News from the Division of Languages and Literature

History, in one view, “is the record of what people have done: Richard Crookback, Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn. The final installment of the ‘Wolf Hall’ trilogy is a reminder that a history is not the same as a story. I suspect that Mantel had already said everything she had to say about Thomas Cromwell in the first two books, but felt compelled—by her evident love for the character; perhaps, too, by the appetite of her audience for more—to doggedly follow the historical trail to its conclusion.”

Alejandra Pizarnik was a leading voice in 20th-century Latin American poetry—Octavio Paz described her writing as exuding “a luminous heat that could burn, smelt, or even vaporize its skeptics.” Six volumes of her poetry have been translated into English. The recently issued A Tradition in Rupture (Ugly Duckling Presse), translated by Bard’s Cole Heinowitz, presents Pizarnik’s critical writings in English for the first time.

On Monday, March 2, 2020, Berlin Prize–winning author Carole Maso will read from her work at Bard College. Known for her experimental, poetic, and fragmentary narratives, “Maso is a writer of such power and originality that the reader is carried away with her, far beyond the usual limits of the novel,” writes the San Francisco Chronicle. Maso will be introduced by Bard literature professor and novelist Bradford Morrow. The reading, presented by Morrow’s Innovative Contemporary Fiction Reading Series, takes place at 2:30 p.m. in Weis Cinema, Bertelsmann Campus Center. It is free and open to the public; no reservations are required. 
 

“Much of the feminist dystopian fiction published over the last few years takes place in the future, in worlds uncomfortably similar to our own. The Illness Lesson, however, proves that books can fit squarely within that genre even when set in the past — in this case, small-town Massachusetts in 1871. Think ‘City Upon a Hill’ ideals and ‘The Scarlet Letter’-style misogyny and you’ll have a pretty good idea of this sly debut novel, which scarily hints that, since the 19th century, perhaps not a whole lot has changed.… Astoundingly original, this impressive debut belongs on the shelf with your Margaret Atwood and Octavia Butler collections” (Siobhan Jones, New York Times).

Clare Beams, Bard Fiction Prize winner and writer in residence at Bard College, will read from recent work on Monday, February 24. This event is free and open to the public. The reading begins at 7 p.m. and will be held in the Reem-Kayden Center’s László Z. Bitó ’60 Auditorium.

Using Orwell’s Down and Out to Understand and Write Histories of Homelessness Then and Now 

Bard College presents its annual Eugene Meyer Lecture in British History and Literature, with Nick Crowson, Chair in Contemporary British History at the University of Birmingham. The lecture takes place in the Lásló Z. Bitó ’60 Auditorium (Room 103) of the Gabrielle H. Reem and Herbert J. Kayden Center for Science and Computation on Tuesday, February 18, at 4:45 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.
 
What does George Orwell's classic account of homeless living in London during the interwar years offer the historian? Where should we locate this semi-fictionalised account in the tradition of the incognito social investigator? Professor Crowson's lecture will address these questions and ask how Orwell helps us understand the physical manifestations of homelessness in modern Britain. In doing so, he shows how historians can play a crucial role in facilitating better, historically-informed public discourse around homelessness.

Nick Crowson holds the Chair in Contemporary British History at the University of Birmingham. The author and editor of many books, including Facing Fascism: The Conservative Party and the European Dictators 1935–40; Britain and Europe: A Political History since 1918; and A Historical Guide to NGOs in Britain: Charities, Civil Society and the Voluntary Sector since 1945, he is writing a new history of homelessness in modern Britain seeking to integrate the lived experience with the policy responses. His research is widely used by a range of policy and cultural organisations, including Crisis, Shelter, the Museum of Homelessness and the Cardboard Citizens Theatre Company.

This annual lecture forms part of the endowment of the Chair in British History and Literature that was established in 2010 to commemorate Eugene Meyer (1875–1959)—the owner and publisher of the Washington Post, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, and first President of the World Bank. The endowment has given Bard the opportunity to extend its commitment to teaching and research in modern British studies. Professor Richard Aldous holds the Eugene Meyer Chair.

Photo courtesy Peter Berthoud.

The fallen executive committed a cardinal, culturally unacceptable sin: hubris.

Justus Rosenberg, Bard Professor Emeritus of Languages and Literature and Visiting Professor of Literature, has penned a new memoir, The Art of Resistance: My Four Years in the French Underground (William Morrow, 2020).

Bard’s Clemente Course in the Humanities in Kingston, New York, kicks off its spring session this week at the Kingston Library. Marina van Zuylen, Bard faculty member and Clemente Course director, talks about the nationwide Clemente Course, and how the program connects to Bard’s mission to make college education more inclusive and accessible. The spring 2020 Kingston Clemente Course begins on Thursday, February 6 and takes place on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6:00 to 8:00 pm. There is no tuition, and the program includes free childcare and transportation. Students earn 6 Bard College credits upon completion. Prospective students are encouraged to come to the open house to preview the program on Tuesday, February 4, 6:00 to 8:00 pm, or simply attend the first class on Thursday. Marina van Zuylen is a professor of French and comparative literature at Bard, director of the French Studies Program, and national academic director of the Clemente Course in the Humanities.
 

