News from the Division of Languages and Literature

Distinguished Writer in Residence Francine Prose considers the results of the midterms and a growing sense that Donald Trump “is losing his grip on the Republican party.” But she cautions, “to ‘move on’ from Trumpism, to view his regime as an aberration, a four-year mistake, is to fall victim to the dangerous historical amnesia to which Americans seem so susceptible.” She examines Trump’s announcement of his intention to run for president in 2024 and reflects on some of the most divisive moments of his presidency.
 

Botticelli’s Secret by Joseph Luzzi, professor of comparative literature at Bard College, was named one of the best books of 2022 by the New Yorker. “In this wide-ranging history, Luzzi considers why the drawings, which illustrated eighty-eight cantos of Dante’s Divine Comedy, had fallen into oblivion, and charts both Dante’s and Botticelli’s reputations across the ages,” they write. “Many of the ideas for the book came from my classroom discussions with our students,” Luzzi says, making the book’s inclusion on this list “especially gratifying.” In Botticelli’s Secret, Luzzi posits “Botticelli’s drawings as ‘a “poem” in their own regard,’ and as a crucial link in the ‘mapping of the human spirit’s transition’ from one era to the next.”

Conjunctions 79: Onword, 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. “Like many endeavors in the arts,” writes Conjunctions editor Bradford Morrow, “literary journals are quixotic undertakings, and no matter how vigorous are the idealism, resilience, and stubbornness that sustain them, they are fragile enterprises. Fragile and yet crucial constituents in the literary ecosphere.” As its title suggests, Onword celebrates the continuation of the journal’s storied legacy.

Edited by novelist and Bard literature professor Morrow, Conjunctions:79, Onword features new work by Fred Moten, Can Xue, John Crowley, Nathaniel Mackey, Sofia Samatar, Yxta Maya Murray, Deb Olin Unferth, Rae Armantrout, G. C. Waldrep, Bonnie Nadzam, Vi Khi Nao, Carole Maso, Julia Alvarez, Fred D’Aguiar, Peter Gizzi, Shane McCrae, a novella by Russell Banks, as well as three previously unpublished poems by C. D. Wright. In his Editor’s Note, Morrow adds, “If the title was ambidextrous, the theme was nonexistent. Our organizing principle was simply great writing by great writers. Yet commonalities, shared themes, did arise over the course of putting the issue together.” He notes that themes of survival, migration, loss and renewal, evolution of mind and place, reimagining and rebuilding, stillness, how to live with disappointment, and how to move onward through difficult spiritual terrains, thread through the works collected in this issue.

Additional contributors to Onword include Leah Newsom, Alyssa Pelish, Jack Shear and Forrest Gander, Cole Swensen, Barrie Jean Borich, Jai Chakrabarti, Karla Kelsey and Nancy Kuhl, Melissa Pritchard, Peter Orner, Minna Zallman Proctor, Yannick Murphy, John Yau, Martine Bellen, and Andrew Mossin.

The Washington Post says, “Conjunctions offers a showplace for some of the most exciting and demanding writers now at work.”

Edited by Bradford Morrow and published twice yearly by Bard College, Conjunctions publishes 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 the 2018 CLMP Firecracker Award for General Excellence. In addition, contributions to recent issues have been selected for The Best American Essays (2018, 2019), The Pushcart Prize XLIV: Best of the Small Presses, 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).

For more information on the latest issue, please visit conjunctions.com/print/archive/conjunctions79. To order a copy, go to bardian.bard.edu/portal/conjunctions, call the Conjunctions office at 845-758-7054, email [email protected], or write to Conjunctions, Bard College, PO Box 5000, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504-5000. Visit the Conjunctions website at conjunctions.com.

Sandro Botticelli (c. 1445–1510) was “unquestionably the greatest artist to take up the challenge” of illustrating Dante’s Divine Comedy, writes Graeme Wood for the American Scholar. Botticelli died with his series of 100 drawings, one for each canto, unfinished, and then the illustrations went missing for over 400 years. In Botticelli’s Secret: The Lost Drawings and the Rediscovery of the Renaissance (W. W. Norton), Professor of Comparative Literature Joseph Luzzi traces the history of Botticelli’s project, the drawings’ rediscovery, and their role in the resurgence of Renaissance art in the 19th century. 

Valeria Luiselli, celebrated writer and Sadie Samuelson Levy Professor in Languages and Literature at Bard College, will receive the Inspiration Through the Arts Award at the 92nd Street Y’s Seventh Annual Extraordinary Women Awards on November 14. The awards honor women leading the way and making a difference. The event will take place in person and be streamed online. Juju Chang, coanchor of ABC News’ Nightline, will host this year’s awards ceremony.

Valeria Luiselli was born in Mexico City and grew up in South Korea, South Africa, and India. She is the author of the award-winning novels The Story of My Teeth (2015) and Faces in the Crowd (2013), and the collections of essays Sidewalks (2013) and Tell Me How It Ends (2017)—all published by Coffee House Press. Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40 Questions was described by the Texas Observer as “the first must-read book of the Trump era” and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism in 2017. Her work has been translated into more than 20 languages and has appeared in publications such as the New York Times, Granta, Harper’s and McSweeney’s. Her most recent novel, Lost Children Archive (Knopf), won the 2020 Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. It was a 2019 Kirkus Prize finalist and was longlisted for the Booker Prize, Women’s Prize for Fiction, and Aspen Words Literary Prize, and shortlisted for the Simpson Literary Prize. Luiselli received the 2020 Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Literature and is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. She has been on the faculty at Bard College since 2019.