Current News
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February 2024
02-20-2024
Bard College’s Institute for Writing and Thinking (IWT) will host its annual April Conference and welcomes educators of all disciplines on Friday, April 26 from 9:30 am to 4:30 pm. This year’s IWT conference will focus on “Climate Change in the Classroom: Embracing New Paradigms.” The conference will be hybrid, and participants can join online or in person at Bard’s Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, campus. Participants can learn more about the conference and register here.
The rate and severity of extreme climate events can bring on a feeling of numbness and resignation rather than catalyzing responsive resilience in the classroom. How can we refocus the conversation from crisis to education and adaptation? The 2024 IWT April Conference will conduct a deep dive into layered and often contradictory pedagogies about the natural world. This day of shared writing and reflection invites participants to join together in small, interactive workshop groups in order to explore a range of written, audio, visual, and hybrid texts—on topics from manifest destiny to global climate strikes—that are creating a new ecology of education.
The day will feature a plenary conversation by two Bard colleagues on the topic of climate change in the classroom from the perspectives of the humanities and STEM, respectively. Visiting Writer in Residence Jenny Offill is the author of three novels, Last Things, Dept. of Speculation, and most recently, Weather, which was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Eli Dueker is associate professor of biology and environmental and urban studies at Bard, codirector of the Center for Environmental Sciences and Humanities, and head of the Community Sciences Lab.
Tuition fees are from $450 to $575, with Early Bird (before March 26) and Group discounts. Scholarships are available by application here. The IWT conference is Continuing Teacher and Leader Education 5.5 credit hours. Register here.
The rate and severity of extreme climate events can bring on a feeling of numbness and resignation rather than catalyzing responsive resilience in the classroom. How can we refocus the conversation from crisis to education and adaptation? The 2024 IWT April Conference will conduct a deep dive into layered and often contradictory pedagogies about the natural world. This day of shared writing and reflection invites participants to join together in small, interactive workshop groups in order to explore a range of written, audio, visual, and hybrid texts—on topics from manifest destiny to global climate strikes—that are creating a new ecology of education.
The day will feature a plenary conversation by two Bard colleagues on the topic of climate change in the classroom from the perspectives of the humanities and STEM, respectively. Visiting Writer in Residence Jenny Offill is the author of three novels, Last Things, Dept. of Speculation, and most recently, Weather, which was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Eli Dueker is associate professor of biology and environmental and urban studies at Bard, codirector of the Center for Environmental Sciences and Humanities, and head of the Community Sciences Lab.
Tuition fees are from $450 to $575, with Early Bird (before March 26) and Group discounts. Scholarships are available by application here. The IWT conference is Continuing Teacher and Leader Education 5.5 credit hours. Register here.
02-20-2024
“The Enlightenment philosopher Baruch Spinoza almost died for his ideals one day in 1672,” writes Ian Buruma, Paul W. Williams Professor of Human Rights and Journalism, in an opinion piece for the New York Times. Buruma writes that, during Spinoza’s lifetime, his arguments for reason and intellectual liberty “were considered so inflammatory that his authorship had to be disguised.” Now, in the United States in 2024, “in a time of book-banning, intellectual intolerance, religious bigotry, and populist demagoguery, his radical advocacy of freedom still seems fresh and urgent,” Buruma argues.
02-13-2024
Bard College is proud to be included on the list of U.S. colleges and universities that produced the most 2023–24 Fulbright students and scholars. Each year, the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs announces the top producing institutions for the Fulbright Program, the U.S. government’s flagship international educational exchange program. The Chronicle of Higher Education publishes the lists annually.
Seven graduates from Bard received Fulbright awards for academic year 2023–24. Getzamany “Many” Correa ’21, a Global and International Studies major, and Elias Ephron ’23, a joint major in Political Studies and Spanish Studies, will live in Spain as Fulbright English Teaching Assistants (ETAs). Biology major Macy Jenks ’23 will be an ETA in Taiwan. Eleanor Tappen ’23, a Spanish Studies major, will be an ETA in Mexico. Juliana Maitenaz ’22, who graduated with a BA in Global and International Studies and a BM in Classical Percussion Performance, was selected for an independent study–research Fulbright scholarship to Brazil. Bard Conservatory alumna Avery Morris ’18, who graduated with a BA in Mathematics and a BM in Violin Performance, won a Fulbright Study Research Award to Poland. Evan Tims ’19, who was a joint major in Written Arts and Human Rights with a focus on anthropology at Bard, received a Fulbright-Nehru independent study–research scholarship to India. Additionally, Adela Foo ’18 won a Fulbright Study Research Award to Turkey through Yale University, where she is a PhD candidate in art history.
“As an institution, Bard College is proud and honored to be included in the list of Top Producing Fulbright Institutions for 2023-2024,” said Molly J. Freitas, Ph.D., associate dean of studies and Fulbright advisor at Bard. “We believe that Fulbright's mission to promote and facilitate cross-cultural exchange and understanding through teaching and research is in perfect alignment with Bard's own institutional identity and goals. We wish to extend our congratulations to our newest Fulbright awardees and reiterate our gratitude to the faculty, staff, and community members who have supported these students during the Fulbright application process and throughout their time as Bard students.”
“Fulbright’s Top Producing Institutions represent the diversity of America’s higher education community. Dedicated administrators support students and scholars at these institutions to fulfill their potential and rise to address tomorrow’s global challenges. We congratulate them, and all the Fulbrighters who are making an impact the world over,” said Lee Satterfield, Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs.