Assistant Professor of Literature Daniel Williams reviews Anna Kornbluh’s The Order of Forms. “Kornbluh anchors her brilliant and challenging book in the 19th-century realist novel but goes well beyond those confines to argue forcefully for the political dynamism and durability of forms and formalisms in our time,” he writes.
 

Clare Beams, Bard Fiction Prize winner and writer in residence at Bard College, will read from recent work on Monday, February 24. This event is free and open to the public. The reading begins at 7 p.m. and will be held in the Reem-Kayden Center’s László Z. Bitó ’60 Auditorium at Bard College. For more information call 845-758-7087.

Beams received the Bard Fiction Prize for her debut collection of short stories, We Show What We Have Learned (Lookout Books 2016). Her newest book, The Illness Lesson (Doubleday 2020), will be released on February 11. Beams’ residency at Bard College is for the fall 2020 semester, during which time she will continue her writing and meet informally with students.

The Bard Fiction Prize committee writes: “The nine stories in Clare Beams’ debut collection of fiction, We Show What We Have Learned, range from factual, historical settings and characters to eerily fantastical ones, displaying a startling depth and an epic scale of imagination. While the characters, and the situations they find themselves in, are sometimes surreal, their psychologies are always absolutely real—fully, compassionately drawn. Every one of these stories has a world and a lifetime behind it, and every one is a compelling, disquieting, and immensely pleasurable journey, reverie, and dream for its reader. Clare Beams is a subtle, quiet master of short fiction, who writes in beautiful and exquisitely crafted prose.”

“I am so much more grateful to Bard and to the Bard Fiction Prize committee than I can possibly say for this recognition of my work and for this gift—one of the best gifts anyone could give me, as a writer who’s also a parent of young children—of time. To join this list of winners, so many who are heroes and heroines of mine, is an honor, and to join the inspiring Bard community is a thrill. I can’t wait to meet the students and faculty and work on my third book, a new novel, in their midst,” says Beams.

Clare Beams is the author of the story collection We Show What We Have Learned, which was a Kirkus Best Debut of 2016 and a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award, and the Shirley Jackson Award. Her first novel, The Illness Lesson, will be published by Doubleday in February of 2020. Her fiction appears in One Story, n+1, Ecotone, The Common, Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, and elsewhere, and she has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Sustainable Arts Foundation. She lives in Pittsburgh with her husband and two daughters, and has taught creative writing at Carnegie Mellon University and St. Vincent College.

The creation of the Bard Fiction Prize, presented each October since 2001, continues Bard’s long-standing position as a center for creative, groundbreaking literary work by both faculty and students. From Saul Bellow, William Gaddis, Mary McCarthy, and Ralph Ellison to John Ashbery, Philip Roth, William Weaver, and Chinua Achebe, Bard’s literature faculty, past and present, represents some of the most important writers of our time. The prize is intended to encourage and support young writers of fiction, and provide them with an opportunity to work in a fertile intellectual environment. Last year’s Bard Fiction Prize was awarded to Greg Jackson for his short story collection Prodigals (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2016).

Valeria Luiselli, the Sadie Samuelson Levy Professor in Languages and Literature at Bard College, was honored with the 2020 American Library Association Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction for her novel Lost Children Archive. Luiselli is an award-winning writer of fiction and nonfiction whose books are forthcoming and/or published in more than 20 languages. She received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2019.

The Paris Review Foundation has announced the appointment of Mona Simpson as the magazine’s new publisher. Simpson, a Guggenheim Fellow and NEA Award–winning author of six novels, began her involvement with the Paris Review as a work-study student in Columbia’s MFA program. She has served on the staff as a senior editor in the past, and has been a member of the board of directors and the editorial committee since 2014.

Artist and author Jibade-Khalil Huffman talks about his multimedia works and his interdisciplinary experience at Bard as he prepares for You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me, his upcoming solo exhibition at the Anat Ebgi gallery in Los Angeles. “At his essence, Huffman is a collector of digital and tangible objects, giving birth to different representation of collage in video, photography, and installation,” writes Marcel Alcalá.

Daniel Mendelsohn, Charles Ranlett Flint Professor of Humanities at Bard College, was announced to the longlist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, for his collection Ecstasy and Terror: From the Greeks to Game of Thrones. The award carries a prize of $10,000. 

Distinguished Writer in Residence Dawn Lundy Martin is among the judges for the PEN Open Book Award. Bard alumnus Pierre Joris ’69 is one of the judges of the Award for Poetry in Translation.

Bard’s Maria Sachiko Cecire talks to Slate about children’s fantasy literature, looking at the way 20th-century authors of what she calls the “Oxford School” used the genre “as a means to preserve a sense of magic inside a modern world they saw as increasingly hostile to belief.”

Associate Professor of Literature Maria Cecire talks with fellow Rhodes Scholars Jean Balchin and Yan Chen about her new book, Re-Enchanted: The Rise of Children’s Fantasy Literature in the Twentieth Century. The trio discusses what makes fantasy literature magical, why parts of it are culturally inflected, and what we can do to reimagine its future. Cecire also discusses her work as the director of the Center for Experimental Humanities at Bard College.

