News from the Division of Languages and Literature

First, writes Fiori, we have to recognize the latent marginalization of minority populations in the mainstream media.

Assistant Professor of Literature Peter L’Official on how Arthur Jafa manipulates time to illuminate black experience in the video collage Love Is the Message, the Message Is Death.

The New Academy Prize in Literature—which is open to public voting—provides an alternative to this year’s canceled Nobel Prize in Literature, and Neil Gaiman is among the nominees.

Grayson Morley is a Bard College written arts graduate from the Class of 2013. Grayson is currently pursuing his MFA in fiction at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.  

"I'm working on an absurdist novel about UPS efficiency tracking, part of which will comprise my thesis when I graduate," he explains. "I teach both creative writing and English courses as part of my funding package."

After graduating from Bard, Grayson had a six-month fellowship focusing on farm worker labor rights in western New York. He then returned to Bard to work with the Office of Alumni/ae Affairs for two years. "If your plan is to go to grad school, take some time off first," he says. "No, seriously. I received this advice from mentors, and while I was loathe to take it ('How many cover letters do I have to write?'), the years I spent working provided experiences that enriched my current course of education."

"My Bard education proved to me the value of inquisitiveness and unwavering idealism," Grayson observes. "Mentors like Mary Caponegro and Matthew Mutter not only shaped my time in Annandale, but have remained treasured resources, and friends, into my life beyond Bard. My involvement with the Bard Prison Initiative remains a formative experience in my trajectory as an educator and person. I am deeply proud of my association with it, and with Bard as a whole."

What did he like best about Bard? "You never met a boring person. There were no carbon copies: everyone was so sincerely into their own, particular thing. My friends jokingly called it the Island of Misfit Toys, but since graduating, I've come to greatly miss that eclectic community."

"Things will be messy at first," Grayson says of life after graduation. "Possibly disheartening. But embrace what comes—then work like hell to find your ideal."

With 68.5 million people forced from their homes in 2017, Professor in the Arts Neil Gaiman explains why every one of them needs our help.

“My class at Bard College is like a book group that I don't have to be democratic about. It's great to be able to talk to people about books that you love.” 

Professor O’Neill talks about his new story collection Good Trouble and writing in the age of Trump.

This new volume “offers an English reader a personal tour through the private quarters of Tchaikovsky to his most informal and intimate zone.”

“The great thing about Norse mythology is that right at the end it gives you hope, just when you think you’re done.”

Professor of comparative literature Joseph Luzzi reviews new translations of works by the contemporary Italian novelists Domenico Starnone, Paolo Cognetti, and Edgardo Franzosini.

Conjunctions:70, Sanctuary: The Preservation Issue features new work from Diane Ackerman, Mary Jo Bang, Julia Elliott, Nam Le, Peter Orner, Donald Revell, and others.

Seniors Elena LeFevre, Nicola Koepnick, Adelina Colaku, Page Benoit, and Madeleine Breshears, and Bethany Zulick ’16 are among the Fulbright winners for 2018–19.

Professor Baldasso, director of Bard’s Italian Studies Program, was awarded the fellowship for his work on literary dissent during the transition from Fascism to democracy in Italy.

Farrow was recognized for a series of articles that contributed to a “worldwide reckoning” regarding sexual harassment and assault and the dynamics of gender and power.

“If Powers were an American writer of the nineteenth century . . . he’d probably be the Herman Melville of Moby-Dick. His picture is that big” (Margaret Atwood, New York Review of Books). 

Neil Gaiman’s ghoulish children’s novella Coraline is being adapted by the Royal Opera in London.

On Monday, April 2, novelist and short story writer Laura van den Berg, winner of the 2015 Bard Fiction Prize, will read from her work at Bard College.

The US-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory of Music will present the Harmony and Power conference and concert series on March 30–31 on the Bard College campus.

Long Soldier received the National Book Critics Circle Award for her poetry collection Whereas, “a brilliantly innovative text that examines history, landscapes, and identities.”

Russian novelist, essayist, and short story writer Tatyana Tolstaya will read from her new collection Aetherial Worlds.

On Thursday, March 29, prominent Russian novelist, essayist, short story writer, and public intellectual Tatyana Tolstaya will speak at Bard College about her new book, Aetherial Worlds, a collection of 18 stories.

“One of the finest, most dimensional inquiries into the significance of books and the role of reading in human life comes from Neil Gaiman.”

Francine Prose’s novel Blue Angel, written 20 years ago and now adapted for the screen as Submission, complicates the current cultural conversation about sexual harassment.

On Monday, March 5, Daniel Mendelsohn will give a book reading and signing followed by a wine reception for his new book, An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic.

The National Book Award finalist and 2017 Bard Fiction Prize-winning novelist Karan Mahajan will read from his work on February 26.

Bard College has launched a tuition-free, degree-granting microcollege in the central branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. This innovative new program is designed to help nontraditional students who have been deterred, discouraged, or excluded from higher education to achieve associate degrees in the liberal arts, at no cost and in their home community.

