Alexander Simons

Alexander Simons' choice of a Senior Project—a study of cultural conflations of homosexuality with homicide—might seem, at first, to belie his mild, affable demeanor. But the Newton, Massachusetts, native and literature student, who is focusing in literary theory and “especially in queer theory,” has discerned a thread between Oscar Wilde’s Faustian portrayal of Dorian Gray, Robert Louis Stevenson’s disjunctive depiction of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and the predatory characters in Alfred Hitchcock’s classic thrillers Rope and Strangers on a Train. “The project looks at texts and films that deal with ambiguously gay characters who commit murder, and how that reflects a climate of homophobia,” he explains.

In its current incarnation, Simons’s project really began to jell when he returned from an “amazing semester” in Hungary, where he studied literary theory with Sophie Howlett and contemporary historical perspectives on World War II with István Rev at Central European University in Budapest during his junior year. Returning to Bard, he found that his Senior Project adviser was on leave. But professors Deirdre d’Albertis and Eric Trudel “saved my life,” he laughs, “picking me up and really pushing me to meet deadlines. At Bard, it’s taken for granted that your professors are here for you, and accessible to you. It’s great to have people advising me whose attitudes are, ‘You can do this, and you can do a great job with it.’”

Simons had applied to “about 20 schools,” but one of the deciding factors in his choosing Bard was its Immediate Decision Plan and the daylong seminar it offers to potential enrollees. “Bard was the only school that gave me the opportunity to have a face-to-face meeting with an admissions counselor that was not contingent upon a prior review of my transcripts,” he says. “I felt I was less here to impress them and more here to represent myself.”