News from the Division of Languages and Literature

Bard faculty members Omar Encarnación and Masha Gessen spoke as part of PEN America’s Town Hall on “Reckoning and Reconciliation in Biden’s America," held as the centerpiece of the organization’s virtual annual general meeting on January 26, 2021. Encarnación and Gessen joined PEN America President Ayad Akhtar, historian Jill Lepore, and columnists Charles Blow and Peggy Noonan for this timely and wide-ranging discussion moderated by PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel. Omar G. Encarnación is professor of political studies at Bard. Masha Gessen is distinguished writer in residence at the College.

“The trauma imposed by these land seizures is still felt, even as nearly nine million people depend daily on the water system,” the series introduction states. “New York’s reservoirs exemplify the social compact that undergirds ambitious public infrastructures, while the stories of their making emphasize divisions between city and country, wealth and poverty, the potentials and risks inherent in large-scale environmental intervention.”

“Navalny’s superpower has been his ability to show people what they had always known about the Putin regime but had the option of pretending away,” writes Distinguished Writer in Residence Masha Gessen. “He has shown the depth of the regime’s corruption. He has shown that Putin’s secret police carries out murders. With his return to Russia, he has shown the regime’s utter lack of imagination and inability to plan ahead. He has also shown that, contrary to the Kremlin’s assertions and to conventional wisdom among Western Russia-watchers, there is an alternative to Putin.”

“I think (Celan’s work) is the work that came out of the mid-20th century that most directly addresses the disaster . . . of Western culture,” Joris says. “I think of the incredible clear-sightedness this man had in relation to the political situation of his time. He had the same clear-sightedness in terms of writing after events such as Khurbn [the Holocaust] . . . and knew that language needed to be transformed, that you could not use the old German, because the Nazi years had contaminated it.”

“Our ability to fear something and, at the same time, assume it will never occur is one aspect of human nature that seems particularly ill-suited to our continued wellbeing and survival,” writes Distinguished Writer in Residence Francine Prose in the Guardian. “During the assault on the Capitol, as I listened to the panic and horror in the voices of the journalists who, until now, had reported on Donald Trump with something closer to detached disapproval, I wondered: is this what it takes to finally make them understand who this man is—and what he wants for our country? What did they think he meant when he tweeted about the gathering planned for 6 January: ‘Be there. It will be wild.’” Francine Prose is distinguished writer in residence at Bard College.

“We do not fear those whom we see as being like us; we fear the other. Black Lives Matter protesters are other to the Capitol Police. So are survivors of sexual assault or women who protest for the right to choose,” writes Distinguished Writer in Residence Masha Gessen. “But an armed mob storming the Capitol, and their Instigator-in-Chief, are, apparently, familiar enough to be dismissed as clowns. The invaders may be full of contempt for a system that they think doesn’t represent them, but on Wednesday they managed to prove that it does.”

“I wanted to look at what it was like to live in a pre-apocalyptic moment,” says Offill, visiting writer in residence, about writing Weather. “You have real existential threats that will impact you, your kids, your neighbours, but you also have everyday life—you’re not just running around picking up tin cans and dodging cannibals like in most apocalyptic novels. You still have to take your kids to school, you still have to avoid that neighbour you can’t stand, there are still money worries.” 

“In Weather, a librarian named Lizzie is weighed down by the torrent of information she keeps encountering about our doomed planet,” writes Hillary Kelly. “Slipping into what Offill calls ‘a kind of twilight knowing,’ she confronts the fact that flooded New York streets and barren apple trees aren’t a possibility but a certainty. Weather isn’t a comfort or a little packet of wishes for a healthy planet—it’s a meticulously constructed (often hilarious, sometimes disconsolate) lament for our old modes of thinking.”

Jenny Offill's Weather received end-of-year accolades from several publications. For further reading:
The Washington Post, “50 Notable Works of Fiction in 2020”
The Observer, “Books That Made 2020 Bearable: A Reading List for an Unusual Year”
The Guardian, “Best Fiction of 2020”