Bard Artist in Residence Tanya Marcuse and Writer in Residence Francine Prose were in conversation at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building of the New York Public Library on the evening of Monday, December 16. The event celebrated Marcuse’s new book Fruitless, Fallen, and Woven, published by Radius Books. This stunning three-volume set traces the arc of 14 years of Marcuse’s work, from the iconic trees of Fruitless to the lush, immersive photographs of Fallen and Woven. Her work features elaborate tableaux of flora and fauna suggestive of the abstract, large-scale paintings of Jackson Pollock and the symbolism of medieval tapestries. She discussed the creative process with Francine Prose, award-winning writer and best-selling author of more than 20 works of fiction.

The Out100 Journalist of the Year talks to the founder of #MeToo, Tarana Burke, about his new book Catch and Kill, and the very real dangers of telling the truth.

Conjunctions:73, Earth Elegies Features New Work from Brian Evenson, Joyce Carol Oates, James Morrow, Lance Olsen, Rae Armantrout, Quincy Troupe, Eliot Weinberger, Nathaniel Mackey, Sabine Schiffner, Rob Nixon, Heather Altfeld, Arthur Sze, Francine Prose, Troy Jollimore, and Kristine Ong Muslim

To be mindful of the planet we call home is to be aware that our natural world is suffering. Its oceans are rising up, as if in protest. Its populations of birds and fish, of mammals and reptiles, are, many of them, in steep and steady decline. Forests, coral reefs, habitats of every sort of life form, from tree frogs to butterfly fish, from elephants to bees, are profoundly afflicted. Conjunctions:73, Earth Elegies—the latest issue of the innovative literary magazine published by Bard College—gathers writings that examine and lament the plight of our planet, while also celebrating its grand sublimity, its peerless beauty, and its indispensability. Edited by novelist and Bard literature professor Bradford Morrow, Earth Elegies features an exclusive interview with Underland author Robert Macfarlane, conducted by Diane Ackerman; a new translation of Sabine Schiffner poems; as well as new work from Brian Evenson, James Morrow, Lance Olsen, Joyce Carol Oates, Rae Armantrout, Quincy Troupe, Eliot Weinberger, Nathaniel Mackey, Sabine Schiffner, Rob Nixon, Heather Altfeld, Arthur Sze, Francine Prose, Troy Jollimore, and Kristine Ong Muslim.
The Washington Post says, “Conjunctions offers a showplace for some of the most exciting and demanding writers now at work.”

Edited by Bradford Morrow and published twice yearly by Bard College, Conjunctions publishes innovative fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction by emerging voices and contemporary masters. For nearly four decades, Conjunctions has challenged accepted forms and styles, with equal emphasis on groundbreaking experimentation and rigorous execution. Named a “Top Literary Magazine 2019” by Reedsy, the journal was a finalist for both the 2018 and 2019 ASME Award for Fiction and the 2018 CLMP Firecracker Award for General Excellence. In addition, contributions to recent issues have been selected for The Best American Essays (2018, 2019), The Pushcart Prize XLIV: Best of the Small Presses, Best American Experimental Writing 2020, Best Small Fictions 2019, and The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2019.

For more information on the latest issue, please visit conjunctions.com/print/archive/conjunctions73. To order a copy, go to annandaleonline.org/conjunctions, call the Conjunctions office at 845-758-7054, e-mail [email protected], or write to Conjunctions, Bard College, PO Box 5000, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504-5000. Visit the Conjunctions website at conjunctions.com.

 

Professor Luzzi participated in the November 16 roundtable “Emergence of Empathy: Encountering the Other through Fiction” at the Helix Center in New York City, which draws together leaders from different spheres of knowledge in the arts, humanities, sciences, and technology for interdisciplinary roundtables.

“We tolerate mockery of the elderly that we’d never allow if it targeted another group,” writes Distinguished Writer in Residence Francine Prose. “But we’ll all be old one day. In any case, I think that the animosity toward the old is less economic than existential, less political than primal, less about student debt than about fear of one’s own ageing. No one particularly wants to get old, however preferable it is to the alternative: an early death. What’s striking is that the prejudice against the elderly is the only bigotry directed at the inevitable future of the bigot.”

“In her new memoir, In the Dream House, Machado achieves a formally inventive representation of a difficult subject,” writes Katy Waldman in the New Yorker. “Yet the arc of this ordeal, although it forms the book’s skeleton, is not Machado’s true subject. Instead, In the Dream House is primarily about the quandary of constructing In the Dream House. It is a quandary both because the telling is painful and because Machado, who has no language for this telling, must invent one.”

On Monday, November 11, National Book Award–winning author Sigrid Nunez will read from her work at Bard College. The New York Review of Books writes that “Nunez’s keen powers of observation make her a natural chronicler,” and, according to the New Yorker, “Nunez has proved herself a master of psychological acuity.” Nunez will be introduced by MacArthur Fellow Dinaw Mengestu, director of Bard’s Written Arts Program. Presented by Bard Literature Professor Bradford Morrow’s Innovative Contemporary Fiction Reading Series and Bard’s Written Arts Program, the reading takes place at 6:30 p.m. in the Reem-Kayden Center László Z. Bitó ’60 Auditorium. It is free and open to the public; no reservations are required. Books by Nunez will be available for sale, courtesy of Oblong Books & Music. For more information about the Innovative Contemporary Fiction Reading Series, call 845-758-7054, email [email protected], or visit conjunctions.com.

