News from the Division of Languages and Literature

Professor Mendelsohn writes that the skills required of an excellent critic are often impediments to writing strong fiction.

Author Mona Simpson discusses Chekhov's "Three Years," an unusual love story that plays on romantic conventions to reveal the growing affection of a couple over years of marriage.

By leaves or play of sunlight, John Cage: Artist and Naturalist at the Horticultural Society of New York is presented with the John Cage Trust at Bard College, and features the composer's poetry and scores with lithographs.

Until recently Bard alumnus Dan Cline was teaching English language classes to young people in Haisyn, Ukraine, working on community projects, and even ending up in the local press for his efforts. That changed over the winter as political unrest in the country grew into a revolution and the Peace Corps evacuated all its volunteers from the country.

Until recently Bard alumnus Dan Cline ‘08 was teaching English language classes to young people in Haisyn, Ukraine, working on community projects, and even ending up in the local press for his efforts. That changed over the winter as political unrest in the country grew into a revolution. In late February, the Peace Corps deemed Ukraine unsafe and evacuated more than 200 volunteers from the country. Now Cline has gone home to New Jersey, hoping to eventually return to Ukraine to finish his service. In the meantime, he’s giving presentations at local schools and doing what he can to support his Ukrainian colleagues remotely.

The revolution seemed far away to Cline when he was in Haisyn. The small city in central Ukraine is 175 miles from the capital, Kiev, the site of much of the nation’s turmoil. There were no protests in Haisyn, only polite discussion in the teachers’ lounge at the school where he worked. While his site was quiet and safe, that wasn’t necessarily the case for his fellow Peace Corps volunteers in other parts of the country. “I very much want to go back and continue my work,” Cline says, “but I understand how and why the decision was made to evacuate.”

Bard College alumnus Dan Cline '08

Cline had been teaching English to students in the equivalent of the fourth through eleventh grades at The Haisyn School–Gymnasium Complex. His major at Bard was an interdivisional combination of literature, history, and Russian/Eurasian studies, which prepared him perfectly for his Peace Corps service. “I enjoy teaching English,” he says. “That has to do with my love of the language, which is thanks in no small part to the wonderful English department at Bard College.”

One of the Peace Corps’s goals in the region is to bring new and interactive teaching methods into the classroom. “There’s a large focus on memorization,” he says, “so we try to get away from the textbook as much as possible with role-playing activities and visual aids.” All the classes are taught in teams with one Ukrainian instructor and one Peace Corps volunteer. Cline praises his colleagues as experienced teachers who are open to new ideas. The classroom resources are another matter: Many of the students don’t have dictionaries, and the teachers’ desk editions are worn and out of date. Dan has been raising money through family and friends to better equip the classes.

Cline poses in his classroom in Haisyn with his students and fellow teacher.

In addition to teaching, Cline’s Peace Corps service requires a capstone project—a community service initiative to be left in the hands of local staff upon his departure. Cline’s project, for which he received a USAID grant, is an outdoor athletic complex at the school where he teaches. Plans include a playground, workout equipment, and stone chess tables. Programming would be offered at the school and around the complex to promote healthy lifestyles for people of all ages. A Young Volunteers Club—a national, state-supported phenomenon in Ukraine—would be responsible for raising additional funds to build the structure, as well as maintaining the programming series in the long term. He was in the midst of executing this project when he was recalled to the United States, and his carefully crafted plans for the site are now on hold.

Cline wrapped up other projects as well as he could, hoping to return but planning for the worst. He had intended to direct two camps for children this summer, one for HIV-positive youth and another that teaches boys about gender and discrimination. Since being evacuated, he has been training new Ukrainian camp staff via Skype so they can take over from the Peace Corps volunteers. He was also preparing exams for Ukraine’s National Olympiad, an advanced English language competition for high school students. He and a colleague were able to finish writing the exams after returning to the United States and to send them back to the country’s Ministry of Education in time for the event in March.

Cline speaks Russian and Ukrainian, and has a strong background in the region’s history and culture. “When I came to Bard, Visiting Professor Jonathan Brent had offered Soviet History, which I jumped on. I was completely enthralled with the subject. It was just amazing the professors that I met. Professor Gennady Shkliarevsky and Professor Jennifer Day worked with me a lot, and they were true mentors.” Seeing Professor Day’s level of language proficiency as a non-native speaker inspired Cline. He decided to study Russian, and enrolled in Bard’s study abroad program at Smolny College in St. Petersburg, beginning with a summer language intensive and returning for further study the following year.

Cline hosted a Thanksgiving celebration for his students in 2013.

