News and Notes by Date
April 2013
04-03-2013
This year marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of the poet C. P. Cavafy. Here, Cavafy translator and Bard professor Daniel Mendelsohn reads “Aboard the Ship” (1919) and “Birth of a Poem” (1922).
04-02-2013
This weekend's Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman show at the Fisher Center will feature music, readings, surprises ... and possible magic.
04-02-2013
Bard literature professor and author Mona Simpson will join members of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra on April 15 in the final performance of their "Westside Connections" series, in which celebrated musicians and authors together explore the relationship between music and story.
04-02-2013
04-01-2013
On Monday, April 8, Pulitzer Prize finalist, Bard Fiction Prize winner, and New York Times bestselling author Karen Russell will read from her work. Russell’s highly acclaimed 2011 novel Swamplandia was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, one of the New York Times 10 Best Books of 2011, and a recipient of the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award.
March 2013
03-25-2013
"He was a titan of African literature," says alumna Priya George '97 of the late Professor Emeritus Chinua Achebe. "He was a titan, but you never really felt that. He had zero ego. He was the friendliest man, he just had a gentle way about him."
03-25-2013
President Botstein reflects on Professor Achebe's life, work, and legacy on CNN. "Achebe's contribution was not merely literary . . . He was committed to his people and his community. He did not shy away from political controversy, and he did so in a manner that was unforgettable."
03-22-2013
The Bard community was deeply saddened to learn of the death of groundbreaking Nigerian writer and Bard professor emeritus Chinua Achebe. The author and educator was best known for his first and most influential novel, Things Fall Apart. He wrote numerous books, including novels, collections of short fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and children's books. Professor Achebe received more than 30 honorary degrees, as well as many awards for his work. He was the Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Professor of Languages and Literature at Bard from 1990 to 2009. (Photo by Don Hammerman)
03-21-2013
Bard College writer in residence Edie Meidav, author of Lola, California, will host the panel "The Female Rebel: Women Writers on the Antiheroine in Fiction." The event will take place on March 27 at Bard College at Simon's Rock as part of the Berkshire Festival of Women Writers.
03-18-2013
Conjunctions held a launch event in January for its newest volume, featuring Bard professor and journal editor Bradford Morrow, alumnus Jedediah Berry '99, Charles Bernstein, and Valerie Martin.
03-18-2013
On Monday, April 1, Junot Díaz, Pulitzer Prize–winning fiction writer and recipient of a 2012 MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, will read from his work at Bard College. The New York Times called Díaz “one of contemporary fiction’s most distinctive and irresistible new voices.”
03-17-2013
Acclaimed Israeli author and filmmaker Etgar Keret will give a reading at Bard College on Monday, April 15. Keret will read selections from his recent work Suddenly, a Knock on the Door, as well as from The Girl on the Fridge, which contains his earliest stories.
03-16-2013
Vassar College professor Amitava Kumar interviews Bard College distinguished writer in residence, historian, and photographer Teju Cole. This issue also contains a series of Cole's paired photographs from different global locations, with Kumar's exploration of their relationships to each other and other great works of art.
03-07-2013
Hesitating Beauty, a new book of photography by Joshua Lutz '97, MFA '05 (ICP), is a meditation on his mother's mental illness. His work will be on display at New York’s ClampArt Gallery from April 11th to May 18th.
03-06-2013
Julia Bloch has been selected as a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards, which recognize LGBT writing. Bloch, a poet and faculty member in the Bard Master of Arts in Teaching program, was nominated for her book Letters to Kelly Clarkson.
03-01-2013
This new series, curated by Bard faculty members Roger Berkowitz and Walter Russell Mead, will engage an ongoing discussion with the nation’s leading bloggers in politics, history, art, and culture. Bard professor Francine Prose, who blogs for the New York Review of Books, will speak on March 5. All events take place at the Bard Graduate Center in Manhattan.
February 2013
02-26-2013
Ian Buruma is the Paul W. Williams Professor of Human Rights and Journalism at Bard College. Professor Buruma is an award-winning journalist and writer.
He was educated in Holland and Japan, where he studied Chinese literature and Japanese cinema. In the 1980s, he worked as a journalist, and spent much of his early writing career traveling and reporting from all over Asia. Buruma now writes about a broad range of political and cultural subjects for major publications, most frequently for the New York Review of Books, the New Yorker, the New York Times, Corriere della Sera, and NRC Handelsblad. He is the author of more than a dozen books, including The China Lover (2008) and Taming the Gods: Religion and Democracy on Three Continents (2010). He is the 2008 recipient of Holland's prestigious Erasmus Prize, as well as the 2008 winner of Stanford University's Shorenstein Journalism Award. Professor Buruma has been at Bard since 2003.02-21-2013
Washington Post writer Michael Lindgren calls Professor Mendelsohn, "elegant and capacious ... a versatile critic."
02-20-2013
Teju Cole, distinguished writer in residence at Bard College, was born in the United States in 1975 to Nigerian parents; he was raised in Nigeria and currently lives in Brooklyn. Cole is an author, art historian, and street photographer.