The National Book Award finalist and 2017 Bard Fiction Prize-winning novelist Karan Mahajan will read from his work on February 26.

"Docile and utilitarian bodies of women and peoples of color, a compliant natural world—these are the operational goals of unreconstructed (and white supremacist) patriarchal society."

Bard College is one of five top schools taking part in the pilot expansion of a program developed to teach students to write for the real world.

Author Carmen Maria Machado, Bard Fiction Prize winner and writer in residence at Bard College, will read from her work on February 19.

Distinguished Writer in Residence Francine Prose reviews David Yaffe’s Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell.

Mendelsohn weaves Homer's epic with episodes from his own life in a book of "shimmering, beautiful, dapple-skilled intelligence" about his relationship with his father.

Chinua Achebe—an icon of African literature and beloved professor at Bard—was recognized with a Google Doodle on Thursday, November 16, on what would have been his 87th birthday.

Conjunctions:69, Being Bodies—the latest issue of the innovative literary magazine published by Bard College—is an exploration of the complex circumstances of flesh-and-blood existence. A memoir of distance running counterpoints a meditation on resurrection. The story of an injury is juxtaposed with an uncommonly candid confession of a young man who struggles with gender identity and sexual orientation. In every contribution come fresh insights into what it means to inhabit our bodies for a brief moment in time. Edited by Conjunctions editor, novelist, and Bard literature professor Bradford Morrow, Being Bodies features new work from Mary Caponegro, Edward Carey, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Nomi Eve, Michael Ives, Carole Maso, Rick Moody, Kyoko Mori, Dina Nayeri, Stephen O’Connor, Peter Orner, Jorge Ángel Pérez, Rosamond Purcell, Sallie Tisdale, Anne Waldman, and others.

On Monday, November 13, celebrated fantasy writer and critic Elizabeth Hand reads from her fiction collection Saffron and Brimstone. The Washington Post writes, "Hand's work is pulsing with tension throughout, charged with its own chilling luminosity." Hand will be introduced by novelist and Bard literature professor Bradford Morrow.

Writer in Residence Wyatt Mason examines how the classicist Emily Wilson has given Homer’s epic a radically contemporary voice.

On Monday, October 30, celebrated author Diane Ackerman will read from The Zookeeper’s Wife at Bard College. This little-known true story of World War II enjoyed months as the New York Times No. 1 nonfiction bestseller, was the basis for a 2017 feature film of the same title, and received the Orion Book Award, which honored it as “a groundbreaking work of nonfiction, in which the human relationship to nature is explored in an absolutely original way through looking at the Holocaust.” Ackerman will be introduced by novelist and Bard literature professor Bradford Morrow. The reading, presented as part of Morrow’s Innovative Contemporary Fiction Reading (ICFR) series, takes place at 2:30 p.m. at Weis Cinema in the Bertelsmann Campus Center and will be followed by a Q&A. It is free and open to the public; no reservations are required.

Author Carmen Maria Machado has received the Bard Fiction Prize for her debut short story collection, Her Body and Other Parties. In the collection, long-listed for the 2017 National Book Award and a finalist for the Kirkus Prize, Machado shapes startling, genre-bending narratives that map the realities of women’s lives and the violence visited upon their bodies. Machado’s residency at Bard College is for the fall 2018 semester, during which time she will continue her writing, meet informally with students, and give a public reading.

What happens when Professor Daniel Mendelsohn's 81-year-old father enrolls in his Odyssey seminar at Bard? The author discusses his new memoir on Friday, October 20.

Professor Emeritus John Ashbery passed away last month. Here, Ann Lauterbach shares her 2011 introduction of the poet upon receipt of his National Book Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award.

On September 27, Stephen King and Owen King spoke at Bard about their new novel, Sleeping Beauties. Heather Fazio talks about the excellent rapport of the father-son writing team.

Professor Luc Sante writes about the impact of groundbreaking poet and Bard professor emeritus John Ashbery, who passed away earlier this month.

On September 27, father-son team Stephen and Owen King discuss their new novel, Sleeping Beauties, at the Fisher Center.

The Prague Sonata is "an elegant foray into music and memory." Morrow discusses the new book with Professor Mary Caponegro at Bard on October 2.

Bard professor Daniel Mendelsohn's new memoir, An Odyssey: A Father, a Son and an Epic, recalls the semester his father decided to join his Odyssey seminar at Bard.

On Monday, September 25, American Book Award–winning poet, memoirist, journalist, and Miles Davis biographer Quincy Troupe will read from his work at Bard College. 

Wyatt Mason on translating the works of the French writer Pierre Michon.

Writers remember acclaimed poet and Bard professor emeritus John Ashbery, including professors Anselm Berrigan and Robert Kelly, professor emerita Joan Retallack, and alumnus Andrew Durbin '12.

Tania Ketenjian '98 looks back on studying with Professor John Ashbery, who died on Sunday at the age of 90.

Adam Begley has crafted a judicious biography of portraitist Félix Tournachon (or Nadar) filled with "character and incident," emulating Nadar's own reverence for his subjects.