Bard’s extraordinary faculty are dedicated to the philosophy of teaching. Today and throughout Bard’s history, members of the faculty have effected change in medicine, the arts and letters, international affairs, journalism, scientific research, and education, among other endeavors. These distinguished scholars are advisers as well as instructors: Bard has no graduate teaching assistants. And the average class size of 16 in the Lower College and 12 in the Upper College allows for intimate discussions and one-on-one interaction.
David Bloom ’13 MM ’15. Photo by Bruce Kung
“What brought me to Bard, in a word, was the faculty.”
“To work with Joan Tower, George Tsontakis, and James Bagwell was an opportunity I couldn’t miss. I had long followed and admired their work, and then I found out that each of them taught here. It’s easy for musicians to focus only on music, whereas I wanted to have a broader education that would prepare me for a world that requires a more well-rounded base of knowledge and experience.”
—David Bloom ’13 MM ’15
—David Bloom ’13 MM ’15
Faculty News
Bard Scholar Julianne Swartz Awarded Grant from Bobby Anspach Foundation
The grant will support Swartz’s project, Heart Flow Instrument, a large-scale contemplative environment in the form of a deconstructed fountain that functions as a body in itself, where water, sound, light, and human presence circulate through interconnected vessels.
Bard Scholar Julianne Swartz Awarded Grant from Bobby Anspach Foundation
Julianne Swartz, associate professor and codirector of the studio arts program.
The grant will support Swartz’s project, Heart Flow Instrument, a large-scale contemplative environment in the form of a deconstructed fountain that functions as a body in itself, where water, sound, light, and human presence circulate through interconnected vessels. Each visitor becomes a component of that body, contributing vital rhythms to a shared sensory field. As visitors engage with sensors, their cardiac and neural rhythms radiate through the installation, affecting the sonic and haptic environment others inhabit.
“This generous funding will allow me to experiment with biomedical sensors to explore new thresholds of interactivity using human biorhythms to shape sound and light,” said Swartz.
The Bobby Anspach Foundation was established to carry forward the vision of artist Bobby Anspach, through the belief that art holds the power to fundamentally transform how we understand ourselves and each other. This year's flagship grants support artists whose work uses immersive technology and sensory experience to open new pathways into consciousness, empathy, and collective transformation. Throughout 2026, the foundation will spotlight the work of all grant recipients across its platforms and through foundation programming such as events, conversations, and gatherings designed to share this research across disciplines and introduce the grant recipients to new audiences.
Post Date: 07-17-2026
Bard College Artist in Residence Julia Weist Featured in the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times
“What I was doing was using my abilities as an artist to circumnavigate their attempt at exercising their power and preventing me from using this exchange as material in my practice.”
Bard College Artist in Residence Julia Weist Featured in the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times
Julia Weist, visiting artist in residence in studio arts. Photo by Adam T. Deen.
“In the absence of the official video, there’s something special that happens, which is that I can demonstrate the case again,” Weist told the LA Times. “What I was doing was using my abilities as an artist to circumnavigate their attempt at exercising their power and preventing me from using this exchange as material in my practice.”
Post Date: 07-15-2026
More News
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Chris Gibson Joins Bard College as Hannah Arendt Center Senior Fellow and Professor of Political Practice
Chris Gibson Joins Bard College as Hannah Arendt Center Senior Fellow and Professor of Political Practice
Bard College’s Hannah Arendt Center is pleased to announce the appointment of Chris Gibson as a senior fellow and a professor of political practice. His residency will begin in the spring 2027 academic semester during the pilot program of the Center’s new initiative, “A Republic, If You Can Keep It,” which coincides with the 250th anniversary of the birth of the American republic. The program aims to address the weakening of the social contract between government and citizens, and offer a renewed focus on constitutional citizenship, civic responsibility, public service, and civilian-military relations. Gibson, a former member of Congress and retired US Army colonel, will also participate in the 2026 Arendt Forum in October.Chris Gibson.
“I feel called to the Hannah Arendt Center and Bard College to help this new initiative, which I believe is focused on precisely what our country needs right now,” said Gibson, “and towards our future leaders being educated and prepared at Bard.”
Gibson, together with Malia Du Mont ’95, vice president for strategy and policy at Bard, will lead the new initiative that focuses on the weakening of the American social contract and explores different paths to possible renewal. The initiative intends to promote the intellectual and moral virtues, the value of public service, public goods including national security, and the criticality of functional civil-military relations within a flourishing republic.
