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Current and Upcoming Events
Robert Bresson and His Legacy
A Complete Retrospective of Robert Bresson's Films
Tuesday, January 31, 2012 - Tuesday, May 8, 2012 , Jim Ottaway Jr. Film CenterFor complete information please click here.
Contact: Richard Suchenski, rsuchens@bard.edu 845-758-6482
Lunchtime Talk: Ory Amitay
The Importance of Studying Monotheism in the 21st Century
Thursday, February 16, 2012 , 12:15 pm - 2:00 pm , Arendt CenterWebsite: http://www.bard.edu/hannaharendtcenter/
The monotheistic (a.k.a Abrahamic) movement is one of the most influential and widespread ideological phenomena in the world today. Ironically, the story of this massive superstructure of faith, myth, even diet has not yet been told. While many treatments can be found of Judaism, Christianity and Islam (to say nothing of the many subdivisions within each), the monotheistic movement as a whole has not yet received a grand narrative to match. A main reason for that is the outlandish proportions of the task involved. In his talk, Professor Amitay will propose a new methodological approach, and try to explain why a deeper understanding of Monotheism is both relevant and necessary.
Contact: Bridget Hollenback, bhollenb@bard.edu 845-758-7878
The Literature of the New Russia
Readings by Debut Prize Winners
Monday, February 20, 2012 , 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm , RKC 103Website: http://www.bard.edu/hannaharendtcenter/
Russia's Most Independent Writers Read Their Latest Works and Share Insights into the State of Art and Freedom in Their Changing Country.
On February 20th, in the second in its series of Debut literary events, CAUSA ARTIUM presents leading novelist Olga Slavnikova and four exciting young Russian authors: Irina Bogatyreva, Igor Savelyev, Alisa Ganieva and Dmitry Biryukov.
Russia has always fascinated the West. Russia: both friend and foe, Europe and Asia, home of militant atheism and spiritual depth, land of political extremism and literary genius. Not all in the West are aware of how crucial a moment this is in the art and life of one of the world’s great cultures, the Russian civilization. The Soviet and immediate post-Soviet generations, opposed as they were, had much in common, both obsessed with the heritage of the Soviet epoch.
Now they are being displaced by a new generation, one for which the Soviet Union is mere history. This generation has been raised in a new and different world, a Russia both more familiar to the West... and less so. They have a new set of hopes and fears, with different lives and aspirations.
For over a decade, the Debut Prize has been seeking out new young literary talent throughout the world’s Russian speaking population. Receiving as many as 70,000 submissions annually, it has become a key element of Russian literary life.
As the coordinator of the Debut Prize, Olga Slavnikova occupies a unique position in Russian literature, forming a bridge between the generation that has currently taken its place at the helm of the Russian literary establishment and the new voices of the New Russian Literature.
Olga Slavnikovа
Olga Slavnikova grew up in Ekaterinburg in the Ural mountain region. She has a degree in journalism. Her first novel, Dragonfly Enlarged to the Size of a Dog, made the Russian Booker Prize short list in 1997. It immediately vaulted her to the top ranks of Russian literature.
Her second novel, Alone in the Mirror, won her the Pavel Bazhov Prize and also made the Anti-Booker Prize short list. She won the Critics’ Academy prize for Immortal, which was also shortlisted for the Belkin and National Bestseller prizes.
Olga Slavnikova's critical essays have won her the Polonsky Prize.
The novel 2017, Slavnikova's magnum opus, recently won Russia's most prestigious literary award, the Russian Booker Prize. It has been translated into numerous languages; it was published in English in 2010. A number of her short stories are also available in English.
Ms. Slavnikova's latest novel is Light Head, the English translation of which is expected to be issued in the spring of 2012.
Alisa Ganieva was born in 1985 in Moscow, but soon moved to her family's native Dagestan. It seems almost a literary device, for she later returned to Moscow to be “born” a second time, as a writer, while her literature continues to revolve around her Dagestani world. A graduate of Moscow’s prestigious Literary Institute, Alisa writes criticism for leading Russian literary journals.