From the languages we speak to politics, philosophy, art, and architecture, the ancient Greeks and Romans have profoundly shaped the history of ideas. By engaging with their legacy, we can develop critical tools for considering our own ideas and beliefs in a fresh light. Studying the ancient past, then, is a vital part of a liberal arts education, as we prepare students to engage critically, imaginatively, and empathetically with the contemporary world around us. To encourage and support students pursuing this important course of study, Bard College has established a new scholarship in Classical Studies. Generous donor support for this scholarship reaffirms that classical studies are more important today than ever. 

The Classical Studies Scholarship recognizes academically outstanding students committed to classical studies. Scholarships cover up to full tuition for four years and are awarded based on need. Scholarship students must maintain a 3.3 grade point average or higher while earning at least 32 credits per year. Recipients are also eligible for a $1,500 stipend for classics-related summer programs (e.g. archaeological excavations, American School at Athens/Rome, language study) following their sophomore or junior year. Transfer students are also eligible for Classical Studies Scholarship funding.

Desirable experiences for selection as a Classical Studies Scholar include a proven interest in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds and their legacies; an interest in, and potential for, learning Greek and Latin; strong performance in high school classes related to English and world literature, languages, history, and/or other related humanities subjects. For more information or to apply, go to connect.bard.edu/register/classics_scholar.

“We in the Classical Studies Program are thrilled about this new initiative. These need-based financial aid scholarships, which include support for summer opportunities such as travel abroad and intensive language study, allow Bard College to make a unique contribution to ongoing efforts to widen access and increase equity in the field of Classics. We are excited to welcome the first scholars to Bard in Fall 2020, where they will join our thriving program and work with our award-winning faculty to pursue their passion for the ancient world,” says Associate Professor of Classical Studies Lauren Curtis.

Avallone’s 2019 Bettie Page Halloween Special is “a tribute to Bard,” he writes. The plot unfolds at “Annandale College” in upstate New York, where settings and characters are modeled on Avallone’s memories of Bard.

On Monday, October 28, Bard Fiction Prize and Los Angeles Times Book Prize winner Peter Orner will read from his from his new collection, Maggie Brown & Others, at Bard College. The Washington Post writes: “Peter Orner is that rare find: a young writer who can inhabit any character, traverse any landscape, and yet never stray from the sound of the human heart.” Orner will be introduced by MacArthur Fellow Dinaw Mengestu, director of Bard’s Written Arts Program. Presented by Bard Literature Professor Bradford Morrow’s Innovative Contemporary Fiction Reading Series and Bard’s Written Arts Program, the reading takes place at 6:30 p.m. in the Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito ’60 Auditorium. It is free and open to the public; no reservations are required. Books by Peter Orner will be available for sale, courtesy of Oblong Books & Music. For more information about the Innovative Contemporary Fiction Reading Series, call 845-758-7054, email [email protected], or visit conjunctions.com.
 

“Pax Americana was never formally an empire,” writes Professor Buruma. “And the allied nations in Europe and East Asia are not colonial possessions. But the level of those states’ dependence is a problem, especially at a time when an erratic, spiteful and isolationist president is in charge of the United States.”

New Faculty Chairs and Distinguished Professorships include Susan Aberth in Art History, Valeria Luiselli in Written Arts, Kelly Reichardt in Film and Electronic Arts, and An-My Lê in Photography

Bard College has appointed four new chairs and distinguished professorships across disciplines this fall. In the Division of the Arts’ Art History and Visual Culture Program, Susan Aberth has been named Edith C. Blum Professor of Art History. This chair was formerly held by Jean French. In the Division of Languages and Literature’s Written Arts Program, Valeria Luiselli has been named Sadie Samuelson Levy Professor in Languages and Literature. In the Division of the Arts’ Film and Electronic Arts Program, Kelly Reichardt has been named S. William Senfeld Artist in Residence. In the Division of the Arts’ Photography Program, An-My Lê has been named Charles Franklin Kellogg and Grace E. Ramsey Kellogg Professor in the Arts. This chair was formerly held by Peter Hutton.

Susan Aberth is an art historian whose area of specialization is surrealism in Latin America. Aberth’s teaching interests focus on Latin American art, African art, Islamic art, and other religious art and practices. Additional interests include African religious practices in the Americas, and the art and iconography of Freemasonry, Spiritualism, and the occult. In addition to her 2004 book Leonora Carrington: Surrealism, Alchemy and Art (Lund Humphries), she has contributed to Seeking the Marvelous: Ithell Colquhoun, British Women and Surrealism (Fulgur Press, 2020), Agnes Pelton: Desert Transcendentalist (Phoenix Art Museum, 2019), Surrealism, Occultism and Politics: In Search of the Marvelous (Routledge Press, 2018), Leonora Carrington: Cuentos mágicos (Museo de Arte Moderno & INBA, Mexico City, 2018), Unpacking: The Marciano Collection (Delmonico Books, Prestel, 2017), and Leonora Carrington and the International Avant-Garde (Manchester University Press, 2017), as well as to Abraxas: International Journal of Esoteric Studies, Black Mirror, and the Journal of Surrealism of the Americas. She received her BA from the University of California, Los Angeles; MA from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University; and PhD from The Graduate Center, City University of New York. Aberth has been at Bard since 2000.