Fulbright is a program of the U.S. Department of State, with funding provided by the U.S. Government. Participating governments and host institutions, corporations, and foundations around the world also provide direct and indirect support to the program.
Fulbright alumni work to make a positive impact on their communities, sectors, and the world and have included 41 heads of state or government, 62 Nobel Laureates, 89 Pulitzer Prize winners, 80 MacArthur Fellows, and countless leaders and changemakers who build mutual understanding between the people of the United State and the people of other countries.
Seven graduates from Bard received Fulbright awards for academic year 2023–24. Getzamany “Many” Correa ’21, a Global and International Studies major, and Elias Ephron ’23, a joint major in Political Studies and Spanish Studies, will live in Spain as Fulbright English Teaching Assistants (ETAs). Biology major Macy Jenks ’23 will be an ETA in Taiwan. Eleanor Tappen ’23, a Spanish Studies major, will be an ETA in Mexico. Juliana Maitenaz ’22, who graduated with a BA in Global and International Studies and a BM in Classical Percussion Performance, was selected for an independent study–research Fulbright scholarship to Brazil. Bard Conservatory alumna Avery Morris ’18, who graduated with a BA in Mathematics and a BM in Violin Performance, won a Fulbright Study Research Award to Poland. Evan Tims ’19, who was a joint major in Written Arts and Human Rights with a focus on anthropology at Bard, received a Fulbright-Nehru independent study–research scholarship to India. Additionally, Adela Foo ’18 won a Fulbright Study Research Award to Turkey through Yale University, where she is a PhD candidate in art history.
“As an institution, Bard College is proud and honored to be included in the list of Top Producing Fulbright Institutions for 2023-2024,” said Molly J. Freitas, Ph.D., associate dean of studies and Fulbright advisor at Bard. “We believe that Fulbright's mission to promote and facilitate cross-cultural exchange and understanding through teaching and research is in perfect alignment with Bard's own institutional identity and goals. We wish to extend our congratulations to our newest Fulbright awardees and reiterate our gratitude to the faculty, staff, and community members who have supported these students during the Fulbright application process and throughout their time as Bard students.”
“Fulbright’s Top Producing Institutions represent the diversity of America’s higher education community. Dedicated administrators support students and scholars at these institutions to fulfill their potential and rise to address tomorrow’s global challenges. We congratulate them, and all the Fulbrighters who are making an impact the world over,” said Lee Satterfield, Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs.
Fulbright is a program of the U.S. Department of State, with funding provided by the U.S. Government. Participating governments and host institutions, corporations, and foundations around the world also provide direct and indirect support to the program.
Fulbright alumni work to make a positive impact on their communities, sectors, and the world and have included 41 heads of state or government, 62 Nobel Laureates, 89 Pulitzer Prize winners, 80 MacArthur Fellows, and countless leaders and changemakers who build mutual understanding between the people of the United State and the people of other countries.
02-13-2024
Novelist and short story writer Brian Evenson will read from new work at Bard College on Monday, March 25 at 5 pm in Weis Cinema, located in the Bertelsmann Campus Center. Brian Evenson is the author of a dozen books of fiction, most recently the story collection The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell (2021) and the Weird West microcollection Black Bark (2023). The reading, which is being presented as part of Professor of Literature and Bard Center Fellow Bradford Morrow’s course on innovative contemporary fiction, is free and open to the public.
Evenson’s collection Song for the Unraveling of the World (2019) won the Shirley Jackson Award and the World Fantasy Award and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times’ Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Speculative Fiction. Previous books have won the American Library Association’s RUSA Prize Award and the International Horror Guild Award, and have been finalists for the Edgar Award. He is the recipient of three O. Henry Prizes, an NEA fellowship, and a Guggenheim Award. His work has been translated into more than a dozen languages. A new book Good Night, Sleep Tight, will be published by Coffee House Press in September of 2024. He lives in Los Angeles and teaches at CalArts.
Evenson’s collection Song for the Unraveling of the World (2019) won the Shirley Jackson Award and the World Fantasy Award and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times’ Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Speculative Fiction. Previous books have won the American Library Association’s RUSA Prize Award and the International Horror Guild Award, and have been finalists for the Edgar Award. He is the recipient of three O. Henry Prizes, an NEA fellowship, and a Guggenheim Award. His work has been translated into more than a dozen languages. A new book Good Night, Sleep Tight, will be published by Coffee House Press in September of 2024. He lives in Los Angeles and teaches at CalArts.
January 2024
01-23-2024
“Author Valeria Luiselli’s next manuscript will remain a secret—sealed, unpublished, and unread—until the year 2114,” writes Ella Creamer for the Guardian. As part of the Future Library, a project created by artist Katie Peterson, Valeria Luiselli, Sadie Samuelson Levy Professor in Languages and Literature, will contribute a manuscript that will not be published until 100 years have passed since the inception of the Library. Luiselli told the Guardian that the invitation to contribute to Future Library was moving to her, and how the challenged her “to rearticulate [her] relationship to writing.” “This is a piece that no one I know will read – maybe my baby daughter, because she’s two, and she would be 93 – so it could be,” Luiselli said. “But other than her, I don’t know anyone that would read it. So there’s a freedom in that.”