Teju Cole is the author of Open City (Random House, 2011), which won the PEN/Hemingway Award and the New York City Book Award, and was shortlisted for a National Book Critics Circle Award. He is also the author of a novella, Every Day Is for the Thief (2007). His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Qarrtsiluni, Chimurenga, New Yorker, Transition, Tin House, and A Public Space, among other publications. He is currently at work on Water Has No Enemy, a nonfiction narrative of Lagos, and on Small Fates. He received his B.A. in studio art and art history from Kalamazoo College in Michigan; his M.A. in African art history from the University of London; and his M.Phil. in 16th-century northern European visual culture from Columbia University, where he is working on his Ph.D. He has taught art history and literature at Hofstra University, New York University, and Columbia University. He has received a Rudolf Wittkower Fellowship and Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities (awarded by the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship Foundation), and has been interviewed for the documentary film, Wole Soyinka: Child of the Forest.
Teju Cole is the author of Open City (Random House, 2011), which won the PEN/Hemingway Award and the New York City Book Award, and was shortlisted for a National Book Critics Circle Award. He is also the author of a novella, Every Day Is for the Thief (2007). His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Qarrtsiluni, Chimurenga, New Yorker, Transition, Tin House, and A Public Space, among other publications. He is currently at work on Water Has No Enemy, a nonfiction narrative of Lagos, and on Small Fates. He received his B.A. in studio art and art history from Kalamazoo College in Michigan; his M.A. in African art history from the University of London; and his M.Phil. in 16th-century northern European visual culture from Columbia University, where he is working on his Ph.D. He has taught art history and literature at Hofstra University, New York University, and Columbia University. He has received a Rudolf Wittkower Fellowship and Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities (awarded by the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship Foundation), and has been interviewed for the documentary film, Wole Soyinka: Child of the Forest.
02-19-2013
Bard presents its annual Eugene Meyer Lecture in British History and Literature, with acclaimed Irish writer Colm Tóibín. Tóibín will speak about his work with Fintan O’Toole, a leading Irish editor, writer, and critic on Thursday, March 7, at 5:30 p.m.
02-12-2013
Bard College at Simon's Rock faculty member and poet Peter Filkins examines the relationship of Sylvia Plath's poetry to her life and death.
02-11-2013
02-06-2013
On February 20 Robert Coover, Samuel R. Delany, Ben Marcus, Rick Moody, and Francine Prose will read letters by Gaddis and discuss what he has meant to them as writers and readers, introduced by Conjunctions editor Bradford Morrow.
02-06-2013
John Ashbery discusses poetry, surrealism, and the New York School.
02-01-2013
02-01-2013
January 2013
01-24-2013
01-23-2013
01-23-2013
Daniel Mendelsohn, award-winning author, critic, and Charles Ranlett Flint Professor of Humanities at Bard College since 2006, has been named a finalist for the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism for his most recent book, Waiting for the Barbarians: Essays from the Classics to Pop Culture.
01-18-2013
01-15-2013
This April, Bard College is launching a yearlong 10th anniversary celebration of The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts with a month of music, theater, and dance. Highlights include an all-Wagner concert performed by the American Symphony Orchestra (ASO); a performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 performed by members of the ASO and the Bard Conservatory Orchestra; a production of Euripides’ The Bacchae; comic works by Jack Ferver and QWAN Company; Sō Percussion’s Student Concert; the 2013 Bard Faculty Dance Concert; and an evening with author Neil Gaiman and singer-songwriter Amanda Palmer.
01-14-2013
Gilles Peress, Bard College visiting professor of human rights and photography and internationally renowned photojournalist, is exhibiting work in Art or Evidence: The Power of Photojournalism, on view from January 3 through March 10 at the Mandeville Gallery, Union College in Schenectady, New York.
01-13-2013
01-11-2013
Devotees of American Public Media’s Marketplace will be pleased to know that the show’s Africa correspondent is Bard’s very own Gretchen Wilson ’97. During the last eight years, Wilson has established herself as a political reporter who tackles serious labor, economic, and social justice issues.
01-10-2013
What does it mean to be human? How can we consider freedom and constraint in the year 2013? Bard's Center for Civic Engagement invites students from the Bard network of institutions to examine these questions in a written essay or multimedia piece for its annual contest. The deadline for submission is March 1, 2013.
01-07-2013
December 2012
12-28-2012
12-27-2012
12-22-2012
12-21-2012
12-18-2012
What place do the humanities have in a global economy increasingly focused on educating a work force for business, finance, and technology? Bard leaders weighed in with the New Indian Express. "Without humanities, social sciences and arts," says Bard IILE Director Susan Gillespie, "we won’t have just and liveable societies or even prosperous economies." Arendt Center director Roger Berkowitz adds that teaching the humanities is about "transmitting a tradition of meaning and substance, texts and ideas that can inspire young people to care more for the common world they share than for their parochial or personal interests."
12-06-2012
On December 10 at 5 p.m., Paris Review editor Lorin Stein will give a talk at Bard on publishing careers and the literary life, followed by a panel of alumni/ae guests who are recent graduates of the Division of Languages and Literature at Bard.
November 2012
11-25-2012
11-19-2012
11-11-2012
11-09-2012
11-07-2012
11-01-2012
October 2012
10-23-2012
10-23-2012
Author Brian Conn has been selected to receive the annual Bard Fiction Prize for 2013. Conn will be awarded $30,000 and will join Bard as writer in residence next semester. He won the prize for his debut novel, The Fixed Stars, a work of experimental science fiction that our judges call "wondrous."