Valeria Luiselli is an award-winning writer of fiction and nonfiction whose books are forthcoming and/or published in more than 20 languages. A 2019 recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, she is the author of the novels Lost Children Archive (2019); The Story of My Teeth (2015), named Best Book in Fiction by the Los Angeles Times and one of the best books of the year by the New York Times, and was a National Book Critics Circle finalist; and Faces in the Crowd (2014), for which she received a National Book Foundation “5 under 35” prize, among other honors. Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40 Question, a nonfiction work published in 2017, won the American Book Award and was a National Book Critics Circle and Kirkus Prize finalist. Other nonfiction publications include “Maps of Harlem,” in Where You Are; and Sidewalks, a collection of essays that was named one of the 10 best books of 2014 by New York. Recent journal, newspaper, and radio work has appeared in the New York Times (“The Littlest Don Quixotes versus the World”), Guardian (“Frida Kahlo and the Birth of Fridolatry”), Outlook Interview Series, BBC World Services (“Undocumented Central American Minors”), Harper’s Trump special (“Terrorist and Alien”), and NPR’s This American Life (“The Questionnaire”), among others. Honors also include an Art for Justice Fellowship (2018–19) and residencies at Under the Volcano, USA-Mexico; Poets House, New York City; and Castello di Fosdinovo, Italy. She previously taught at Hofstra University, City College, the New York University MFA Writing Program in Paris, and Columbia University’s MFA Writing Program. Luiselli founded the Teenage Immigrant Integration Association at Hofstra in 2015, a program that offers continuous support to immigrant and refugee teens through one-on-one English classes, soccer games, and civil rights education. She is a member of PEN America and the Association of Writers and Writing Programs. She received her BA from UNAM in Mexico, and her MA and PhD from Columbia University. She has been at Bard since 2019.

Kelly Reichardt is a filmmaker whose latest film, Certain Women—starring Laura Dern, Michelle Williams, Kristen Stewart, and Lily Gladstone—premiered in 2016 at the Sundance Film Festival and won the top award at the London Film Festival. Her other films include: Night Moves (2013), Meek’s Cutoff (2010), Wendy and Lucy (2008), Old Joy (2006), and River of Grass (1994). Her film First Cow is currently in postproduction. Reichardt has received the United States Artists Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship, Anonymous Was a Woman Award, and Renew Media Fellowship. Her work has been screened at the Whitney Biennial (2012), Film Forum, Cannes Film Festival in “un certain regard,” Venice International Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, Berlin International Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, and BFI London Film Festival. She has had retrospectives at the Anthology Film Archives, Pacific Film Archive, Museum of the Moving Image, Walker Art Center, and American Cinematheque Los Angeles. Reichardt received her BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Tufts University. She has taught at Bard College since 2006.

An-My Lê is a photographer who was born in Saigon, Vietnam, in 1960, but left that country during the final year of the war in 1975 and subsequently found a home as a political refugee in the United States. She received an MFA from Yale University in 1993. Her film and photography examine the effects and representation of war and have included the documentation of (and participation in) Vietnam War reenactments in South Carolina. She has received fellowships from the MacArthur Foundation, Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and New York Foundation for the Arts, and has had exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, the International Center of Photography, and MoMA PS1. An-My has been teaching at Bard since 1999.

Bard faculty members Marina van Zuylen and Daniel Terris spoke at "Educating for Freedom, for All," a forum marking the 75th Anniversary of the Teagle Foundation. The event featured leaders and fresh voices promoting equity in higher education. It took place on Thursday, October 3, at the Harold Pratt House in New York City. Daniel Terris, dean of the Al-Quds Bard College of Arts and Sciences in East Jerusalem, spoke on the panel "Opening Minds" on the topic of educating for citizenship. Marina van Zuylen, professor of French and comparative literature at Bard College and national academic director of the Clemente Course in the Humanities, spoke on the panel "Liberal Arts for All" on how the humanities bring hope to adults in crisis.

Author Clare Beams has received the Bard Fiction Prize for her debut collection of short stories, We Show What We Have Learned (Lookout Books 2016). Beams’ residency at Bard College is for the fall 2020 semester, during which time she will continue her writing and meet informally with students. Beams will give a public reading at Bard in spring 2020.

The Bard Fiction Prize committee writes: “The nine stories in Clare Beams’ debut collection of fiction, We Show What We Have Learned, range from factual, historical settings and characters to eerily fantastical ones, displaying a startling depth and an epic scale of imagination. While the characters, and the situations they find themselves in, are sometimes surreal, their psychologies are always absolutely real—fully, compassionately drawn. Every one of these stories has a world and a lifetime behind it, and every one is a compelling, disquieting, and immensely pleasurable journey, reverie, and dream for its reader. Clare Beams is a subtle, quiet master of short fiction, who writes in beautiful and exquisitely crafted prose.”