“I had a wonderful time traveling and learning. My Russian improved by leaps and bounds, and that made it vastly easier to pick up Ukrainian later. I had an unfair advantage. As a lot of my Peace Corps friends like to tell me, ‘Showing up speaking Russian is not really fair for the rest of us.’ I definitely have Bard to thank for putting me in a place in which my language skills were so advanced that I feel comfortable giving speeches.” That is what Cline did last fall at Rayon Rada, the parliamentary body in Haisyn that administers the surrounding county. He attended a ceremony with his director during which he was asked to make an impromptu speech. He was later interviewed by one of the mayor’s assistants and that interview was broadcast over the radio in Haisyn.

Now back home, the safety of his friends, coworkers, and students in Haisyn is always on his mind. He’s looking for a job in the United States, but he continues his service by educating Americans about Ukrainian history and culture. In March, Dan spoke at New Jersey City University and to several classes at the Hudson School in Hoboken, his former school. He also hopes to present at his high school and at Bard.

In mid-April, the Peace Corps officially ended the terms of service for all volunteers who had been in Ukraine, though there is a possibility that Cline could be reinstated at the same location within a year. He finds it difficult to imagine not returning to Haisyn. “I hope that I can resume my service. It was wonderful to be in Ukraine. I met amazing volunteers who were full of energy and ideas, and I met so many fantastic Ukrainians. I also learned a lot about my own abilities. A lot of firsts happened in Ukraine.”

Bard College announces the appointment of esteemed writer Anne Carson as Visiting Distinguished Writer in Residence. Carson, who joins the faculty in fall 2014, will teach courses in classical studies and in written arts through the Division of Languages and Literature. Anne Carson, a classics scholar, poet, essayist, critic, and translator, has won international acclaim across genres. She was twice a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; was honored with the 1996 Lannan Award and the 1997 Pushcart Prize, both for poetry; and was named a MacArthur “Genius” Fellow in 2000.

On April 4, Bard College Professor in the Arts Neil Gaiman and Pulitzer Prize–winning cartoonist Art Spiegelman took the stage at the Fisher Center for a historic conversation about cartooning and writing, working across artistic mediums, friendship, identity, and more.

What responsibilities do writers have to their spouses, friends, and children as they draw from personal experience to create works of art? Francine Prose looks at the ethics and repercussions of using real relationships for literary material.

When comics legends Neil Gaiman and Art Spiegelman shared the stage at the Fisher Center earlier this month, their discussion ranged across art forms and into history both personal and global.

The Bard Free Press, the college's student newspaper, has won two New York Press Association awards in the 2013 Better Newspaper Contest. Among college newspapers, the Free Press received first place for design and second place for feature story. The judges awarding the design prize said of the publication, "Brilliant design and layout. It felt like reading art. ... Not traditional by any means but that is what makes it so remarkable. It is a format that a young person could pick up and engage/relate with, and that demographic is obviously highly important in the future landscape of print publications."

The Nation (Pakistan) praises Bard College Berlin undergraduate Osman Ali Chaudhry's first book, Wisdom Salad, as "a short but sweet and thought-provoking anthology."

Bard writer in residence Francine Prose's Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 is "a bona fide page turner."

Norman Manea survived a Nazi concentration camp in Ukraine and a communist dictatorship in his native Romania. Through his experiences, he learned a language of subversion that sets apart his impressive body of work. (Daily Beast)

On Thursday, April 10, the Written Arts Program at Bard College presents a reading by Rikki Ducornet (Bard ’64). A poet, fiction writer, and visual artist, Ducornet’s many books include the recent novels Netsuke, Gazelle, The Fan-Maker’s Inquisition, and Phosphor in Dreamland. Publisher’s Weekly said of her story collection The Complete Butcher’s Tales: “[It’s] told in prose of such beauty that one can't help silently mouthing the words. Fluid, studied, almost overripe, it is also intensely visual.”

On Monday, April 7, Michael Cunningham—the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Hours, By Nightfall, Flesh and Blood, and other books—will read from his work at Bard College. Cunningham will be introduced by novelist and Bard literature professor Bradford Morrow. The reading, presented as part of Morrow’s Innovative Contemporary Fiction Reading Series, takes place at 4:00 p.m. in Olin Auditorium. It is free and open to the public; no reservations are required.

Live Arts Bard (LAB) is a partnership between the Theater and Performance Program and the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College. As its acronym suggests, Live Arts Bard is a laboratory for new performance. Each year LAB will provide residencies for individual artists, or groups of collaborators, in theater, performance, dance, live arts, and allied art forms. Its aim is to develop a fertile and nurturing community of visiting artists and students, who work side by side to generate projects and new creative methodologies.

