News from the Division of Languages and Literature

The Stevenson Library at Bard College is pleased to present “Rewriting Hisstory,” a conversation between Jonathan Brent, visiting Alger Hiss Professor of History and Literature at Bard, and author Jeff Kisseloff. They will discuss Kisseloff's new book, Rewriting Hisstory: A Fifty-Year Journey to Uncover the Truth About Alger Hiss, about the American government official who was accused of spying for the Soviet Union and whose controversial case became one the most important political trials of the 20th century.

The talk will take place on Monday, September 15 from 4:30 pm to 6:00 pm on the first floor of the Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Library on Bard’s campus in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. The event, which will feature a reception with refreshments and end with a Q&A, is free and open to the public. For more information, call 845-758-6822.

Alger Hiss, a US State Department official and the Secretary-General of the UN's San Francisco Conference, was accused by Whittaker Chambers in 1948 of having been a Communist spy in the 1930s. The statute of limitations had expired for espionage, but he was convicted of perjury in connection with this charge in 1950. Hiss maintained his innocence until his death, and Kisseloff, in his book, brings a new perspective, evidence, and accusations to this historical controversy.

Jeff Kisseloff developed a fascination for the Hiss case as a child when he heard a recording of Alger Hiss and Whittaker Chambers testifying before the House Un-American Activities Committee. In college, Kisseloff contacted Hiss and went to work for him, reading his voluminous FBI file. He later became a newspaper reporter and editor, an author of five books including three oral histories, and has been working full time on Rewriting Hisstory since 1997. Kisseloff is a native New Yorker who now lives in Tucson, with his wife Sue, two dogs, and about 115,000 pages of unredacted FBI files, the result of a successful lawsuit against the Bureau. For more information, visit algerhiss.com, of which Kisseloff is managing editor.

Jonathan Brent, visiting Alger Hiss Professor of History and Literature at Bard College, is a historian, publisher, translator, and writer. For 18 years (1991-2009) he was editorial director at Yale University Press where he established the Annals of Communism series. His books include Stalin’s Last Crime (2003) and Inside the Stalin Archives (2008). Brent has translated poems of Joseph Brodsky and Vladimir Mayakovsky, is currently writing a biographical study of the Russian writer, Isaac Babel, and finishing a novel. In 2009, Brent became executive director and CEO of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, where he initiated the Edward Blank YIVO Vilna Online Collections project to conserve and digitize all of YIVO’s pre-WWII collections.

Huiwen Li, continuing associate professor at Bard, is the recipient of the 2025 Best Chinese Calligraphy Curriculum Design Award from the American Society of Shufa Calligraphy Education (ASSCE). The award is bestowed in recognition of notable contribution to the advancement of Chinese calligraphy education in North America and beyond. ASSCE is a nonprofit organization that aims to serve the needs of its community of educators, researchers, and students of East Asian calligraphy. Through conferences, workshops, exhibitions, and other venues of academic and social exchange, the organization seeks to advance the professional and personal goals of its members, as well as the general public in the teaching, learning, and understanding of East Asian calligraphy in its traditional and modern forms.

The Asian Studies Program at Bard draws from courses in literature, history, art, religion, and other fields, with students selecting a regional and disciplinary focus.

In an article for the New Yorker, Bard College Professor of Literature Hua Hsu examines the purpose of higher education in a scholastic landscape that is being reshaped by artificial intelligence. As more students—and some professors—are findings ways to include AI in their work, Hsu discusses the various pedagogical approaches educators are using to either avoid or incorporate the influence of AI in their classrooms, and the fundamental question of how the long term use of AI will transform the way we learn how to think. “The future of the midterm essay may be a quaint worry compared with larger questions about the ramifications of artificial intelligence, such as its effect on the environment, or the automation of jobs,” Hsu writes. “And yet has there ever been a time in human history when writing was so important to the average person? E-mails, texts, social-media posts, angry missives in comments sections, customer-service chats—let alone one’s actual work. The way we write shapes our thinking.”

Daniel Mendelsohn, the Charles Ranlett Flint Professor of Humanities, spoke with the New York Review of Books about his new translation of Homer’s Odyssey for the University of Chicago Press. In conversation with Lauren Kane, Mendelsohn discussed the challenges of balancing both poetic beauty and literal meaning in translating, the ways in which the story handles depictions of family relationships, and why the epic is experiencing a resurgence in modern retellings. The Odyssey, he says, is a “postwar poem, but it’s also a sort of post-everything poem. The old order has disappeared. The gods have receded. They’re almost not present at all, except in a couple of crucial moments, and certainly not in the way they’re present in the Iliad, where they’re all over the action and fighting in the battles. You feel the gods have withdrawn. Odysseus is a lone guy in a strange world with no familiar landmarks. The whole poem is haunted by a feeling that the old world order has come to an end, and now we’re just on our own, making our way as best we can. That may be what’s speaking to people.”

Bard written arts major Samantha Barrett ’26 has won the 2025 PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. This award recognizes 12 emerging writers each year for their debut short story published in a literary magazine, journal, or cultural website, and aims to support the launch of their careers as fiction writers. Chosen for originality, craft, and pushing the boundaries of the genre, each winner receives a $2,000 cash prize and is published by Catapult in their annual anthology, Best Debut Short Stories: The PEN America Dau Prize. This year’s judges—Lydi Conklin, Dionne Irving, Brenda Peynado—selected the winning stories from a range of dynamic literary publications. 

Barrett’s prize-winning story “Invert” was published by Foglifter Journal, issue 9.1 (2024) and nominated by the journal’s editors for the PEN award. Barrett will attend the 61st annual PEN America Literary Awards Ceremony on May 8 in New York City, where over 20 distinct awards, fellowships, grants, prizes, and nearly $350,000 will be conferred to writers and translators.