“I am so much more grateful to Bard and to the Bard Fiction Prize committee than I can possibly say for this recognition of my work and for this gift—one of the best gifts anyone could give me, as a writer who’s also a parent of young children—of time. To join this list of winners, so many who are heroes and heroines of mine, is an honor, and to join the inspiring Bard community is a thrill. I can’t wait to meet the students and faculty and work on my third book, a new novel, in their midst,” says Beams.

Clare Beams is the author of the story collection We Show What We Have Learned, which was a Kirkus Best Debut of 2016 and a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award, and the Shirley Jackson Award. Her first novel, The Illness Lesson, will be published by Doubleday in February of 2020. Her fiction appears in One Story, n+1, Ecotone, The Common, Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, and elsewhere, and she has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Sustainable Arts Foundation. She lives in Pittsburgh with her husband and two daughters, and has taught creative writing at Carnegie Mellon University and St. Vincent College.

The creation of the Bard Fiction Prize, presented each October since 2001, continues Bard’s long-standing position as a center for creative, groundbreaking literary work by both faculty and students. From Saul Bellow, William Gaddis, Mary McCarthy, and Ralph Ellison to John Ashbery, Philip Roth, William Weaver, and Chinua Achebe, Bard’s literature faculty, past and present, represents some of the most important writers of our time. The prize is intended to encourage and support young writers of fiction, and provide them with an opportunity to work in a fertile intellectual environment. Last year’s Bard Fiction Prize was awarded to Greg Jackson for his short story collection Prodigals (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2016).

Two Bard College faculty members have been named 2019 MacArthur Fellows. Jeffrey Gibson, artist in residence in the Studio Arts Program and Valeria Luiselli, writer in residence in the Written Arts Program, are both recipients of this prestigious “genius grant” awarded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

The MacArthur Fellowship is a no-strings-attached award to extraordinarily talented and creative individuals as an investment in their potential. There are three criteria for selection of Fellows: exceptional creativity, promise for important future advances based on a track record of significant accomplishments, and potential for the Fellowship to facilitate subsequent creative work. Recipients may be writers, scientists, artists, social scientists, humanists, teachers, entrepreneurs, or those in other fields, with or without institutional affiliations. Fellows may use their award to advance their expertise, engage in bold new work, or, if they wish, to change fields or alter the direction of their careers. Although nominees are reviewed for their achievements, the Fellowship is not a lifetime achievement award, but rather an investment in a person’s originality, insight, and potential. Indeed, the purpose of the Fellowship is to enable recipients to exercise their own creative instincts for the benefit of human society. MacArthur Fellows receive $625,000 stipends that are bestowed with no conditions; recipients may use the money as they see fit. Eleven Bard faculty members have previously been honored with a MacArthur Fellowship.



Jeffrey Gibson grew up in major urban centers in the United States, Germany, Korea, and England. He is a Choctaw-Cherokee artist who incorporates his heritage into his multi-disciplinary work, which includes abstract sculptures, paintings, and prints. Gibson earned his Master of Arts in painting at the Royal College of Art, London, in 1998 and his Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1995. Gibson has work in the permanent collections of the Denver Art Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian at the Smithsonian Institution, National Gallery of Canada, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and more. Recent solo exhibitions include Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer at the Seattle Art Museum in Washington and Madison Museum of Art in Wisconsin and Jeffrey Gibson: This is the Day at Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas. Gibson is a past TED Foundation Fellow, and a Joan Mitchell Grant recipient. He lives and works in New York.



Valeria Luiselli is an award-winning writer of fiction and nonfiction whose books are forthcoming and/or published in more than 20 languages. She is the author of the novels Lost Children Archive (2019); The Story of My Teeth (2015), named Best Book in Fiction by the Los Angeles Times, one of the best books of the year by the New York Times, and a National Book Critics Circle finalist; and Faces in the Crowd (2014), for which she received a National Book Foundation “5 under 35” prize, among other honors. Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40 Questions, a nonfiction work published in 2017, won the American Book Award and was a National Book Critics Circle and Kirkus Prize finalist. Other nonfiction publications include “Maps of Harlem,” in Where You Are, and Sidewalks, a collection of essays that was named one of the 10 best books of 2014 by New York. Recent journal, newspaper, and radio work has appeared in the New York Times (“The Littlest Don Quixotes versus the World”), Guardian (“Frida Kahlo and the Birth of Fridolatry”), Outlook Interview Series, BBC World Services (“Undocumented Central American Minors”), Harper’s Trump special (“Terrorist and Alien”), and NPR’s This American Life (“The Questionnaire”), among others. Honors also include an Art for Justice Fellowship (2018–19) and residencies at Under the Volcano, USA-Mexico; Poets House, New York City; and Castello di Fosdinovo, Italy. She previously taught at Hofstra University, City College, the New York University MFA Writing Program in Paris, and Columbia University’s MFA Writing Program. She founded the Teenage Immigrant Integration Association at Hofstra in 2015, a program that offers continuous support to immigrant and refugee teens through one-on-one English classes, soccer games, and civil rights education. She is a member of PEN America and the Association of Writers and Writing Programs. She was born in Mexico City and currently lives in New York City.