The John Ashbery Poetry Series at Bard College presents Brenda Coultas and Ann Lauterbach reading from their work, with an introduction by Michael Ives. The program takes place on Thursday, April 3, at 6 p.m. in Bard Hall, and is free and open to the public.

A track from the record Thunder Lay Down in the Heart by composer Christopher Tignor ’98 features a new recording of poet and Bard professor emeritus John Ashbery.

Teju Cole’s book Every Day Is for the Thief, previously only available in Nigeria, will be published this week in the United States.

On Monday, March 31, at Bard College, biographer and New Yorker staff writer D. T. Max will read from his highly acclaimed biography of David Foster Wallace, Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story, a New York Times bestseller that Vanity Fair called “as illuminating, multifaceted, and serious an estimation of David Foster Wallace’s life and work as we can hope to find.”

Ken Buhler discusses how he finds inspiration in striking natural environments, and the importance of spontaneity in his work.

Daniel Mendelsohn, celebrated author, critic, and Charles Ranlett Flint Professor of Humanities at Bard College since 2006, is one of 20 writers to receive a 2014 American Academy of Arts and Letters award in literature. Mendelsohn has won the Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award of $20,000, given to a writer whose work merits recognition for the quality of its prose style.

The Hudson Valley Big Read, made possible through a partnership between Bard and local libraries, will feature six weeks of events exploring the novel Housekeeping, by Marilynne Robinson.

Bard writer in residence Teju Cole's award-winning novel Open City is the March book selection for 1book140, the Atlantic's Twitter book club.

As Bard senior J. p. Lawrence prepares to graduate in May, he will not be entering the work force for the first time—far from it. The anthropology and writing joint major, Bard Free Press editor-in-chief, and cross-country runner has been a member of the U.S. Army National Guard since 2008. His specialty in the military is photojournalism, and he has served in Kuwait, Qatar, Germany, and Australia, earning several military journalism awards for his work, as well as an Army Commendation Medal. Lawrence was on the ground reporting for the U.S. Army during the drawdown of U.S. troops in Iraq in 2009, and in New York City after Hurricane Sandy in 2012. He has been recognized for his work at Bard, as well, winning the Hannah Arendt Center Award for Excellence in Political Thinking as a sophomore.

Lawrence wants to continue in journalism or broadcasting after graduation, and he’s taken every opportunity to gain experience in the field. On deployment, the Minneapolis native was on a military team that worked with Twin Cities Public Television to produce a documentary about Minnesota soldiers called Iraq and Back. The film, in which Lawrence is a named contributor, was part of a series that won the most prestigious Regional Emmy® Award for its area in 2013, the Upper Midwest Board of Governors Award.

Last summer, Lawrence interned with ABC news, in which he worked the overnight shift for the early morning news programs World News Now and America This Morning. “Their tag line is, ‘World News Now—informing insomniacs for more than two decades’!” Lawrence says. “I was able to pitch stories, and find footage and see my work on air.” One of the pieces Lawrence pitched was a segment called “Yoga Babies,” about mothers who do yoga with their infants. “It was great! I got to write, I got to help on the anchor track. I got to help with editing. It all came together.”

At Bard’s student newspaper, the Free Press, Lawrence and Kurt Schmidlein ’13 organized a series of pieces written by students studying in Bard’s global network of institutions. Students visiting from Smolny College in St. Petersburg wrote articles about working toward free elections in the country, and about the openness of political discussions among American students. “It's really cool that Bard has all these people under its umbrella. We were able to go talk to students basically like us, but who come from a different context. It's one of the reasons why I really like journalism; it's getting to know people from different places and seeing how your ideas can change for the better by encountering new perspectives.”

Lawrence was accepted to Bard and deferred for two years so he could join the National Guard. He continues to spend one weekend a month and two weeks during the summer on duty. “It’s really interesting because I leave Bard every weekend to hang out with people from a very different socioeconomic context. … I hang out with officers who are lawyers, who work in the district attorney's office, and I hang out with people who are mechanics, plumbers and things like that.” His service offers a fresh perspective on his time at Bard, and has given him a wide range of experience working with different kinds of people all over the world.

For his senior project, Lawrence is following the staff at several of the area’s college newspapers to see how each team works. “My idea is that the different context of each college produces a different lens and affects the way news is processed.” His project will combine anthropology and writing. “I want to be able to write something that really pushes the boundaries of what I can do,” he says.

Lawrence reenlisted with the National Guard this winter and is now a sergeant. He is exploring graduate schools and has made it to the second round of screening for the Fulbright Program. With a Bard education under his belt and a resume of outstanding experiences and awards, he’s ready for the next chapter.

Visit Lawrence’s website to read some of his work and view his photography.

