News from the Division of Languages and Literature

Acclaimed novelist and Bard writer in residence Mona Simpson this week published her seventh novel, Commitment (Knopf). A “minimalist masterpiece” (Ann Levin, Associated Press) the novel follows a California family in the 1970s and 1980s whose three siblings must learn to navigate their lives after their mother is institutionalized for severe depression. “Simpson is an artist of the family saga, the multigenerational narrative. In her seventh novel, she doesn’t revisit this territory so much as animate it anew.” (Kirkus) Commitment is one of Kirkus’s 20 Best Books to Read in March.

The Bard College Institute for Writing and Thinking’s (IWT) upcoming April Conference, "Crafting, Composing, Conversing: The Writer’s Voice Reconsidered," will focus on the teaching practices that help students to develop their writerly voices. This conference will welcome educators of all disciplines to Bard College's Annandale campus on Friday, April 28, 2023, from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Speaker Peter Elbow, the author of the bestselling books Writing without Teachers and Writing with Power, will deliver the keynote address. The conference offers an online attendance option for those who are unable to join in person at Annandale. Standard Tuition is $575, Early-Bird Tuition is $500, and Early-Bird Group Tuition is $450. Register by March 28 to qualify for discounted rates. A group is three or more teachers from the same institution. Scholarship applications are available. To learn more and register, go to: iwt.bard.edu. 

The 2023 April conference focuses on IWT writing-based teaching practices rooted in the interplay of written and spoken voices to explore voice as concept, craft, and conversation. Voice, according to Peter Elbow, has become a “warm fuzzy word” that people use to describe writing they like or that does something appealing they can’t quite pinpoint. “We’re in trouble if we don’t know what we mean by the term,” he adds.  

In small workshop groups, participants will work toward a clear, nuanced, and practical understanding of voice. Our work will also consider challenges and dilemmas: how can hesitant writers or students writing in a second language tap into voice? Can a strong voice get in the way of an essay’s substance or argument? How do we honor and create space for our students’ diverse voices, both spoken and written? Working together, we will aim to identify clear and transparent language that can help our students recognize, develop, and experiment with voice in their writing. 

About Keynote Speaker Peter Elbow
Peter Elbow is Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He has been extremely influential in the field of Composition Studies, having authored Writing with Power and other books that have transformed how writing is taught. He also played an instrumental role in the founding of Bard IWT, and the institute is honored to welcome him back. 

Elbow has been a Director of Writing Programs for over ten years, first at Stony Brook University and then at UMass Amherst. He was on the founding faculty at two experimental colleges, Franconia College in New Hampshire and Evergreen State College in Washington State—precursors to today's movements towards interdisciplinary teaching. 

Nuruddin Farah, distinguished professor of literature at Bard College, was interviewed in the Financial Times, where he spoke about his ambiguous relationship with his homeland as a Somali novelist who has lived in exile, his identity as a radical secularist, and his refusal to tolerate intolerance. “Like many people forced to live in exile, Farah has a complex relationship with his homeland,” writes David Pilling for the Financial Times. “A liberal who abhors the radical Islam that has overwhelmed his country, a fierce individualist who detests the conformity imposed by many families, Farah is a man who has lived in 13 countries but who can only think about one: Somalia.” Farah, who has been a perennial nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature, and whose works have been translated into more than 20 languages, spoke of the transformative power of books to take on a direction and life of their own in the literary sphere. “The books are continuing their dialogue through the writing with other books,” he said. “And the reader is the person who finds out which books they’re in dialogue with.”