News from the Division of Languages and Literature

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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).