News from the Division of Languages and Literature

Jenny Xie, assistant professor of written arts at Bard College, has been announced as a recipient of a Howard Foundation Fellowship for 2026-27. Xie’s fellowship in the category of Poetry, conferred by the George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation, is one of 14 fellowships awarded by the foundation this year, which support independent creative and scholarly work on major projects by early mid-career individuals who have demonstrated potential to be future leaders in their fields.

During her fellowship, Xie will receive $40,000 in unrestricted funds to devote her time to researching, developing, and writing her third poetry collection, Dead Time, which delves into forms of directionless time, or time untroubled by plot and by imperatives of action. Xie is the author of two other collections of poetry. Eye Level (2018) was a finalist for the National Book Award, and the recipient of the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets and the Holmes National Poetry Prize from Princeton University. The Rupture Tense (2022) was a finalist for the National Book Award and the CLMP Firecracker Award, and a recipient of the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award. Xie has also been supported by fellowships and grants from Civitella Ranieri Foundation, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Kundiman, New York Foundation for the Arts, the Vilcek Foundation, and the Jerome Foundation.

The Howard Foundation is an independent agency administered at Brown University. Established in 1954, it awards annual, unrestricted fellowships to promising individuals in selected artistic and academic fields. Past fellows have authored bestsellers, directed Oscar nominated feature-length films, and earned some of the world’s most prestigious honors including Pulitzer Prizes, the Rome Prize, and the Whiting Award. For more information, visit howard-foundation.brown.edu.

Four Bard College graduates have won 2026–27 Fulbright Awards for individually designed research projects, English teaching assistantships, and the pursuit of a master’s degree. The Fulbright 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. During their grants, Fulbrighters meet, work, live with, and learn from the people of the host country, sharing daily experiences. Bard College is a Fulbright top producing institution.

Danika Dortch ’26, a Literature major at the College and a French Horn Performance major at the Bard Conservatory, will conduct an independent project on the composer Leoš Janácek and his influence on the writer Milan Kundera.  She will reside in Brno, Czech Republic, and conduct archival research on Janácek, Kundera, and Moravian folk music in order to examine their influence on Czech national identity.

Peter Fields ’26, a Classical Studies major who has served as a Latin and Greek tutor at Bard, has been awarded an English Teaching Assistantship to Romania. While at Bard, he participated in an archaeological dig of an ancient Roman villa in Transylvania, an experience which sparked his interest in Romania and its culture, both ancient and modern.

Annaliese Simons ’26, a Written Arts major, was awarded a Fulbright study-research grant to pursue a master's degree in public policy, with a focus on disability studies, at the Hertie School in Berlin, Germany. Annaliese has been captain of the Bard Debate Team, as well as copresident of the Bard Disabled Students Association. They aspire to a career in disability advocacy.

Shosha Wheeler ’26, a Mathematical Sciences major, has been awarded the Fulbright Austria Community-Combined Award.  For her project, Shosha plans to lead math-based community project for immigrant youth in Vienna, while also taking courses in mathematics at Universität Wien. At Bard, Shosha has served as a math tutor and volunteer for MAGPIES, the math outreach program for girls.

Bridget White ’25, an Anthropology and German Studies double major, has been awarded an English Teaching Assistantship to Germany. While at Bard, Bridget was codirector of EMS and sang in the Georgian Choir.  

Benjamin Hale, writer in residence at Bard College, was highlighted in an article in Chronogram about his new nonfiction book, Cave Mountain: A Disappearance and a Reckoning in the Ozarks, which covers his cousin’s 2001 disappearance in the Arkansas wilderness at the age of 6. “At first glance, Cave Mountain reads like true crime,” writes Brian K. Mahoney. “A child disappears. A massive search ensues. The wilderness becomes a stage for suspense and survival. Yet Hale’s narrative quickly veers into stranger territory,” as Hale uncovers a darker history surrounding the mountain where his cousin was lost, which had been the site of a cult-related murder of a child decades before. Hale considered adapting the story into a fictional work before concluding that “the story really only works as nonfiction,” he told Chronogram. “It’s so weird it wouldn’t be believable as a novel.”

Hale will discuss the book in conversation with Ryan Chapman at Oblong Books in Rhinebeck on March 12 at 6 pm.

Peter Filkins, professor emeritus at Bard College, has been awarded the inaugural Freudenheim Translation Prize, presented by the Jewish Literary Foundation in partnership with the Times Literary Supplement. This new international award, which is the largest offered by the foundation, celebrates excellence in translated fiction and nonfiction, highlighting the power of Jewish literature to engage diverse audiences. Filkins, who was also formerly Richard B. Fisher Professor of Literature at Bard College at Simon’s Rock and visiting professor of literature at Bard, is recognized for his translation of The Book Against Death by Elias Canetti, published in the U.K. by Fitzcarraldo Editions in 2024. In the judges’ citation, chair Boyd Tonkin praised Peter’s “masterly translation,” noting how his thoughtful and deeply attentive rendering brings Canetti’s reflections on life and death vividly into English. 