“We are honored to welcome Chris Gibson as a senior fellow and professor,” said Roger Berkowitz, founder and academic director of the Hannah Arendt Center. “Gibson's lifelong dedication to public service embodies Hannah Arendt's call for courageous public engagement. By bringing his experience to the Center at Bard College and together with our esteemed colleague Malia Du Mont, we will create programming that is intellectually serious, practically consequential, and nationally replicable.”
“This critical juncture in the history of American democracy is the right time to launch this effort to reinvigorate student engagement with ideals of democratic leadership and public service," said Du Mont. “I'm honored and humbled to work with my colleagues at the Hannah Arendt Center, and especially with Chris Gibson, to bring it to life.”
Chris Gibson is a former US Army Colonel (now retired) whose last assignment was as Commander of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team of the 82nd Airborne Division. He is also a former three-term member of Congress (departing after term-limiting himself), a scholar of civil-military relations, and a former President of Siena College. Over a 29-year Army career (which started in 1981 as a 17-year old infantry private with the New York Army National Guard before being commissioned through ROTC and serving 24 more years in the Regular Army), Gibson rose to the rank of Colonel, deployed seven times, and received numerous military honors, including four Bronze Stars, two Legions of Merit, the Purple Heart, the Combat Infantryman’s Badge with Star, the Master Parachutist Badge, and the Ranger Tab. During his time in the Army, Gibson taught American politics for three years at the United States Military Academy at West Point and served as a national security affairs fellow at the Hoover Institution (where he earned War College credit). Gibson represented New York in the US House of Representatives from 2011 to 2017 and served as President of Siena College from 2020 to 2023. He holds a Ph.D. in government from Cornell University and is the author of work on national security, citizenship, and the founding principles of the American republic. His most recent book, The Spirit of Philadelphia: A Call to Recover the Founding Principles, argues for civic renewal grounded in constitutional responsibility, public service, and republican self-government.
Malia K. Du Mont ‘95 is a senior executive and national security professional currently serving as Vice President for Strategy and Policy at Bard College, and as a Senior Fellow at the College’s Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and the Humanities. Previously, she was Co-President of Amur Equipment Finance and a non-resident fellow at the Stimson Center and the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center on Strategy and Security. She has spent much of her career in the Pentagon, where she held multiple positions including Director of Strategy in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. In that role, she led the team charged with developing and implementing the National Defense Strategy, represented OSD on two National Security Staff subcommittees, and served as an outside reviewer on the National Intelligence Strategy and Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review. Malia helped spearhead the Obama Administration’s Afghanistan Strategy Review, following two years in Kabul and at NATO where she focused on analyzing Afghan politico-military affairs. She was lead author of the Ft. Hood Follow-on Review, coordinating across the defense enterprise on recommendations and interim guidance documents to strengthen the Department’s ability to counter insider threat. An Army Reserve officer and Afghanistan veteran, she chairs Congressman Pat Ryan’s (NY-19) Veterans and Military Families Advisory Board, represents the Mid-Hudson Valley on the New York State Council on the Arts, and serves on the boards of Community Foundations of the Hudson Valley, World Affairs Council Mid-Hudson Valley, and Arts Mid-Hudson.
The mission of the Hannah Arendt Center is to create and nurture an institutional space for bold, risky and provocative thinking about our political world in the spirit of Hannah Arendt. The Center’s vision is to empower a plural people to at once (re)discover their unique opinions and political agency and also find common ground to build together a shared world through thinking, listening, and talking with one another. Learn more at hac.bard.edu.
Post Date: 07-15-2026
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Roosevelt Montás Discusses the Future of College with the Chronicle of Higher Education
Roosevelt Montás Discusses the Future of College with the Chronicle of Higher Education
Laura Y. Chang and Arnold Chavkin Professor in Liberal Education and Civic Life Roosevelt Montás was interviewed by the Chronicle of Higher Education about why he believes general education is the future of college. “There’s a recognition that general education has not performed its civic function [to] prepare citizens to be meaningful, engaged participants in self-governance in a democratic society,” Montás said. Educational institutions now have the opportunity now to embrace a new model focused on questioning and interdisciplinary small-group discussion. “Students are hungry for this kind of serious intellectual engagement,” Montás believes. “Even if we achieve only a small portion of our ambition [of promoting general education], we would have done something great for the next generation of undergraduates.”Professor Roosevelt Montás. Photo by Inbal Sivan
The Chang Chavkin Center for Liberal Arts and Civic Life is focused on the connection between liberal education and civic life. It hosts discussion-based classes and supports faculty in building general education programs for students in all disciplines. It promotes, as Montás told the Chronicle, “liberal education rooted in four principles: the study of works of major cultural significance; small, discussion-based classes; a common intellectual experience; and nondisciplinary course design and teaching."