Her 2009 “Salam, Dalgat” was a stunning and sharply controversial literary mystification. The tale was published as the work of Gulla Khirachev, a fighter in the war-torn Russian Caucasus. It exploded onto the literary scene and Khirachev was a star - until the Debut Prize awards. Khirachev was called to the podium, but in place of a rough, unshaven rebel in khakhis or camouflage, up walked the delicate and elegant young Ganieva.
Ganieva has since won numerous awards for her prose and the October magazine prize for her critical articles. She is also the creator of her own new genre, a special kind of avant-garde children’s tale.
Dmitry Biryukov lives in Novosibirsk's “Academic City,” where he was born in 1979. He has degrees in history and philosophy in addition to post-graduate work at the Institute of Philosophy and Law and a course of study at the Literary Institute in Moscow.
Biryukov is the author of numerous short stories and essays. He made the Debut Prize long list in 2004 and then won the prize in 2005 in the “Essays” category. His first novel is currently in press.
Biryukov’s current project is a novel whose protagonist is an artist searching for the hidden meaning of one of the landmark works of 20th century art, Kasimir Malevich's 1915 “Black Square.”
Biryukov is a journalist. He recently left a position as editor-in-chief Science First-Hand to cover arts and culture.
Irina Bogatyreva was born in 1982 in Kazan, Tatarstan. In 2005, she graduated the prestigious Literary Institute in Moscow. She has been recognized by numerous literary awards and her stories and articles can be read in Russia’s leading literary journals.
Bogatyreva writes on the most important issues for Russia's younger generation, including the freedoms offered by the hitchhiking subculture, cults and esoteric spirituality, the attraction of unspoiled nature and ancient civilizations.
Bogatyreva's “Off the Beaten Track” struck a chord in Russia. “The tale is largely autobiographical,” she explains. “The protagonists hitchhike from Moscow to the Altai, much as I once did. But from the day it was published, so many people saw themselves in my characters that I came to understand that it wasn't my story alone, but the story of everyone who had ever experienced the joys and the thrill of the open road.”
Igor Savelyev was born in 1983 into a family of writers in Ufa in the southern Urals, where he still lives and works as a crime reporter for the local news agency. He received his degree in philology from Ufa University and is currently working on his dissertation on the topic of contemporary Russian literary criticism.
In 2004, his short novel Pale City, based on first-hand hitchhiking experiences, became a cult classic for Russia's youth culture.
Critics have raved about Savelyev’s “masterful, finely chiseled style based on brilliant counterpoints, like a virtuoso music piece.” In his works, “realism is bordering on phantasmagoria, a striking sample of new-generation psychological prose.”
Contact: Bridget Hollenback, bhollenb@bard.edu 845-758-7878
Lunchtime Talk: Douglas Irvin
The Origins of Genocide: Tracing the Lemkin-Arendt debate in Lemkin’s Archives
Wednesday, February 29, 2012 , 12:15 pm , Arendt CenterWebsite: http://www.bard.edu/hannaharendtcenter/
Hannah Ardent and Raphael Lemkin were two of the most important thinkers in the postwar world. Both produced the seminal works on totalitarianism and genocide, a term Lemkin coined in 1943 when he was living in Stockholm, fleeing Nazi persecution in Poland. Lemkin and Arendt are more than contemporaries. They shared similar intellectual interests, and passed in many of the same social and professional circles while living in the United States. While they never cite each other and give no indication that they knew each other personally, one thing is clear: they did not like each other’s ideas. When Arendt writes about the "jurist and professional idealist" whose "genocide convention wasn't fit for the protection of animals," she is most certainly referencing Lemkin. But what could she have possibly have meant by this? In this talk, based on my dissertation research into Lemkin’s unpublished manuscripts and personal papers, I will answer this question by presenting two key aspects of Lemkin’s theory of genocide (which are still unknown to the scholarly community, languishing in archives) and speaking about the sharp differences between Arendt and Lemkin’s ideas. Lemkin was deeply indebted to the romantic thinker Johann Gottfried Herder as well as 17th-century Spanish theologians such as Francisco de Vitoria who dissented against the Spanish destruction of the American peoples. This intellectual heritage places him a great odds with Arendt, indeed. What is more, Arendt and Lemkin have very different things to say about the role of violence and politics in totalitarian and genocidal regimes. With the persistence of genocide in our age and the ever-increasing rise of genocide tribunals in international law, reviving this Lemkin/Arendt debate is as important as ever.