As Bard senior J. p. Lawrence prepares to graduate in May, he will not be entering the work force for the first time—far from it. The anthropology and writing joint major, Bard Free Press editor-in-chief, and cross-country runner has been a member of the U.S. Army National Guard since 2008.

The Fisher Center and Live Arts Bard are pleased to present a conversation between acclaimed author Neil Gaiman and celebrated cartoonist Art Spiegelman, about cartooning and writing, working across artistic mediums, friendship, identity, and more. This special event takes place on Friday, April 4 at 7:30 p.m. in the Sosnoff Theater.

Event Rescheduled from Monday, March 3
On Monday, March 10, highly acclaimed fiction writer Amy Hempel will read from The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel, which, in 2007, was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, an Ambassador Book Award winner, and named one of the Ten Best Books of the Year by the New York Times.

The Big Read comes to Dutchess, Columbia, and Ulster Counties through a unique partnership between Bard College and the Germantown, Kingston, Red Hook, Rhinecliff, and Tivoli libraries. Beginning in March 2014, The Big Read spans six weeks of activities, performances, and discussions exploring Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Marilyn Robinson’s Housekeeping.

On Monday, March 10, at Bard College, Raquel Partnoy, Alicia Partnoy and Ruth Irupé Sanabria—three generations of women from a remarkable Argentinian family whose lives were brutally and forever changed by state terrorism during the military rule in Argentina in the late 1970s and early 1980s—will share their art, writing, memories, and commentary on the continuing struggles for justice in Argentina.

Chinua Achebe and Toni Morrison—both former Bard professors—made college history in 2001 when they shared the stage at Olin. Read their conversation with President Botstein in Transition.

A wide-ranging interview with award-winning Romanian author Norman Manea conducted in German in 2009 has now been published in English in a new volume, Paradise Found.

"As the furthest distillation of a feeling, poems like Lauterbach’s demand that the reader inhabit the world of the poem," writes Benjamin Landry.

The owner of a previously unknown papyrus made a chance call to an Oxford classicist, who uncovered that the collector possessed texts from two previously unknown poems by Sappho, the ancient Greek poet.

Bennett Sims, Writer in Residence at Bard College, will read from his work on Monday, February 24. Sims received the 2014 Bard Fiction Prize for his debut novel, A Questionable Shape. In this penetrating story set in Baton Rouge, about a son looking for his undead father, Sims transcends traditional zombie narrative to deliver a wise and philosophical rumination on the nature of memory and loss. Sims is at Bard for the spring 2014 semester.

Joseph O'Neill, distinguished visiting professor of written arts, talked about his Booker Prize–nominated novel, Netherland, at the Jaipur Literature Festival.

Pulitzer Prize–winning author Elizabeth Frank discusses the work of J.D. Salinger in this outtake from the new documentary about the reclusive novelist.

Ghosts, goblins, and poetry ... Environmental and Urban Studies executive administrator Tom O'Dowd writes about the inspirational Hudson River.

Writer in Residence Francine Prose talks about the perils of relying on Wikipedia, as well as the joys of accidental discoveries on YouTube.

Last week Teju Cole affirmed the literary possibilities of Twitter when he collaborated with other users to share his short story, "Hafiz," in bits and pieces. He then retweeted it in chronological order.

Third-generation filmmaker Gia Coppola is making a name for herself with her forthcoming film Palo Alto. She both directed the film and adapted the script from James Franco's short story collection.

Julia Klein's Chicago-based Soberscove Press (named for Bard's Obreshkove dormitory) "fills a much needed gap in art publishing, shaping how we think about recent art history."

Author and avid Twitter user Neil Gaiman will be taking a break from social media in 2014 to focus on writing and teaching at Bard. Here are a few of his recent Twitter gems.

Bard Italian professor Joseph Luzzi's moving New York Times essay, "I Found Myself in a Dark Wood," was the subject of an article in a leading Italian daily newspaper, Corriere della Sera. (In Italian)

Artist, alumna, and Bard MFA faculty Amy Sillman launched her first museum survey this year. Now the exhibition catalogue is one of the best art books of 2013.

When Italian professor Joseph Luzzi's wife, Katherine, died suddenly in a car accident, Dante's Divine Comedy took on new meaning as he faced his grief.

"Dylan’s songs can make us feel that pleasurable shock of being partially decapitated by beauty," writes Francine Prose.

President John Dramani Mahama of the Republic of Ghana visited Bard last week for the Chinua Achebe Leadership Forum. Sahara TV covered the event, which included music, dancing, poetry, and speeches from honored guests.

This week, the APA recognized Professor Daniel Mendelsohn's contributions to the field of classical studies by honoring him with the 2013 President's Award.

Stacey Allan '04, graduate of the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard, has cofounded the cutting edge arts publication and book imprint East of Borneo.