December 2023
12-15-2023
Six Bard College students have been awarded highly competitive Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarships by the US Department of State. Gilman Scholars receive up to $5,000, or up to $8,000 if also a recipient of the Gilman Critical Need Language Award, to apply toward their study abroad or internship program costs. This cohort of Gilman scholars will study or intern in more than 90 countries and represents more than 500 US colleges and universities.
Biology major Yadriel Lagunes ’25, from Clifton, New Jersey, has been awarded a $3,000 Gilman scholarship to study at Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador via tuition exchange for spring 2024. At Bard, he serves as a Residential Life Peer Counselor and a supervisor on the Bard EMT Squad. “This scholarship has made studying abroad a possibility for me,” says Lagunes. “I want to center global public health in my future career as a healthcare worker and researcher. Through travel, I hope foster cultural sensitivity and communication skills that are desperately needed in my field. I am so grateful for Gilman scholarship for this opportunity.”
French and Anthropology double major Lyra Cauley ’25, from Blue Hill, Maine, has been awarded a $4,000 Gilman scholarship to study at the Center for University Programs Abroad (CUPA) in Paris, France via tuition exchange for spring 2024. “I would like to thank the Gilman scholarship for giving me financial security and freedom abroad. This scholarship allows me to fully embrace the experience of learning and living abroad with financial worry or strain,” says Cauley.
Biology major Angel Ramirez ’25, from Bronx, New York, has been awarded a $3,000 Gilman scholarship to study at University College Roosevelt in Middelburg, The Netherlands via tuition exchange for spring 2024. “I’m very grateful to be a recipient of the Gilman scholarship,” says Ramirez. “It’s a huge opportunity to be able to pursue my goals within biology for my future in STEM. I’m excited to learn a new language abroad in the Netherlands and experience new cultures without a financial barrier. I proudly come from a family of Mexican immigrants; therefore, I feel empowered that people like me are able to partake in a change as great as this one.”
Spanish and Written Arts joint major Lisbet Jackson ’25, from Colorado Springs, Colorado, has been awarded a $4,000 Gilman scholarship to study at Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador via tuition exchange for spring 2024. “I am incredibly grateful to the Gilman Scholarship for supporting my semester in Ecuador and ensuring I can commit to developing my Spanish, studying literature, and immersing myself in Ecuadorian culture. Thanks to the Gilman Scholarship I will also be more prepared to pursue a career in multilingual and global education,” says Jackson.
Sociology major Jennifer Woo ’25, from Brooklyn, New York, has been awarded a $3,500 Gilman scholarship to study at Bard College Berlin in Germany for spring 2024. “To be awarded this scholarship means to fully explore and pursue my dream of studying abroad with the freedom of having the financial support I hoped for,” says Woo. “My dad is an artist who has always pushed me to travel and search for culture, the arts, and new experiences, so being able to fulfill this dream while having the resources of education means the world to me.”
German Studies major David Taylor-Demeter ’25, from Budapest, Hungary, has been awarded a $5,000 Gilman scholarship to study at Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany via tuition exchange for spring 2024. “To combine my studies of German language and literature with a day-to-day experience of Berlin is an invaluable opportunity,” says Taylor-Demeter.
Since the program’s inception in 2001, more than 41,000 Gilman Scholars from all US states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and other US territories have studied or interned in more than 160 countries around the globe. The Department of State awarded more than 3,600 Gilman scholarships during the 2022-2023 academic year.
The late Congressman Gilman, for whom the scholarship is named, served in the House of Representatives for 30 years and chaired the House Foreign Relations Committee. When honored with the Secretary of State’s Distinguished Service Medal in 2002, he said, “Living and learning in a vastly different environment of another nation not only exposes our students to alternate views but adds an enriching social and cultural experience. It also provides our students with the opportunity to return home with a deeper understanding of their place in the world, encouraging them to be a contributor, rather than a spectator in the international community.”
The Gilman Program is sponsored by the US Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) and is supported in its implementation by the Institute of International Education (IIE). To learn more, visit: gilmanscholarship.org.
Biology major Yadriel Lagunes ’25, from Clifton, New Jersey, has been awarded a $3,000 Gilman scholarship to study at Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador via tuition exchange for spring 2024. At Bard, he serves as a Residential Life Peer Counselor and a supervisor on the Bard EMT Squad. “This scholarship has made studying abroad a possibility for me,” says Lagunes. “I want to center global public health in my future career as a healthcare worker and researcher. Through travel, I hope foster cultural sensitivity and communication skills that are desperately needed in my field. I am so grateful for Gilman scholarship for this opportunity.”
French and Anthropology double major Lyra Cauley ’25, from Blue Hill, Maine, has been awarded a $4,000 Gilman scholarship to study at the Center for University Programs Abroad (CUPA) in Paris, France via tuition exchange for spring 2024. “I would like to thank the Gilman scholarship for giving me financial security and freedom abroad. This scholarship allows me to fully embrace the experience of learning and living abroad with financial worry or strain,” says Cauley.
Biology major Angel Ramirez ’25, from Bronx, New York, has been awarded a $3,000 Gilman scholarship to study at University College Roosevelt in Middelburg, The Netherlands via tuition exchange for spring 2024. “I’m very grateful to be a recipient of the Gilman scholarship,” says Ramirez. “It’s a huge opportunity to be able to pursue my goals within biology for my future in STEM. I’m excited to learn a new language abroad in the Netherlands and experience new cultures without a financial barrier. I proudly come from a family of Mexican immigrants; therefore, I feel empowered that people like me are able to partake in a change as great as this one.”
