  “We are honored to welcome Professor Roosevelt Montás as a distinguished new member of the Languages and Literature faculty at Bard,” said Dean of the College Deirdre d’Albertis. “As a humanist and fierce champion of general education, he inspires renewed commitment to teaching transformative texts in a time of increasing discord and fragmentation in the academy.”
  
  Montás was born in the Dominican Republic and immigrated to New York as a teenager, where he attended public schools in Queens, New York. His book Rescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation (Princeton University Press, 2021) reflects on his experiences as a student and then a teacher at Columbia University, explaining how a liberal education transformed his life and why Great Books have the power to speak to people of all backgrounds. He is also author of Becoming America: Four Documents That Shaped a Nation and Why Their Ideas Still Matter (forthcoming, Princeton University Press, 2026) and coeditor of The Princeton History of American Political Thought (forthcoming, Princeton University Press, 2026). He speaks and writes on the history, place, and future of liberal education and his essays have appeared in The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Times, The Point Magazine, The Financial Times, Aeon Magazine, The New York Daily News, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, The Dispatch, The Wall Street Journal, and other outlets.
  
  Prior to joining Bard, he has been on faculty at Columbia University as Senior Lecturer in American Studies and English and served as director of Columbia’s Center for the Core Curriculum from 2008 to 2018, where he taught moral and political philosophy as well as seminars in American political thought in the Center for American Studies. He is currently director of the Freedom and Citizenship Program at Columbia, which introduces high school students from disadvantaged backgrounds to the Western political tradition through the study of primary texts and helps them prepare competitive applications to college.
  
  Montás specializes in antebellum American literature and culture, with a particular interest in American national identity. His doctoral dissertation Rethinking America: Abolitionism and the Antebellum Transformation of the Discourse of National Identity won Columbia University’s 2004 Bancroft Award. In 2000, he received the Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching by a Graduate Student and in 2008 he received the Dominican Republic’s National Youth Prize. In 2023, he was conferred the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters honoris causa by Ursinus College.
  
  This newly endowed faculty chair was made possible through the generosity of the Chang Chavkin Charitable Foundation.
  
  Post Date: 03-04-2025