Contact: Bridget Hollenback, bhollenb@bard.edu 845-758-7878
Lecture: Michael Weinman
Pedagogy or demagogy: The dangerous dunamis of the rhetor's art
Tuesday, March 27, 2012 , 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm , Olin, Room 102Website: http://www.bard.edu/hannaharendtcenter/
Professor Weinman describes his upcoming lecture:
"My subject is the power of composed speech. While it is by no means unusual to note that rhetoric is terribly powerful, I believe you might hear something uncommon. For, while most discussions of the influence of rhetoric focus on the ways in which it distracts, distorts and dissembles—in short, on the ways that rhetoric minimizes or even abolishes the power of truth in political discourse—I aim tonight, drawing upon the classical analysis of the speaker’s art offered by Aristotle, to sing its song of praise. I shall not pretend that the common attacks on rhetoric are false. Rather, I will show that it is precisely because they are true that we need to cherish and cultivate this art, albeit in a fashion diametrically opposed—in the manner of an antistrophe—to way it is generally practiced. If rhetoric is generally practiced as the tool of the demagogue, mine is the praise of the antistrophic rhetoric of the pedagogue. Decrying the tool itself because of it demagogic use, I shall try to persuade you, undermines our own capacity to deploy the tool pedagogically, at our peril. "
Contact: Bridget Hollenback, bhollenb@bard.edu 845-758-7878
Lecture with Professor Trevor Norris
Consuming the Polis: Arendt's account of the rise of consumerism
Tuesday, April 10, 2012 , 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm , Olin, Room 102Website: http://www.bard.edu/hannaharendtcenter/
Arendt is well known as a critic of modernity, but she is less well known as a critic of consumerism. In The Human Condition Arendt describes how the rise of a consumer society presents a profound threat to political life. Arendt provides a theoretical framework to explain how the public realm has been eroded by the emergence of the private forces of production and consumption, and the ensuing eclipse of politics. The polis is where we not only differentiate ourselves from others, but also differentiate between ‘activities related to a common world and those related to the maintenance of life.’ Consumerism constitutes a false form of differentiation, one based on commodification and self-commodification rather than political action in the form of ‘speech and deed’. With the loss of action and the polis, freedom becomes reduced to routinized behaviour, difference and plurality to conformity and uniformity, speech and self-disclosure to production and consumption. The polis is required to enable the promotion of consumption such that we are no longer Aristotle’s zoon politikon, but live as if merely zoon. In closing, the presentation will raise a concern about the role of education: will education facilitate the promotion of a consumer society or serve as a site for renewal of our political world?
Contact: Bridget Hollenback, bhollenb@bard.edu 845-758-7878
Lecture with Michael Steinman
Heidegger: Politics With and Without Identity
Tuesday, April 17, 2012 , 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm , Olin, Room 102Website: http://www.bard.edu/hannaharendtcenter/
Contact: Bridget Hollenback, bhollenb@bard.edu 845-758-7878
Lecture: Thomas Meyer
"How to Study Modernity? Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss on Ancient
Tuesday, April 24, 2012 , 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm , Olin, Room 102Website: http://www.bard.edu/hannaharendtcenter/
In this talk Professor Meyer will develop two concepts on modernity which both start with Plato and Aristotle, but end up with very different conclusions.
Arendt formulates her solution in the form of a Political Theory that
affirms Modernity. Leo Strauss on the contrary insisted on the superiority
of classical Greek Political Philosophy.
Contact: Bridget Hollenback, bhollenb@bard.edu 845-758-7878