Post Date: 07-14-2026
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Arts Mid-Hudson Bestows Community Arts Grant for Bridge Arts Project With Musical Direction by Bard Faculty Member Roland Vazquez
Arts Mid-Hudson Bestows Community Arts Grant for Bridge Arts Project With Musical Direction by Bard Faculty Member Roland Vazquez
Bridge Arts, a Kingston-based nonprofit dedicated to growing a more diverse and innovative music community, has received a 2026 Community Arts Grant from Arts Mid-Hudson in support of the Bridge Arts Afro-Caribbean Big Band, for which Bard College Artist in Residence Roland Vazquez will serve as musical director.Roland Vazquez, artist in residence.
Vazquez will guide the ensemble in repertoire rooted in Afro-Cuban, Caribbean, and contemporary Latin jazz traditions, drawing on his expertise in the music of the African Diaspora. The project brings together professional musicians and advanced youth artists from across the Hudson Valley and will culminate in a public performance in Ulster County later in 2026, with an emphasis on expanding access to culturally specific jazz programming and creating mentorship opportunities for young musicians alongside professional artists.
The Music Program, one of the largest programs on Bard’s campus, provides a wide range of musical concentrations, from classical composition and performance to jazz, electronic music, musicology, ethnomusicology, and music theory.
Post Date: 06-29-2026
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Bard Faculty Member Gwen Laster Awarded a MacDowell Fellowship
Bard Faculty Member Gwen Laster Awarded a MacDowell Fellowship
Gwen Laster, visiting artist in residence in music at Bard College, has been awarded a MacDowell Fellowship to the MacDowell Residency Program in the Music Composition category for spring/summer 2026. While in residence, Laster will complete work on her project, “Is My Black Still Beautiful: Reflections on a Childhood in Detroit,” a mixed-media staged play with original music, storytelling, dance, and projected visuals.Gwen Laster, visiting artist in residence. Photo by Tom Moore Studios
Laster’s project explores the global complexities of Colorism, a discriminatory practice within one’s own ethnic group based on a person’s complexion and skin tone, through the lens of a Black girl reared during the post–civil rights movement in Detroit. The music spans various genres from contemporary classical to Motown, blues, soul, R&B, and jazz—both free and traditional. “Is My Black Still Beautiful” will premiere in New York City on July 23 at Mabou Mines,and on September 26–27 at the Philipstown Depot Theater.
The Music Program, one of the largest programs on Bard’s campus, provides a wide range of musical concentrations, from classical composition and performance to jazz, electronic music, musicology, ethnomusicology, and music theory.
Post Date: 06-26-2026
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The Zora Neale Hurston Writing Fellowship at Bard College Welcomes Four Writers for Its 2026 Summer Residency Program
The Zora Neale Hurston Writing Fellowship at Bard College Welcomes Four Writers for Its 2026 Summer Residency Program
The Zora Neale Hurston Writing Fellowship at Bard College, now in its fifth year, welcomed its cohort of four writers this summer, Chihiro Shibata, Fawziah A. Qadir, Stephanie Jenn Boggs, and Tomomi J. Emoto.Clockwise from top left: Chihiro Shibata, Fawziah A. Qadir, Tomomi J. Emoto, and Stephanie Jenn Boggs.
The Hurston Fellows are in residence for three weeks this summer. Each fellow spends their time working, writing, and researching independently on dedicated projects for the duration of the residency. Founded and directed by Associate Research Professor Donna Ford Grover, the Hurston Fellowship enables writers from all disciplines who have not had the opportunity to develop their scholarship, and supports writers who are currently employed as adjuncts or visiting professors with terminal degrees.
“The diverse academic backgrounds and voices of the participants of this program merge together into a wonderful writing community,” said Grover. “The Bard College campus is a fitting backdrop for the amazing work that happens in these three weeks.”