Spanish and Written Arts joint major Lisbet Jackson ’25, from Colorado Springs, Colorado, has been awarded a $4,000 Gilman scholarship to study at Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador via tuition exchange for spring 2024. “I am incredibly grateful to the Gilman Scholarship for supporting my semester in Ecuador and ensuring I can commit to developing my Spanish, studying literature, and immersing myself in Ecuadorian culture. Thanks to the Gilman Scholarship I will also be more prepared to pursue a career in multilingual and global education,” says Jackson.
Sociology major Jennifer Woo ’25, from Brooklyn, New York, has been awarded a $3,500 Gilman scholarship to study at Bard College Berlin in Germany for spring 2024. “To be awarded this scholarship means to fully explore and pursue my dream of studying abroad with the freedom of having the financial support I hoped for,” says Woo. “My dad is an artist who has always pushed me to travel and search for culture, the arts, and new experiences, so being able to fulfill this dream while having the resources of education means the world to me.”
German Studies major David Taylor-Demeter ’25, from Budapest, Hungary, has been awarded a $5,000 Gilman scholarship to study at Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany via tuition exchange for spring 2024. “To combine my studies of German language and literature with a day-to-day experience of Berlin is an invaluable opportunity,” says Taylor-Demeter.
Since the program’s inception in 2001, more than 41,000 Gilman Scholars from all US states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and other US territories have studied or interned in more than 160 countries around the globe. The Department of State awarded more than 3,600 Gilman scholarships during the 2022-2023 academic year.
The late Congressman Gilman, for whom the scholarship is named, served in the House of Representatives for 30 years and chaired the House Foreign Relations Committee. When honored with the Secretary of State’s Distinguished Service Medal in 2002, he said, “Living and learning in a vastly different environment of another nation not only exposes our students to alternate views but adds an enriching social and cultural experience. It also provides our students with the opportunity to return home with a deeper understanding of their place in the world, encouraging them to be a contributor, rather than a spectator in the international community.”
The Gilman Program is sponsored by the US Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) and is supported in its implementation by the Institute of International Education (IIE). To learn more, visit: gilmanscholarship.org.
12-14-2023
Program Provides Support for International Artists Under Threat Due to Their Work
Bard College and PEN America’s Artists at Risk Connection (ARC) are delighted to announce the inaugural cohort of fellows for the Center for Ethics and Writing Program, comprising five international artists who have been persecuted for their work. The fellows encompass a range of backgrounds and artistic disciplines.The Fellows for the Center for Ethics and Writing Program are poet and artist Amaury Pacheco del Monte; writer, human rights activist, and physicist Asli Erdogan; Tamil poet, filmmaker, and actor Leena Manimekalai; Ugandan human rights advocate, poet, and medical anthropologist Stella Nyanzi; and Iranian poet, lyricist, and women’s rights activist Mahtab Yaghma.
This fellowship is a non-residency program providing direct support for one year to writers and artists whose free expression is threatened due to their socially engaged art. The Center hopes to further empower the fellows by inviting them to speak on their creative practice in virtual courses, networking extensively on their behalf, and promoting their work on the Center’s website and online journal.
“The Center for Ethics and Writing’s partnership with Pen America’s ARC is the next step in the Center’s efforts to highlight the critical and urgent role artists and writers play in shaping our political and cultural discourse. Our first cohort of fellows embody the Center’s commitment to supporting creative practices that despite the risks, engage boldly with some of the most pressing and divisive social issues facing us,” said John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of the Humanities Dinaw Mengestu, director of Bard College’s Written Arts program and the Center for Ethics and Writing.
“ARC is honored to collaborate with Bard College to identify a talented pool of writers and artists who demonstrate an unwavering commitment to their freedom of expression. We are thrilled to amplify these writers and artists who will lend their expertise and experience to the Center for Ethics and Writing,” said ARC Director Julie Trébault. “By centering creatives who have fled their own country for the sake of their free expression, Bard recognizes the vital role creatives play in advancing the international exchange of thoughts and ideas and the necessity to create such an empowering program.”
The Fellowship for the Center of Ethics and Writing Program is made possible by generous support from the Booth Ferris Foundation.
12-12-2023
The one-night-only, six-hour-long opera Stranger Love by composer and Bard alumnus Dylan Mattingly ’14 and librettist Thomas Bartscherer, Bard’s Peter Sourian Senior Lecturer in the Humanities, has been selected as one of the best classical music performances of 2023 by the New York Times. The performance was conducted by Mattingly’s fellow Bard alumnus David Bloom ’13. “For all its abstraction and timelessness — what is more ageless than the opera’s themes of love and beauty? — this work is absolutely of its time, slowing down emotion in a world that moves uncontrollably fast,” writes Joshua Barone. “The premiere run, at the Los Angeles Philharmonic in May, was just a single evening, but Stranger Love deserves a life far beyond that.”
