Bard Common Courses

Faculty: Thomas Williams
This course asks: How is Black identity imagined, imposed, resisted, and reinvented? We will read writers who refuse easy answers—Thomas Jefferson and Alexis de Tocqueville wrestling with the contradictions of American freedom; Frederick Douglass redefining what it means to be self-made; James Baldwin and Zora Neale Hurston insisting on the complexity and creativity of Black life; Albert Murray and Ralph Ellison challenging the rigidity of racial categories; and contemporary thinkers from Barbara Fields to Adrian Piper who unsettle the very concept of “race” itself. We ask: how do we create a self in a society eager to tell us who we are? We will explore that question through classic and contemporary texts, including Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me, Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son, “Sonny’s Blues,” The Fire Next Time, and selections from William F. Buckley Jr., whose conservatism offered Baldwin a deeply adversarial foil in their legendary 1965 Cambridge debate. We will watch that debate, view I Am Not Your Negro, and consider how these clashes over the “American Dream” continue to animate our politics and our culture. The point is not consensus but curiosity. Students will grapple with writers who disagree not just about policy but about the meaning of justice, the role of identity, and the possibilities of American life. This is a courage to be common course. It fulfills the Difference & Justice requirement and includes lectures, dinners, and shared activities across sections of the Common Course.

Faculty: Thomas Bartscherer
In 2001, Congresswoman Barbara Lee was the sole member of the United States Congress to vote against the Authorization for Use of Military Force that formed the legal foundation for military action in Afghanistan, and subsequently, many additional deployments of the U.S. military. Her vote was praised by many as courageous, and condemned by many others. Lee was celebrated in a poem by Fred Moten as “the unacknowledged legislator.” What is courage? In this course, we shall approach this question both directly and obliquely. We begin with Homer’s Iliad and with philosophical accounts from 5th century Athens. Should courage be understood the same way in all contexts? Is a warrior’s courage the same as that of a philosopher or a legislator? Who is truly courageous, the one who defends the regime, the one who critiques it, or both? Is the courage of Hektor or Achilles the same as that of Socrates or Antigone? Our discussion will proceed through close readings of philosophical texts and essays, both ancient and modern (Plato, Aristotle, Tillich, Arendt, Baldwin, Abani) and imaginative representations in literature and film (Homer’s Iliad, Sophocles’ Antigone, Brecht’s Mother Courage, Fugard’s The Island, Bergman’s Shame). We will be asking, among other things, whether and in what way it makes sense to speak of a single virtue, courage, being manifest in varying circumstances and in different times and places; whether and in what sense courage brings people together or sets them apart; and what we may mean today when we characterize people or acts as courageous. This course includes lectures, dinners, and other activities undertaken in common with the other sections of this Common Course.

Faculty: Joshua Boettiger
There may be no more complex or compelling biblical narrative than that of David—the young shepherd and harpist who slays Goliath and ultimately becomes king. This course will fundamentally focus on the literary portrayal of David in the books of Samuel and Kings, and to a lesser extent, the Psalms (traditionally imagined to be authored by David). In the Jewish tradition, David’s story doesn’t end with the biblical account but continues into rabbinic literature, where his heroism is somewhat demilitarized and reconfigured in Talmudic and Midrashic texts. We’ll also look at David’s continuing legacy around questions of messianism, masculinities, power, and ambivalence of power in Jewish and Christian traditions—all orbiting around the larger theme of the different faces of courage being explored in the common course.  This course includes lectures, dinners, and other activities undertaken in common with the other sections of this Common Course.

Faculty: Jana Mader
In this course, we explore the theme of courage in artistic encounters with nature. Through the work of writers and artists such as Henry David Thoreau, Ansel Adams, and Georgia O’Keeffe, we examine how creative expression becomes a tool for environmental activism and cultural transformation. Literary works like Thoreau’s Walden and Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring reveal the power of writing to awaken ecological consciousness and inspire conservation. We consider the ephemeral art of Andy Goldsworthy, whose sculptures made from natural materials expose the impermanence of human intervention, and study filmmakers such as Werner Herzog and Terrence Malick, whose films invite spiritual contemplation of the natural world. We also explore the music of John Luther Adams, whose compositions evoke nature’s vastness. Engaging with literature, visual art, photography, film, music, and poetry, we ask how artists courageously confront the complexities of nature—whether by challenging social norms, exposing uncomfortable truths about human impact, or inspiring a more profound connection to the earth. By semester’s end, students will gain a deeper understanding of how art reflects and shapes our perceptions of the natural world, and how artistic courage can foster environmental and social change. This course includes lectures, dinners, and shared activities with other sections of the Common Course.

Faculty: Michael Sadowski, Jamal Neal, and Seth Halvorson
This course introduces students to theories that posit relational connection as a foundation of human development, drawing on evidence from psychology, sociology, primatology, neuroscience, and other fields. Course readings will be drawn from texts such as Franz de Waal’s The Age of Empathy (primatology), Matthew Lieberman’s Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect (neuroscience), and Carol Gilligan's In a Human Voice (psychology). After an introduction to this evidence, the class will engage with this question: What gets in the way of human connection? In this part of the course, we will examine the cultural forces that disrupt connection and relationships, and the different ways this disconnection manifests across cultures. Patriarchy, racism, homophobia and transphobia, interpersonal conflict, war, and other social issues will be examined as manifestations of cultural breaks in relationship. In the final segment of the course, readings and discussion will shift to a final question: How do we reconnect as human beings within cultures that drive us to separate, create divisions and hierarchies among people, and alienate us from one another? Perspectives from psychology, education, the arts, and other fields will be brought to bear on this question as students consider ways to cultivate individual and societal resilience to the forces that breed separation and division.
Important Note: Students considering this course should be advised that readings address issues such as race- and gender-based violence, homophobia and transphobia, ableism, and related issues, and that personal writing and sharing will be an important aspect of the class.

