News from the Division of Languages and Literature

A new book by Joseph Luzzi, professor of comparative literature at Bard College, has been reviewed in the New Yorker. The Innocents of Florence chronicles the formation of what came to be known as the Innocenti in 15th-century Florence, which was the first orphanage in Europe devoted exclusively to abandoned children and would go on to care for nearly 400,000 young lives over the next five centuries. Luzzi examines the tragic and complex history of the groundbreaking humanitarian institution, that ultimately—in recognizing poor and abandoned children as worthy of nurture—would shape education and childcare for generations to come. Harrowing accounts of “sexual violence, family separation, child abuse, and mass death” are examined alongside the “historic Tuscan superbloom of human creativity and innovation,” writes Jessica Winter for the New Yorker.  It also, Winter notes, contains distressing echoes of the present: “Since the Dobbs decision abolished the constitutional right to abortion, in 2022, at least ten states have passed new or expanded ‘safe haven’ laws for relinquishing infants, and hundreds of temperature-controlled ‘baby boxes’ have cropped up in Indiana, Kentucky, and elsewhere—the contemporary equivalent of the Innocenti’s holy-water font.” 

The Literature Program at Bard challenges national, cultural, and disciplinary boundaries that have often dictated the terms by which we understand the meaning and value of the written word, and has a long-standing commitment to fostering the work of writers and thinkers who expand the parameters of public discourse.

“Eça de Queirós is hardly the first writer to ask whether we would be better off without the blessing and curse of our complex consciousness,” writes Distinguished Writer in Residence Francine Prose of Adam and Eve in Paradise, a 19th-century novella in which, among other things, Adam fights a dinosaur and Eve is praised for eating the forbidden fruit. Prose, reading the novella over the course of one afternoon (and then again the next day), found herself moved by it. “Despite the book’s short length, there’s room for startling plot turns, inspired details, violent drama, and a thoughtful consideration of what it means to be human,” she writes in the New York Review of Books. As Prose found herself delighted, in 2025, by the novella’s humor and humanity, she felt a sense of gratitude to Eça de Queirós. “What pure pleasure it is, in these dark times,” she writes, “to read a bright fantasy about Adam and Eve and evolution, about the necessity of loving the poisonous roots, the scattered nebulae, and even one another without any expectation of being loved in return.”

Prose has taught in the Literature Program since 2005, which challenges cultural and disciplinary boundaries that have often dictated the terms by which we understand the meaning of the written word. She is also affiliated faculty in the Written Arts Program at Bard, which encourages students to experiment with their own writing in a context sensitive to intellectual, historical, and social realities.