See the Best Classical Music Performances of 2023 from the New York Times
Read the New York Times Review of Stranger Love
See the Best Classical Music Performances of 2023 from the New York Times
Read the New York Times Review of Stranger Love
12-12-2023
Forbes magazine reports that the number of students enrolled in Korean language classes at US colleges and universities grew from 8,449 students in 2009 to 20,000 in 2021. The motivating force behind this shift is The Hallyu, or Korean Wave, in which global popularity of South Korean pop culture and entertainment has surged, as evidenced in the appeal of K-Pop music, Korean TV shows like Squid Game, and films like Parasite in America. Soonyoung Lee, visiting assistant professor of Korean literature, language, and culture at Bard College, has noticed the demographic in her Korean film and language classes changing away from a majority of Asian and Asian American students. “The enthusiasm for Korean pop culture has transcended ethnic boundaries, drawing in a diverse cohort of students. They are not just seeking to learn a language; they are immersing themselves in a cultural phenomenon that resonates with them on multiple levels,” said Lee.
12-05-2023
Bard College is pleased to announce that Marina van Zuylen, Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Bard, has been named the first Clemente Chair in the Humanities. This new Chair is funded by a generous gift from two of Clemente’s long-time supporters, John and Marlene Childs.
“Bard has been Clemente’s key strategic partner for decades, providing college credits for Clemente students around the country,” said James S. Shorris, Board President of The Clemente Course. “Historically, this critical partnership has been overseen by Clemente’s National Academic Director, Professor Marina van Zuylen, in a pro bono role,” said Shorris. “We are thrilled that Prof. van Zuylen has been named the first holder of this esteemed chair, and are deeply grateful to the Childs family for their tremendous support for Clemente, and to Bard College for their enduring support and partnership.”
"My Clemente students often tell me that literature and philosophy have become their lifeline. One student, after reading Virginia Woolf, wrote in her final paper that sitting around our Clemente seminar table in the Kingston public library was her version of having a room of her own, where she finally had the mental freedom to think and imagine different worlds and new possibilities,” said van Zuylen. “Witnessing how our students gain confidence through the sheer joy of sharing their opinions, being listened to, and then processing what they have discovered, continues to be an unparalleled experience."
"I can think of no better inaugural Clemente chair that Marina van Zuylen, said Jonathan Becker, Bard’s vice president for academic affairs. “Marina is a dedicated teacher, a brilliant writer and researcher, and has demonstrated time and again her commitment to the Clemente mission of bringing rigorous liberal arts and sciences education to adults facing adverse circumstances."
About Marina van Zuylen
Marina van Zuylen is Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Bard College. She was educated in France before receiving a BA in Russian literature and a PhD in comparative literature at Harvard University. She is the author of Difficulty as an Aesthetic Principle, Monomania: Living Life as Art, The Plenitude of Distraction, and Éloge des vertus minuscules. She has published in praise of some of the most beleaguered maladies of modernity—boredom, fatigue, idleness, mediocrity—and written about snobbery, dissociative disorders, and obsessive compulsive aesthetics. She has published extensively on the work of the philosopher Jacques Rancière and has written about art and aesthetics for MoMA and other art-related venues. She has taught at Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, and the university of Paris VII. She is the national academic director of the Clemente Course in the Humanities (clemente.bard.edu), a free college course for underserved adults, and accepted on its behalf a National Humanities Medal from President Obama in 2014. AB, MA, PhD, Harvard University. At Bard since 1997.
About The Clemente Course in The Humanities
The Clemente Course in the Humanities provides a transformative educational experience for adults facing economic hardship in adverse circumstances. These free college humanities courses empower students to further their education and careers, to become effective advocates for themselves and their families, and engage actively in the cultural and civic lives of their communities.
The Clemente Course in the Humanities is founded on the conviction that studying the humanities enables individuals who face barriers to economic and social opportunities to develop critical, reflective and creative skills that empower them to improve their own lives and those of their families and communities.
Clemente’s seasoned professors provide a rigorous education in literature, philosophy, history, art history, and critical thinking and writing. Students do not need to have a high school diploma or GED to be admitted to study. Rooted in Clemente’s commitment to access, tuition is always free, as is the cost of books, childcare, and transportation.
Courses are accredited by higher educational institutions, primarily Clemente’s longstanding partner, Bard College. For many Clemente alumni, these college credits mark the first step toward receiving a college degree. For all students, whether they choose to pursue additional formal education or not, Clemente aims to increase civic literacy, participation, and advocacy.
Clemente has expanded substantially since its first courses more than twenty-five years ago, conceived by its visionary founder Earl Shorris. Clemente now encompasses over twenty-five courses around the country, has been honored with a National Humanities Medal, and received prestigious grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and other leading bodies. The Clemente National Board (CCH) is an indispensable resource for each Clemente course nationwide, providing assistance with student recruitment, curriculum development, staff and faculty hiring, course accreditation, grant-writing, and faculty training development.
“Bard has been Clemente’s key strategic partner for decades, providing college credits for Clemente students around the country,” said James S. Shorris, Board President of The Clemente Course. “Historically, this critical partnership has been overseen by Clemente’s National Academic Director, Professor Marina van Zuylen, in a pro bono role,” said Shorris. “We are thrilled that Prof. van Zuylen has been named the first holder of this esteemed chair, and are deeply grateful to the Childs family for their tremendous support for Clemente, and to Bard College for their enduring support and partnership.”
"My Clemente students often tell me that literature and philosophy have become their lifeline. One student, after reading Virginia Woolf, wrote in her final paper that sitting around our Clemente seminar table in the Kingston public library was her version of having a room of her own, where she finally had the mental freedom to think and imagine different worlds and new possibilities,” said van Zuylen. “Witnessing how our students gain confidence through the sheer joy of sharing their opinions, being listened to, and then processing what they have discovered, continues to be an unparalleled experience."