Faculty: Bruce Chilton, Katherine Boivin, Mary Grace Williams, and Susan Aberth
The emblematic ritual of Christianity, known under its oldest names as the Sanctification, the Blessing, the Lord’s Supper, Eucharist, Mass, and Communion, has a history of two thousand years. Throughout that history, even when the death of Jesus is vividly recalled, participants have spoken of their idealized meal as a celebration. This class will involve understanding how people have celebrated this sacrament involves defining “sacrament” in different times and places, seeing why it is depicted in joyous terms, and identifying what activities and ideas it has both generated and been influenced by. Multidisciplinary engagement is required.

Faculty: Sucharita Kanjilal and Julia Rosenbaum
One of the most used social spaces at home and outside it, the kitchen functions as a site for the preparation of food as well as a place of cultural connection and contestation. What kinds of social and economic practices emerge out of kitchens? What does the design and architecture of particular kitchens in particular places tell us about history, politics, and power? How have kitchens changed over time? This course begins from a familiar place and makes it unfamiliar by exploring how kitchens are and have been key sites of meaning-making, gender troubles, artistic expression, state planning, and political organizing. Throughout the semester we will consider material from a variety of sources (among them, ethnographic, archival, and artistic) to explore how everyday infrastructures of eating, dining, food preparation and presentation shape our social lives. In addition to scholarly writings, objects for analysis include cookbooks, utensils and appliances, as well as floorplans and design manuals. Throughout the semester, students will have the opportunity to work on hands-on projects, both individually and in groups.

Faculty: Ziad Dallal and Erin Atwell
This common course will explore modern experiences of dreams, madness, hallucination, and delusion alongside the ancient ideas and texts such experiences engage. Dreams have been objects of folktales, drivers of epics, and sources of legends. They have been both censored and used to evade censorship. They are never far off from centers of power, whether divine or secular. Whereas today dreams are often seen as fanciful imaginings of artistic potential that, if acted upon, can inexorably lead to madness, not so long ago and indeed in some contemporary circles dreams are a means of engaging truth. We will approach these themes and their concomitant contradictions by examining ancient understandings of prophecy, revelation, and mystical musings on dreams and madness. We will then use these understandings as a reading toolkit for apprehending 20th and 21st century literatures and ethnographies. The Dream and Delirium course will bring artists, philosophers, psychologists, and novelists together to help students explore the interface of imagination and reality in ways that upend notions of enchantment and disenchantment, reason and unreason. Authors and titles may include: “The Tale of Princess Fatima, Warrior Woman,” the Qurʾan, Sadeq Hedayet, Ahmed Bounani, Amira Mittermaier, and Mahmoud Darwish.

Faculty: Beate Liepert, Elena Kim, Adriane Colburn, and Tatjana Myoko von Pritwitz und Gaffron

This course will introduce students to core facets of climate change through the lens of interconnected, yet markedly different viewpoints: climate science, behavioral sciences, artistic expression, and spirituality.   In this class, students will gain a depth of understanding through labs, interdisciplinary projects and artworks that are aimed at fostering empowerment, resilience and action. In the laboratory, we will take a hands-on approach to exploring climate, beginning with a primer on climate change as a science that connects natural and human systems such as the carbon cycle. We will explore how climate shifts from seasons to eons and how that shapes our world, from the local environment of Bard Campus to the entire planet. Experiments with the scientific principles of climate change will lead to investigations on how they influence cognition, mental health and human behavior. To complement this robust curriculum in climate science and climate psychology, a series of lectures and creative projects will guide students to consider climate futures and how humans contend with uncertainty as individuals, at a societal level, and as a species. Artworks, activism and mindfulness exercises will spring from this research, giving students new tools to process and contend with our changing world.
 

Faculty: Victor Apryshchenko, Franco Baldasso, and Zahid Jalali

Why do communities and societies choose to remember or to forget? Who holds the power as lords and managers of memory? How might memory, or its deliberate erasure, be wielded as a tool of resistance? In the 21st century, collective memory has emerged as a ‘leading concept’ within the humanities, profoundly shaping fields such as cultural, historical, and political studies. The course investigates collective memory both as a shared cultural practice and as a rigorous academic discipline. Student will explore the conceptual frameworks of collective consciousness and pivotal research categories such as “trauma,” “nostalgia,” “appropriation of the past,” and “transnational memory,” drawing upon the foundational insights of Maurice Halbwachs’, Aleida Assmann’s, Pierre Nora’s, and Jeffrey C. Alexander’s scholarship. By reading and discussing the transformative texts of Primo Levi, Robert Darnton, and Susan Sontag, students will discuss the gaps and correspondences between history and memory. They will learn how narratives shape collective memory by making distant past visible and emotionally impactful as well as expose the past to the danger of desensitization, complicating the balance between memory’s preservation and emotional engagement. The course will engage with written and visual sources, including films, material culture, and field trips to the Metropolitan Museum, the 9/11 Memorial, and other sites where memory is produced, performed, contested, or forged.