Lampedusa is Price’s fictional account of how the aristocratic Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa came to write one of the best-selling novels in Italian history: The Leopard. “Price’s novel excels where it counts most: inside Lampedusa’s head,” writes Luzzi. “The prose is superbly controlled, richly textured, brimming with wise and lyrical insights that make it a worthy heir to its mighty predecessor.”

Acclaimed Somali writer and Bard professor Nuruddin Farah was awarded the $50,000 Ho-Chul Literary Prize at a ceremony in Seoul, South Korea, in August.

The Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Awards are given annually to six women writers who demonstrate excellence and promise in the early stages of their careers. The awards of $40,000 each will be presented to the six recipients on September 12 in New York City. Sarah, a freelance writer and editor who is currently pursuing an MFA at Bard, will use the grant to focus on her writing projects full time.

“Because the culture as a whole is so overwhelmingly commercial, it’s vital that professional, public, literary, and cultural criticism remain independent,” says Professor Mendelsohn. “Negative criticism is, in part, what fights against the commercial, or the merely stupid, or vulgar; it is a form of resistance, a reminder that we must think for ourselves and not have our judgments coopted by advertising and the ephemeral.”

“For Johns, factual certainties, such as the American flag or a plaster cast of a body part, enable him to dwell in ‘uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts,’ and not reach after ‘fact,’ which would be redundant,” writes Yau in this two-part essay. “This is the pleasure that Johns gives us. He does not tell us what to see or think. He shows what seeing and thinking can be.”

Bard Language and Thinking faculty member Cecelia Watson brings the semicolon to life in this “deceptively playful-looking book that turns out to be a scholarly treatise on a sophisticated device that has contributed eloquence and mystery to Western civilization,” Semicolon: The Past, Present, and Future of a Misunderstood Mark.
 

Jonathan Brent, Bard faculty member and executive director of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, received the Cross of the Knight of the Order for Merits to Lithuania from H.E. Dalia Grybauskaitė, President of the Republic of Lithuania. The honor recognizes Brent’s work in promoting cooperation between Lithuania and YIVO and for the preservation of the prewar Jewish archives of Lithuania.

Professor Mendelsohn invokes the classics to offer perspectives on modern-day events in this collection—“one fascinating essay after another from one of America’s best critics.”

In June 2019, Professor Lauren Curtis traveled to Fribourg, Switzerland, to participate in the conference, The Dance of Priests, Matronae, and Philosophers: Aspects of Dance Culture in Rome and the Roman Empire. She presented her new research about the relationship between dance and politics in ancient Rome, “Roman Rhythms: Music, Dance, and Imperial Ethics,” and learned about new approaches in ancient dance studies from specialists from France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
 

"I was preparing myself for a life with books, sharing them with students like the ones who just read Joyce with me." Professor Luzzi explores our quest for ambitious summer reading, and how even failing to make our goals can lead to great insights.

“Like two mirrors facing each other, Wild West reënactments and the myths that fuel them shed light on the emotions driving the response to ‘the border crisis,’” writes Luiselli.

“Inside my family’s home, I could lay full claim to being an Ethiopian; on the streets of Addis Ababa, however, I had to contend with the obvious facts,” writes Professor Mengestu.

Seneca’s essay “On Anger” has just been republished as “How to Keep Your Cool: An Ancient Guide to Anger Management,” with a translation and introduction by James Romm. Romm talks about the work’s relevance today.

Luzzi, professor of comparative literature at Bard College, observes that literature can be valuable to the thinking businessperson because it offers a lens on human nature, provides “test cases” that can generate models for decision making, and gives a crucial sense of history and perspective.

Conjunctions:72, Nocturnals—the latest issue of the innovative literary magazine published by Bard College—gathers fiction, poetry, and essays from leading writers, both emerging and established, on the theme of night, its denizens, and its chronicles.

Bard College senior Evan Tims ’19, a written arts and human rights major, has won a highly selective Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) for the 2019 summer session. This is the second summer Tims has been awarded this competitive scholarship. CLS, a program of the U.S. Department of State, provides recipients with overseas placements that include intensive language instruction and structured cultural enrichment experiences designed to promote rapid language gains. These 8-week programs are all fully funded, including the costs of tuition, visas, airfare, home stays, and a stipend for cultural enrichment/excursions. The CLS program offers foreign language study at sites worldwide in 14 languages identified as critical to United States national security and economic prosperity. The languages include Azerbaijani, Bangla, Hindi, Indonesian, Korean, Punjabi, Swahili, Turkish, Urdu, Arabic, Persian, Chinese, Japanese, and Russian.

Tims will study Bangla at the American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS) in Kolkata, India. Spoken from the densely populated nation of Bangladesh to the Kolkata metropolis in the Indian state of West Bengal, Bangla is the seventh most spoken language in the entire world. With a population of 4.5 million, Kolkata is the largest city in East India and the third largest in India after New Delhi and Mumbai. In Kolkata, Tims will spend 20 morning hours per week in the classroom focusing on grammar, conversation, pronunciation, journal writing, and dictation language classes. In the afternoons, Tims will take a cultural activity class, such as singing, dancing, storytelling, cooking, or painting, and meet with his native language partner for Bangla conversation practice. Tims will engage in weekly local group excursions in order to explore the area, gain in-depth knowledge of culture and history, and meet locals from different backgrounds. Tims will also travel on one overnight excursion to Bishnupur. The summer study culminates in an independent project of his choosing, presented to his fellow classmates entirely in Bangla. During his stay, Tims will live with a host family to maximize language learning and the cultural immersion experience.