While in residence as a Hurston Fellow, Chihiro Shibata will work on a chapter from her dissertation on the effects of body size in wild golden-handed tamarin monkeys (Saguinus midas) in Suriname. Shibata will draw on field data from the main study group, which consists of locomotor and postural patterns, activity budgets, and sleeping site selection, to address a larger discussion on how the golden-handed tamarins adapt to being the “gorillas” among the tamarin species of the South American rain forests. Shibata is a lecturer in the anthropology department at Queens College, City University of New York.
Fawziah Qadir will spend her time during the Hurston Fellowship working on her project Refusal as Praxis: Black Mothers, Educational Malpractice, and the Politics of Opting Out, which examines Black mothers’ participation in the opt-out movement as a form of political resistance to educational malpractice in US public schools. Drawing on qualitative interviews and narrative analysis, the project reframes opting out not as parental disengagement, but as deliberate refusal—an act that exposes the limits of schooling systems built on compliance rather than care. Grounded in Critical Race Theory, Black feminist thought, interest convergence, and the capabilities approach, Qadir’s manuscript positions Black mothers as theorists whose lived experiences generate critical insights into the failures of contemporary educational reform. It also turns inward, interrogating how refusal operates as a methodological and pedagogical stance within the researcher’s own scholarly practice. Qadir is a lecturer in the Education Program at Barnard College.
As a Hurston Fellow, Stephanie Jenn Boggs will spend her time advancing her first book. Her cultural memoir seamlessly bridges her scholarly research and fieldwork in Black studies, media studies, and visual culture with ethnographical and familial accounts to explore US screen history. Boggs is the Mellon Visiting Faculty Scholar-in-Residence of Black Intellectual Thought at Xavier University of Louisiana.
Tomomi J. Emoto is currently completing a book-length ethnohistory of Tsushima Island, Japan, integrating archival research with her ethnographic fieldwork to illuminate the island’s complex borderland identities. Her scholarship is grounded in extensive, long-term ethnographic fieldwork, with theoretical focus upon historical consciousness, nationalism, cultural performance of identity, and border studies. Emoto is an adjunct assistant professor at Queens College, City University of New York.
Post Date: 06-26-2026
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Katherine Boivin Awarded New Foundation for Art History Fellowship
Katherine Boivin Awarded New Foundation for Art History Fellowship
Katherine Boivin, associate professor of art history and visual culture at Bard College, is the recipient of a 2026-27 Non-Residential Fellowship from the New Foundation for Art History (NFAH), a year-long fellowship awarded annually to mid-career scholars carrying out innovative work on the art of any era or culture. NFAH aims to identify and support early and mid-career scholars and scholarly projects which would not necessarily be sustained by other established avenues, and to provide support based not only on merit but on need in order to foster the best scholarship possible in the art history field.Katherine Boivin, associate professor of art history and visual culture.
The fellowship will contribute $50,000 in support of Boivin’s current project, Powers of Projection: Contingent Architecture and Medieval Subjectivity. The book considers everyday spaces in the medieval city, which were constructed and maintained through large-scale collaborative processes but which, through their small scale, addressed individual pedestrians. It asks how medieval people experienced these spaces and whether such fundamentally contingent architecture shaped the understanding of the self in relationship to society. The project guides readers from outside the gates of the medieval city into its very heart through a series of encounters with different projecting architectural features, including bridges, city gates, market stalls, and charnel houses.
Katherine M. Boivin is the author of Riemenschneider in Rothenburg: Sacred Space and Civic Identity in the Late Medieval City (Penn State University Press, 2021) and coeditor of Riemenschneider in Situ (Brepols, 2021) and Gothic Space: Studies in Celebration of Stephen Murray (Brill, 2026). Boivin’s work has been recognized with numerous fellowships and awards, including the Michèle Dominy Award for Teaching Excellence, a Samuel H. Kress Foundation Art History Grant, an NEH Summer Stipends Award, an ICMA Research Grant, and a Fulbright Fellowship. Her research focuses on the dynamic interactions between art, architecture, and human activity in late medieval Europe.
About the New Foundation for Art History
Founded in 2019, the New Foundation for Art History strives to serve the field in innovative ways that have been overlooked or underserved by existing institutions of its kind. The goal of the NFAH is to foster the best current research in Art History with a flexible approach to grant-making, and to lead by example towards a more equitable future of the discipline where excellence is promoted and rewarded in the broadest ways possible.
Post Date: 06-24-2026
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