"I can think of no better inaugural Clemente chair that Marina van Zuylen, said Jonathan Becker, Bard’s vice president for academic affairs. “Marina is a dedicated teacher, a brilliant writer and researcher, and has demonstrated time and again her commitment to the Clemente mission of bringing rigorous liberal arts and sciences education to adults facing adverse circumstances."
About Marina van Zuylen
Marina van Zuylen is Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Bard College. She was educated in France before receiving a BA in Russian literature and a PhD in comparative literature at Harvard University. She is the author of Difficulty as an Aesthetic Principle, Monomania: Living Life as Art, The Plenitude of Distraction, and Éloge des vertus minuscules. She has published in praise of some of the most beleaguered maladies of modernity—boredom, fatigue, idleness, mediocrity—and written about snobbery, dissociative disorders, and obsessive compulsive aesthetics. She has published extensively on the work of the philosopher Jacques Rancière and has written about art and aesthetics for MoMA and other art-related venues. She has taught at Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, and the university of Paris VII. She is the national academic director of the Clemente Course in the Humanities (clemente.bard.edu), a free college course for underserved adults, and accepted on its behalf a National Humanities Medal from President Obama in 2014. AB, MA, PhD, Harvard University. At Bard since 1997.
About The Clemente Course in The Humanities
The Clemente Course in the Humanities provides a transformative educational experience for adults facing economic hardship in adverse circumstances. These free college humanities courses empower students to further their education and careers, to become effective advocates for themselves and their families, and engage actively in the cultural and civic lives of their communities.
The Clemente Course in the Humanities is founded on the conviction that studying the humanities enables individuals who face barriers to economic and social opportunities to develop critical, reflective and creative skills that empower them to improve their own lives and those of their families and communities.
Clemente’s seasoned professors provide a rigorous education in literature, philosophy, history, art history, and critical thinking and writing. Students do not need to have a high school diploma or GED to be admitted to study. Rooted in Clemente’s commitment to access, tuition is always free, as is the cost of books, childcare, and transportation.
Courses are accredited by higher educational institutions, primarily Clemente’s longstanding partner, Bard College. For many Clemente alumni, these college credits mark the first step toward receiving a college degree. For all students, whether they choose to pursue additional formal education or not, Clemente aims to increase civic literacy, participation, and advocacy.
Clemente has expanded substantially since its first courses more than twenty-five years ago, conceived by its visionary founder Earl Shorris. Clemente now encompasses over twenty-five courses around the country, has been honored with a National Humanities Medal, and received prestigious grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and other leading bodies. The Clemente National Board (CCH) is an indispensable resource for each Clemente course nationwide, providing assistance with student recruitment, curriculum development, staff and faculty hiring, course accreditation, grant-writing, and faculty training development.
12-05-2023
Dina A. Ramadan, continuing associate professor of Human Rights and Middle Eastern Studies at Bard College, has received a 2023 Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant in the category of Short-Form Writing. One of 27 grantees, professor Ramadan will write a series of articles on the relation of contemporary art to migration from the Middle East and North Africa. The articles will approach art criticism as a decolonial strategy that counters neutralizing practices of inclusion and representation. The Arts Writers Grant program supports writing about contemporary art and aims to ensure that critical writing remains a valued mode of engaging with the visual arts.
In its 2023 cycle the Arts Writers Grant has awarded a total of $935,000 to 27 writers. Ranging from $15,000 to $50,000 in three categories—Articles, Books, and Short-Form Writing—these grants support projects addressing both general and specialized art audiences, from short reviews for magazines and newspapers to in-depth scholarly studies.
“The grants uplift the diverse perspectives of writers whose fine-tuned attention to the content and context of contemporary art-making helps to keep artists at the center of cultural conversations and debates—where they belong,” said Joel Wachs, President, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
Further reading:
Ali Cherri Interviewed by Dina A. Ramadan in BOMB Magazine
What Is the Cost of Inclusion? Dina Ramadan Reviews Baseera Khan’s I Am an Archive for Art Papers
In its 2023 cycle the Arts Writers Grant has awarded a total of $935,000 to 27 writers. Ranging from $15,000 to $50,000 in three categories—Articles, Books, and Short-Form Writing—these grants support projects addressing both general and specialized art audiences, from short reviews for magazines and newspapers to in-depth scholarly studies.
“The grants uplift the diverse perspectives of writers whose fine-tuned attention to the content and context of contemporary art-making helps to keep artists at the center of cultural conversations and debates—where they belong,” said Joel Wachs, President, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
Further reading:
Ali Cherri Interviewed by Dina A. Ramadan in BOMB Magazine
What Is the Cost of Inclusion? Dina Ramadan Reviews Baseera Khan’s I Am an Archive for Art Papers
12-04-2023
Conjunctions:81, Numina Features New Work by Julia Alvarez, Aimee Bender, Arthur Sze, Shane McCrae, Kyoko Mori, Han Ong, James Morrow, Amparo Dávila, and Many Others
Conjunctions:81, Numina, the latest issue of the innovative literary magazine published by Bard College, which has been in print for more than 40 continuous years, has just been released. This issue of Conjunctions explores enchantment. “In a world rife with disenchantment, gathering works that explore enchantment might seem contrarian to some, but to us it felt natural, even imperative,” writes Conjunctions editor Bradford Morrow. “Words like numinous and enchanted are—wonderfully—open to a variety of interpretations. And so the writers in this issue had an even greater than usual role in defining its direction, its atmosphere, its very meaning.” The issue collects 30 essays, stories, and poems that converge on enchantment—“Think of this issue as a literary murmuration,” Morrow continues. “A kind of word ballet whose constantly shifting images spark the imaginations of all who encounter it.”