“I'm deeply honored to receive this award, and incredibly excited to attend this ceremony along with some of the most promising up-and-coming writers of today,” said Barrett.

The PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers is generously supported by the family of the late Robert J. Dau, whose commitment to the literary arts made him a fitting namesake for this career-launching prize. Before his death, Robert J. Dau, a lifelong Michigan resident, requested that a prize be established to promote budding writers. He knew that Ernest Hemingway spent summers with his family in northern Michigan and was a contemporary of Dau’s mother. Hemingway spent a winter writing in Dau’s hometown of Petoskey, and Robert loved Hemingway’s connection to his hometown. He also loved that Hemingway wrote his Nick Adams stories about places he knew personally. Dau’s admiration for Hemingway resulted in the creation of the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers.

Professor Robert Cioffi reviewed The Red Sea Scrolls: How Ancient Papyri Reveal the Secrets of the Pyramids by Pierre Tallet and Mark Lehner for the London Review of Books. The authors discuss an archaeological discovery that changed how we view the Great Pyramid of Giza: the papyri of Wadi el-Jarf, written between 2607 and 2605 BCE. These documents name people who worked on the pyramid, how much they were paid, and what their tasks were. As Cioffi puts it, these documents are "a first-hand account of the men who built the Great Pyramid of Giza.”

Cioffi’s review draws on his expertise in papyrology and Egyptian cultural interactions. He writes that while Tallet and Lehner can’t explain everything about the pyramids, they do reveal important facts about the daily life of workers there. Thanks to the papyri, “For the first time in 4500 years, Khufu’s pyramid has its voices again: not of priests or pharaohs but of the men who made it possible.”

Faculty, staff, and students gathered at Blithewood Manor for this year’s Undergraduate Awards Ceremony, which was held on Monday, April 28. The annual ceremony is a celebration of the incredible talent and dedication showcased by Bard students, as well as the unwavering support and guidance from esteemed faculty and staff at the College. The evening's awardees, who were nominated by faculty from across the four divisions of the College, represent excellence in the arts; social studies; languages and literature; and science, mathematics, and computing. Among the awardees were students in the Bard Baccalaureate, a program for older students returning to college to finish their undergraduate degrees. 

The event featured remarks and award presentations from key figures, including President of the College Leon Botstein, Dean of the College Deirdre d'Albertis, Dean of Studies and Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs David Shein, and Bard Alumna Cara Parks ’05. A special highlight of the evening was the announcement of a newly established award in memory of a beloved Bardian, Betsaida Alcantara ’05, by the Class of 2005, family, friends, and loved ones who knew her. The inaugural Betsaida Alcantara ’05 Pioneers for Progress Award, in memory of Betsaida Alcantara '05 (1983–2022), who exemplified the best of Bard's hope to inspire people to be passionate agents of change, pioneers for progress, and advocates for justice for those most in need was given to Sierra Ford ’26 who has demonstrated strong leadership skills, a commitment to public service, and support for open societies.
 
The presentation of awards was a moment to acknowledge and celebrate the exceptional academic achievement, leadership, and commitment demonstrated by Bard students. It was a testament to their hard work and perseverance, which defines the spirit of Bard College and serves as an inspiration to us all.

Many of the undergraduate awards are made possible by generous contributions from Bard donors. Thank you to all our supporters for believing in the value of a college education, and for investing in the future of Bard students.

In an article for YES Magazine, Bo Ruberg ’07, Bard alum and professor of film and media studies at UC Irvine, reflects on the role that video games hold in building worlds for marginalized people and communities. For Ruberg, the relationship between the physical world and the virtual space accessed within video games is complex, and the latter is no less real for being speculative, given that it offers players a chance to inhabit and interact with realities that are different from our own. “Through video games, I theorize a practice that I term queer worldbuilding,” Ruberg writes. “Queer worldbuilding is not the same thing as building worlds that feature queer stories or communities, though such worlds themselves have immense value. Instead, queer worldbuilding describes the practice of constructing new worlds through methods, frameworks, and tools that can themselves be understood as queer.”

In an opinion piece for the New York Times, M. Gessen, distinguished visiting writer at Bard, asserts that the way universities can fight against the Trump administration’s attacks is to abandon concerns of rankings, endowment building, and campus amenities to “focus on their core mission: the production and dissemination of knowledge.” Gessen spoke to Bard College President Leon Botstein because he “has long practiced the approach I am advocating” and “seems to respond to every crisis by figuring out ways to teach more people”—citing the Bard Prison Initiative, Bard Early Colleges, and Bard Microcolleges as some examples of the College’s mission-driven expansion of higher education beyond traditional pathways. Botstein believes universities are essential to democracy as “portals to tolerance and the expression of fundamental equality of all human beings.” Gessen challenges other universities to: “Act like universities, not like businesses. Spend your endowments. Accept more, not fewer students. Open up your campuses and expand your reach not by buying real estate but by bringing education to communities. Create a base. Become a movement.”

Daniel Drake interviewed Distinguished Visiting Professor of Written Arts Joseph O’Neill for the New York Review of Books, speaking to O’Neill about his assessment of the state of authoritarianism and resistance in the United States. “The end of the rule of law does not mean that we automatically find ourselves in an authoritarian society,” O’Neill said, but cautioned Democrats against being “distracted by the past.” “The (dubious) strategies hatched by their consultants in response to Trump’s win—‘talk about egg prices,’ ‘work with Republicans,’ and so on—make even less sense than usual,” O’Neill said. “New strategies, new faces, and a new level of adversarial exertion will be required.”