News from the Division of Languages and Literature

A new book by Joseph Luzzi, Asher B. Edelman Professor of Literature at Bard College, has been reviewed in the Wall Street Journal. Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Biography, covers how Dante Alighieri’s poem profoundly influenced other writers and artists in the centuries that followed, leaving its mark on authors such as John Milton, Mary Shelley, T.S. Eliot, and James Joyce, and shaping issues ranging from women’s identity to debates about censorship of canonical literature. “By recounting the history of the poem’s reception by readers over the centuries—from Giovanni Boccaccio and Michelangelo in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance to modernist writers and filmmakers such as Antonio Gramsci and Jean-Luc Godard, Mr. Luzzi shows what a many-headed and irreducible beast it has always been and continues to be,” writes Andrew Frisardi for the Wall Street Journal.

Nikkya Hargrove ’05, a member of the Bard College Alumni/ae Association Board of Governors and Lambda Literary Nonfiction Fellow, was interviewed by Bomb magazine about her memoir, Mama. In the book, Hargrove tells the story of her decision to adopt her newborn baby brother Jonathan after their incarcerated mother died, and how she set out, with her wife Dinushka, to create the kind of family she never had. “I think the calling to be Jonathan’s mother was nothing short of spiritual,” Hargrove said. “The drive to take Jonathan was to keep him out of a broken system and try to protect him as much as I could from my mother’s mistakes. I wanted to be his constant. I didn’t want him to worry about who would be there for him. And, knock on wood, at 18, he just figured it out. And it feels amazing, you know, to have him reflect back at us what we’ve been trying to do as his parents.”

Bard student Celeste Connell ’26 has won the 2024 Dante Prize, a longstanding award bestowed by the Dante Society of America for the best essay on the Italian poet Dante Alighieri by an undergraduate in the US or Canada. Connell, a junior in classical studies and literature at Bard, was awarded the prize for her essay “Lucan’s Exiles: Solitude and Moral Vision in the Commedia.” “Celeste’s prize-winning essay was unusually brilliant for a student at her early stage of development as a scholar,” said Joseph Luzzi, Asher B. Edelman Professor of Literature at Bard. “She established quite convincingly that the political rhetoric of Lucan’s Pharsalia, a pro-republic epic poem written around the time of Virgil’s more imperial Aeneid, influenced Dante in constructing his moral vision in the Commedia. It’s always challenging to establish direct links of influence, especially between works separated from one another by more than a millennium; and yet Celeste did just that, employing her perceptive skills in close reading along with her thorough knowledge of the Latin source. The resulting essay was one that any scholar would be proud of.”

Five 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, who will study or intern in over 90 countries, represents more than 500 US colleges and universities.

Bard College Mathematics and Italian Studies double major Ezra Calderon ’25, from Harlem, New York, has been awarded a Gilman Scholarship to study at the University of Trento in Italy via exchange, for the spring semester 2025. “This scholarship provides an exciting opportunity to improve my language skills and conduct research while abroad for my Senior Project in Italian Studies,” says Calderon.

Bard College Studio Art major Adelaide Driver ’26, from Taos, New Mexico, has been awarded a $4000 Gilman Scholarship to study at Kyoto Seika University in Japan, for the spring semester 2025. “Receiving this scholarship means the world to me. I have always wanted to study abroad, but money was a concern. This scholarship provides the opportunity to study what I love in an incredible place. I am so grateful,” says Driver. She serves as a peer counselor at Bard and will be studying illustration at Kyoto Seika.

Bard College junior Dashely Julia ’26, who is jointly majoring in Architecture and Art History with a concentration in Latin American and Iberian studies, has been awarded a $3000 Gilman Scholarship to study at Bard College Berlin in Germany, for the spring semester 2025. “Winning the Gilman Scholarship holds profound significance for me. It represents the opportunity to engage with diverse cultures and gain new perspectives that will enrich my understanding of art history and architecture. As someone deeply passionate about exploring how cultural and historical contexts shape artistic and architectural practices, studying abroad is more than an academic pursuit—it is a lifelong dream come true,” says Julia, who is a Posse Puerto Rico Scholar and lead peer mentor for the Office of Equity and Inclusion at Bard.

Bard College Computer Science major Nyla Lawrence ’26, from Atlanta, Georgia, has been awarded a $5,000 Gilman scholarship to study at National Sun Yat-sen University in Taiwan via exchange, for the spring semester 2025. “My grandmother told me this quote from Derek Bok: ‘If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.’ There is always something to be ignorant about but, I am happy the Gilman Scholarship provides others and myself the ability to learn more about the world while also studying. Studying abroad not only allows for broader education opportunities, but also life lessons and responsibility before exiting college, which I am really excited for,” says Lawrence, who will be learning Mandarin, her third language after English and German, to better communicate and traverse the land. Lawrence is currently one of three captains of the Bard women’s volleyball team and the Katherine Lynne Mester Memorial Scholar in Humanities for the 2024–2025 academic year at Bard.

Bard College Psychology major Brenda Lopez ’26, from Bronx, New York, has been awarded a $3,000 Gilman scholarship to study at Kyung Hee University in Seoul via exchange, for the spring semester 2025. “I couldn’t be more grateful, and I can’t wait to see how this scholarship helps me when spending my time in Korea,” says Lopez. At Bard, Lopez is part of the Trustee Leader Scholar Project Nicaragua Education Initiative and a clubhead for the K-DIARY club on campus.

The Department of State awarded the Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship to approximately 1,600 American undergraduate students from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico, in this fall 2024 cycle. All scholarship recipients are US undergraduate students with established high financial need as federal Pell Grant recipients. On average, 65 percent of Gilman recipients are from rural areas and small towns across the United States, and half are first-generation college or university students.

Since the program’s inception in 2001, more than 44,000 Gilman scholars have studied or interned in more than 170 countries around the globe. Supported by the US Congress, the Gilman Scholarship is an initiative of the US Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and is aided in its implementation by the Institute of International Education. To learn more about the Gilman Scholarship and its recipients, including this newest cohort, visit gilmanscholarship.org.

The latest book by Dinaw Mengestu, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of the Humanities and director of the Written Arts Program at Bard College, has been featured on a list of art that inspired former president Barack Obama in 2024. Mengestu’s novel, Someone Like Us, tells the story of the son of Ethiopian immigrants who seeks to understand a hidden family history and uncovers a past colored by unexpected loss, addiction, and the enduring emotional pull toward home. In exploring this history, he begins to understand that perhaps the only chance he has of saving his family and making it back home is to confront not only the unresolved mystery around his father’s life and death, but his own troubled memories, and the years spent masking them.