Edited by novelist and Bard literature professor Morrow, Conjunctions:81, Numina features new work by Julia Alvarez, Aimee Bender, Arthur Sze, Shane McCrae, Kyoko Mori, Han Ong, James Morrow, Amparo Dávila, and many others. Through fiction and poetry, drawings, and beguiling writings in a multitude of genres, Numina brings together a wide community of writers who invite readers to view their world anew, transfigured just a little. Or maybe a lot.
Additional contributors to Numina include Alyssa Pelish, Meredith Stricker, Bronka Nowicka, Mark Irwin, Melissa Pritchard, Laird Hunt, Jessica Reed, Nathaniel Mackey, Martha Ronk, Cristina Campo, Andrew Ervin, Brian Conn, Heather Altfeld, Eliot Weinberger, Laynie Browne, Edie Meidav, Nancy Kuhl and Karla Kelsey, Nina Shope, Michael Ives, Madeline Kearin, Ben Tufnell, and Brian Evenson.
The Washington Post hails Conjunctions as “a showplace for some of the most exciting and demanding writers now at work.”
Published twice yearly by Bard College, Conjunctions features innovative fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction by emerging voices and contemporary masters. For four decades, Conjunctions has challenged accepted forms and styles, with equal emphasis on groundbreaking experimentation and rigorous execution. Morrow won PEN America’s 2007 Nora Magid Award for Magazine Editing and the 2022 Community of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP) Lord Nose Award, given in recognition of a lifetime of superlative work in literary publishing. In 2020, Conjunctions received the prestigious Whiting Literary Magazine Prize. The judges noted, “Every issue of Conjunctions is a feat of curatorial invention, continuing the Modernist project of dense, economical writing, formal innovation, and an openness to history and the world.” Named a “Top Literary Magazine” of 2019, 2020, and 2021 by Reedsy, the journal was a finalist for the 2018, 2019, and 2021 ASME Award for Fiction and a recipient of the 2023 CLMP Capacity Building Grant. In addition, contributions to recent issues have been selected for The Best American Essays (2018, 2019, 2022), The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses (2022, 2023), Best American Experimental Writing 2020, Best Small Fictions 2019, The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2019, and The Best American Short Stories (2021, 2022).
November 2023
11-28-2023
In her essay “Forget Your Darlings,” published in the European Review of Books, Associate Professor of Literature and Director of the Literature Program Marisa Libbon explores the ways in which “three recent books about the lives of medieval women—one fictional, the others real—experiment with biographical form, and in doing so, challenge their readers to remember differently.” In her analysis of Charlotte Cooper-Davis’s Christine de Pizan: Life, Work, Legacy, Janina Ramirez’s Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It, and Marion Turner’s The Wife of Bath: A Biography, Libbon reveals how the complexity and agency of women’s lives and work during the Middle Ages have been scarcely memorialized or documented—and in some cases, textually erased—since that era. “It’s only in the historical narrative, our memory of the past, that women are absent,” Libbon writes. “Today, and historically, these absences leave room for false narratives to take root about what were and are ‘natural’ and ‘traditional’ roles for women.”
11-28-2023
For Sarah Elia ’06, Bard College alumna and an English as a New Language teacher at Saugerties Central School District, using news resources has been an invaluable part of teaching her students about language and culture. For the New York Times, Elia writes about four methods that she has used in her classroom for bringing a global perspective to language studies. Using reporting from the Times, she has had her students give public presentations that draw on varied viewpoints, engage in bilingual discussions of articles, use Venn diagrams to compare cultures, and include news images to illustrate culture-themed art projects. “Presenting their work to audiences throughout the school has boosted my students’ confidence and given them a greater presence in the school community,” Elia writes for the Times. “It also has given listeners the chance to learn from and engage with their international peers in contexts that are connected to the curriculum.”
October 2023
10-18-2023
Botticelli’s Secret: The Lost Drawings and the Rediscovery of the Renaissance, a new book by Joseph Luzzi, Asher B. Edelman Professor of Literature at Bard College, was reviewed in The Christian Century. The book explores not only how the Italian Renaissance came to life, but also how Sandro Botticelli’s art helped bring it about and why we need the Renaissance and all that it stands for today. “The secret at stake here is a set of drawings made by Sandro Botticelli for a Medici patron in late 15th-century Florence—a commission meant to illustrate all 100 cantos of Dante’s intensely Christian early 14th-century Commedia,” writes Peter S. Hawkins for The Christian Century. “What a Renaissance artist made of a quintessentially medieval text brings Luzzi to ponder all that was entailed in the seismic cultural rebirth that took place in Florence 500 years ago and has been reinterpreted again and again across the reaches of the Western world.”
September 2023
09-26-2023
Author Zain Khalid has received the Bard Fiction Prize for his first novel, Brother Alive (Grove Press, 2022). Khalid’s residency at Bard College is for the fall 2024 semester, during which time he will continue his writing and meet informally with students. Khalid will give a public reading at Bard during his residency.
