News from the Division of Languages and Literature

Four covers from Bard's La Voz magazine will be displayed in the exhibition “Vive La Guelaguetza: An Encounter with Oaxaca” at the Mid-Hudson Heritage Center in Poughkeepsie, New York, through July 19. The exhibition commemorates La Guelaguetza, a world-famous cultural festival from Oaxaca, Mexico, which for the last five years has been celebrated locally at Waryas Park in Poughkeepsie. The festival, which attracts thousands of spectators, will take place on August 3 this year. The La Voz covers on display feature the town's past La Guelaguetza celebrations, and are on view alongside paintings, photography, and traditional costumes from the state of Oaxaca. Bard College students Mariel Fiori '05 and Emily Schmall '05 founded La Voz in 2004 as a Trustee Leader Scholar (TLS) project, aiming to serve the Latino community of the Hudson Valley with a free Spanish-language magazine. Fiori is still editor at La Voz, and the award-winning publication now has an estimated 20,000 readers in the area. La Voz will mark its 10th anniversary with a celebratory evening at the Spiegeltent at Bard's Fisher Center on August 12.

Experimental Humanities Director Maria Cecire talks about how the new concentration draws on innovative methods to help students explore the human condition in the digital age.

Francine Prose reviews Agnieszka Holland's new film, in which one young man's shocking protest against Soviet occupation in January 1969 inspires family and strangers to take action at great cost.

The Bard Fiction Prize is awarded annually to a promising, emerging writer who is an American citizen aged 39 years or younger. Winners receive a monetary award and an appointment as writer in residence at Bard for one semester. Applications for the 2015 prize are due by July 15, 2014.

Daniel Mendelsohn reviews Fermor's The Broken Road, the long-anticipated, posthumously published final volume in the trilogy chronicling his famous walk across Europe in the 1930s.

Writers, says Mona Simpson, don't usually get rich doing their craft. And yet, they spend their lives "making something that you find beautiful and that's deeply satisfying and fulfilling ... that's a kind of wealth."

Bard alumni Joel Clark '05, Tavit Geudelekian '05, Andrew Kopas '08, and Mark Perloff '08 are part of King Post Studios, which last year launched a board game based on Herman Melville's Moby Dick, and is now working on a new game for the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf.

Human Rights and Written Arts joint major Corinna grew up in the small town of Sherman, Texas. She has been active with Bard’s Center for Civic Engagement and the TLS (Trustee Leader Scholar) program, which supports student volunteer efforts. In this interview, she talks about falling in love with Bard's campus, getting involved in the community, and how Bard has changed her.

Bard writing professor Susan Fox Rogers took her kayak out on North Tivoli Bay last week not expecting to see much wildlife, since the height of migration has passed. To her surprise, the trip was marked by a series of encounters, including one with a baby beaver.

"The only people worth envying are the dead. That much, at any rate, is clear once you’ve spent some time reading the Greeks," begins Daniel Mendelsohn in this "Bookends" piece, which honors a most enviable ancient writer.