News from the Division of Languages and Literature

Chris Claremont has written more X-Men comics than anyone else, and his work has had a major impact on the franchise and the superhero genre generally.

Professor Manea was welcomed warmly to his native Romania this week for an event celebrating the author as a national literary treasure ahead of his 80th birthday.

"I found myself going back to my childhood at Bard," writes Ducornet. "That campus had provided me so many amazing experiences."

Professor Manea talks about the joy of reconnecting with friends in Bucharest, Romanian political life, the Islamic State, and his work in progress.

Unlike blood kinship, friendships are forged with people we choose, and continue to choose. People who become, in essence, a free-will kind of family which, like our blood family, can be a strong source of happiness and, sometimes, of grand miseries. Friendships are as mercurial as they are essential. Conjunctions:66, Affinity—the latest issue of the innovative literary magazine published by Bard College—investigates the phenomenon of friendship in its many forms, collecting innovative, provocative fiction, poetry, and essays by writers of every ilk. Edited by Conjunctions editor, novelist, and Bard literature professor Bradford Morrow, Affinity includes a never-before-published poem by Robert Duncan in his original handwriting, as well as new work from Rick Moody and Darcey Steinke, Robert Coover, Paul Lisicky, John Ashbery, and Joyce Carol Oates, among other leading contemporary writers. The issue is dedicated to poet and longtime Conjunctions contributor C. D. Wright.

Professor Rosenberg is the last surviving member of the Varian Fry group, which helped rescue hundreds of artists and intellectuals from the Nazis in World War II.