The Literature Program at Bard emphasizes cultural, linguistic, and geographic diversity, challenging national, cultural, and disciplinary boundaries.

Valeria Luiselli, Sadie Samuelson Levy Professor in Languages and Literature at Bard College, was interviewed in the New Yorker about her story “Predictions and Presentiments,” which appeared in the magazine and is drawn from her upcoming book, Beginning Middle End. The story explores family relationships, stages of life, and the relationship between memory and identity. The audio version will incorporate sounds that Luiselli recorded in Sicily, where both the piece and the novel take place. “Over the past year, we’ve collected field recordings from Sicily and the Aeolians: sea sounds, underwater currents, winds, volcanoes, fire, dust storms, rainstorms, church bells, fish markets,”  Luiselli said. “They are not meant to illustrate or enhance the narrative. Rather, they constitute a kind of emotional undercurrent.” 

The Written Arts Program at Bard encourages students to experiment with their writing in a context sensitive to intellectual, historical, and social realities. Students are encouraged to consider writing as an act of critical and creative engagement, a way of interrogating and translating the world.

M. Gessen, distinguished visiting writer at Bard College and New York Times Opinion columnist, appeared on the Ezra Klein Show podcast to speak about the Trump administration’s operation in Venezuela, the fatal shooting of Renee Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis, and the broader messages that these displays of force are meant to send. Gessen also discussed how totalitarian leaders will wage war internally by designating an enemy within the country, and expanding who is included in that designation in order to escalate, as well as the swiftness with which this is now unfolding in the US. “It’s comparable to the speed at which countries that experienced an actual violent revolution have transformed that I have studied but not lived through,” Gessen told Klein. “We can use some of the tools from, particularly from the electoral autocracies in Eastern Europe to understand some of what’s happened here. But I don’t have any tools for understanding the rate at which this country is being transformed.”

Beginning February 3, Bard College is offering its first Spanish-speaking Clemente Course, a free college-level introduction to the humanities. Focusing on Spanish and Latin American literature, this class, conducted entirely in Spanish, invites students to explore the power of the written word and the joy of reading. Students attend at no cost, with tuition and books provided, and those who successfully complete the semester-long course will earn 3 college credits from Bard College transferable to any higher educational institution upon completion. 

This class will run every Tuesday from February 3 through May 26, from 6–8 pm, at 7 Grand Street, Kingston, NY, 12401. John Burns, associate professor of Spanish at Bard College, will be leading the course. Burns is an educator, poet, translator, and the author, among other works, of Contemporary Hispanic Poets: Cultural Production in the Global, Digital Age (Cambria Press, 2015). Applicants should write to professor Burns ([email protected]) to express their interest.

The Clemente Course in the Humanities provides a transformative educational experience for adults facing economic hardship and adverse circumstances. The free humanities courses empower students to further their education and careers, become effective advocates for themselves and their families, and engage actively in the cultural and political lives of their communities.

Adam Shatz, visiting professor of the humanities at Bard College, has been awarded the 2026 Grace Dudley Prize for Arts Writing bestowed by the Robert B. Silvers Foundation, in recognition of outstanding achievement in critical writing on the fine and performing arts or on cultural history. Shatz is also the US editor of the London Review of Books and a contributor to the New York Times magazine, the New York Review of Books, the New Yorker, and other publications. The Robert B. Silvers Foundation is an organization that aims to support writers working in the fields of long-form literary and arts criticism, intellectual essays, political analysis, and social reportage. 

Karen Raizen, director of Italian Studies and assistant professor of Italian and music at Bard College, appeared on Tutto Italiano “Everything Italian” hosted by Radio Kingston. Raizen discusses her involvement with the Ulster County Italian American Foundation (UCIAF) and organizing an upcoming UCIAF New Italian Cinema Showcase this spring, in collaboration with Bard College, Marist University, and Vassar college. The showcase, screening at Upstate Films in Saugerties and Rhinebeck from April 24–26, focuses on “new Italian cinema, because I think everybody knows old Italian cinema and is excited about it,” Kaizen says. “But there’s a lot happening in Italy that’s really exciting right now … What does it mean to be Italian today? That’s all changed and is still changing, and who is giving this new version of Italy life?”

Italian Studies at Bard College focuses on the acquisition of fluency in speaking, reading, and translating Italian. Students can improve their understanding of Italian culture by focusing on language and translation, literature, art, film, music, and Italian cultural studies, which encompasses transnational history, human rights and media. 

The newest book by Joseph Luzzi, professor of comparative literature at Bard College, has been included in a roundup list of “The Best Books of 2025” by the New Yorker and was reviewed in the Guardian. In The Innocents of Florence, Luzzi details the formation of what came to be known as the Innocenti in 15th-century Florence, the first orphanage in Europe devoted exclusively to abandoned children and would go on to care for nearly 400,000 children throughout its duration. The institution, while groundbreaking, carried a tragic and complex history that would ultimately shape education and childcare for centuries to come. “Luzzi’s slender and compelling book, with its accounts of forced pregnancy, family separation, and child labor, feels surprisingly and unsettlingly of the moment,” the New Yorker writes. 

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