The Bard Fiction Prize committee writes: “Zain Khalid’s novel Brother Alive is itself alive, made of language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree, with at least three valances of narrative draped one on top of another. First is a deeply personal novel about three adopted brothers of mysterious origins growing up in a Staten Island mosque under the care of its eccentric Imam, inhabiting an ordinary world precisely observed and rendered extraordinary with kaleidoscopic language, training its lens on a ride on the back of a motorcycle or a pickup basketball game and turning and turning, changing the patterns of image and sensation, radiating universes of detail. Another is a wild, satirical work of science fiction involving a sinister experimental gas central to the three brothers’ mysteries, which brings them from Staten Island to the Middle East as the book’s politics globalize into ruminations on Islam’s clashes and compacts with the West. And the third is the narrator Youssef’s invisible other “brother” who gives the text its title, the symbiotic shadow-consciousness that lives in his mind and feeds on literature, frequently pointing the reader directly to the author’s influences, as Brother Alive is a novel that knows all literature is about literature, and isn’t afraid to embrace it.”
“I’m honored and grateful to be the recipient of the 2024 Bard Fiction Prize. I’ve long admired the prize’s previous winners, luminaries, really, and am stunned to be joining their ranks,” said Khalid. “To work on my novel alongside Bard’s brilliant literary community is a truly awesome endowment.”
Zain Khalid is an American writer and novelist, originally from New York. His debut novel, Brother Alive, won the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award and the CLMP Firecracker Award in Fiction, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize for best first book in any genre, and was shortlisted for the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction.
The creation of the Bard Fiction Prize, presented each October since 2001, continues Bard’s long-standing position as a center for creative, groundbreaking literary work by both faculty and students. From Saul Bellow, William Gaddis, Mary McCarthy, and Ralph Ellison to John Ashbery, Philip Roth, William Weaver, and Chinua Achebe, Bard’s literature faculty, past and present, represents some of the most important writers of our time. The prize is intended to encourage and support young writers of fiction, and provide them with an opportunity to work in a fertile intellectual environment. The 2023 Bard Fiction Prize was awarded to Violet Kupersmith for her novel, Build Your House Around My Body (Random House 2021).
The Bard Fiction Prize committee writes: “Zain Khalid’s novel Brother Alive is itself alive, made of language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree, with at least three valances of narrative draped one on top of another. First is a deeply personal novel about three adopted brothers of mysterious origins growing up in a Staten Island mosque under the care of its eccentric Imam, inhabiting an ordinary world precisely observed and rendered extraordinary with kaleidoscopic language, training its lens on a ride on the back of a motorcycle or a pickup basketball game and turning and turning, changing the patterns of image and sensation, radiating universes of detail. Another is a wild, satirical work of science fiction involving a sinister experimental gas central to the three brothers’ mysteries, which brings them from Staten Island to the Middle East as the book’s politics globalize into ruminations on Islam’s clashes and compacts with the West. And the third is the narrator Youssef’s invisible other “brother” who gives the text its title, the symbiotic shadow-consciousness that lives in his mind and feeds on literature, frequently pointing the reader directly to the author’s influences, as Brother Alive is a novel that knows all literature is about literature, and isn’t afraid to embrace it.”
“I’m honored and grateful to be the recipient of the 2024 Bard Fiction Prize. I’ve long admired the prize’s previous winners, luminaries, really, and am stunned to be joining their ranks,” said Khalid. “To work on my novel alongside Bard’s brilliant literary community is a truly awesome endowment.”
Zain Khalid is an American writer and novelist, originally from New York. His debut novel, Brother Alive, won the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award and the CLMP Firecracker Award in Fiction, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize for best first book in any genre, and was shortlisted for the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction.
The creation of the Bard Fiction Prize, presented each October since 2001, continues Bard’s long-standing position as a center for creative, groundbreaking literary work by both faculty and students. From Saul Bellow, William Gaddis, Mary McCarthy, and Ralph Ellison to John Ashbery, Philip Roth, William Weaver, and Chinua Achebe, Bard’s literature faculty, past and present, represents some of the most important writers of our time. The prize is intended to encourage and support young writers of fiction, and provide them with an opportunity to work in a fertile intellectual environment. The 2023 Bard Fiction Prize was awarded to Violet Kupersmith for her novel, Build Your House Around My Body (Random House 2021).
09-26-2023
Bard College’s Clemente Course, a college-level introduction to the humanities taught by Marina Van Zuylen, Clemente Chair in the Humanities at Bard College and national academic director of Clemente, was featured in the Times Union. “Some students who take the Clemente Course continue their higher education—many have received full scholarships to enroll at Bard College—while others have started businesses, nonprofit organizations or have run for office,” writes Maria M. Silva for Times Union. The program, which will run from October 5 until January 26 via Zoom and in person in Kingston, offers free, accredited humanities courses to economically and educationally disadvantaged adults who will learn about US history, writing, literature, philosophy, and art history through class discussions, readings, and written assignments. Students who complete the course earn six college credits from Bard that can be transferred to any institution of higher education. “These professors teach right under these banners that read ‘education is a human right’ and that dictates the way they approached us,” Michael Atkin, one of Clemente’s most recent graduates, told Silva. “I went in with very high hopes and in fact, I couldn’t have even imagined how great it would be.”
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