“I study Bangla because someday I hope to work in the field of climate change induced migration,” says Tims. “Bangladesh is facing numerous challenges due to its low elevation and large coastline. Additionally, I have a strong interest in Bengali literature and culture. I intend to pursue graduate research on the narratives and forms of expression in relation to a changing environment.”

CLS is part of a wider government initiative to expand the number of Americans studying and mastering foreign languages that are critical to national security and economic prosperity. CLS plays an important role in preparing students for the twenty-first century’s globalized workforce and increasing national competitiveness. CLS is a program of the United States Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. It is supported in its implementation by American Councils for International Education.
 

An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic is the story of what happened after Mendelsohn’s 81-year-old father enrolled in his Bard College course on Homer’s Odyssey.

Five Bard College students won prestigious Fulbright Awards for individually designed study/research projects or English Teaching Assistant Programs. During their grants, Fulbrighters meet, work, live with, and learn from the people of the host country, sharing daily experiences. The program facilitates cultural exchange through direct interaction on an individual basis in the classroom, field, home, and in routine tasks, allowing the grantee to gain an appreciation of others’ viewpoints and beliefs, the way they do things, and the way they think. Bard College is a Fulbright top-producing institution.

Marion Adams ’19, a German studies and philosophy major, won a Fulbright Study/Research Award to Austria. She will teach English and study how Jewish museums there negotiate their country’s role in commemorating traditional and stimulating contemporary Austrian-Jewish culture. Alexa Frank ’15, who graduated with a dual degree in film and Asian studies, won a Fulbright Study/Research Award to pursue her graduate studies at Waseda University in Tokyo. Economics and human rights major Sofia Hardt ’18 won a Fulbright Study/Research Award to Argentina, where she will conduct a study of labor market choices and incentives in relation to Argentina’s Universal Child Allowance. Tonery Rogers ’19 is an alternate for a Fulbright Award to Morocco.

Asian studies majors Corrina Gross ’19 and Kerri Anne Bigornia ’19 both won Fulbright English Teaching Assistant Awards to Taiwan, where they will teach English to primary and middle school students. Olivia Donahue ’19 has been awarded a Fulbright to Germany, where she will spend next year teaching English.

The Fulbright U.S. Student Program is the largest U.S. exchange program offering opportunities for students and young professionals to undertake international graduate study, advanced research, university teaching, and primary and secondary school teaching worldwide. The program currently awards approximately 2,000 grants annually in all fields of study, and operates in more than 140 countries worldwide. Fulbright U.S. Student alumni populate a range of professions and include ambassadors, members of Congress, judges, heads of corporations, university presidents, journalists, artists, professors, and teachers. Bose Corporation founder Amar Bose, actor John Lithgow, composer Philip Glass, opera singer Renee Fleming, and economist Joseph Stiglitz are among notable former grantees.
 

On Tuesday, April 23, American Book Award–winning author Valeria Luiselli will read from her work at Bard College. “The novel truly becomes novel again in Luiselli’s hands—electric, elastic, alluring, new. . . . She is a superb chronicler,” writes the New York Times. Luiselli, who was recently appointed as writer in residence in the Division of Languages and Literature at Bard, will be introduced by MacArthur Fellow and Director of Bard’s Written Arts Program Dinaw Mengestu. The reading, presented by the Innovative Contemporary Fiction Reading Series, takes place at 6:00 p.m. in Weis Cinema, Bertelsmann Campus Center. It is free and open to the public; no reservations are required. Books by Luiselli will be available for sale, courtesy of Oblong Books & Music.

Valeria Luiselli was born in Mexico City in 1983 and has lived in Costa Rica, South Korea, South Africa, India, Spain, France, and New York City. She is the author of a book of essays, Papeles falsos/Sidewalks (2012, 2014) and the internationally acclaimed novel Los ingravidos/Faces in the Crowd (2013, 2014), which won the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. In 2014, she won the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 prize, an annual award honoring young and promising fiction writers. Her novel La historia de mis dientes/The Story of My Teeth (2013, 2015) won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction and the Azul Prize in Canada; was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Best Translated Book Award, and the Impac Prize 2017; and was named one of the New York Times’ 100 Notable Books of the Year. Her recent book Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40 Questions won the 2018 American Book Award from The Before Columbus Foundation and was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism.

Luiselli received her PhD in comparative literature from Columbia University. Her books have been translated into more than twenty languages, and her writing has appeared in publications including the New York Times, Granta, McSweeney’s, Harper’s, and the New Yorker. Her latest novel, Lost Children Archive (2019), which was written in English, was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction.

For more information about the Innovative Contemporary Fiction Reading Series, please call 845-758-7054, email [email protected], or visit conjunctions.com.

Further Reading

Valeria Luiselli Assays the Death of the Pioneer Myth in Lost Children Archive (Atlantic)

Valeria Luiselli, At Home in Two Worlds (New York Times)

Valeria Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive Confronts the Complexities of Writing About the Border Crisis (New Yorker)