A man in a navy blue bomber jacket teaches in a seminar-style classroom.

Ephraim Asili MFA ’11, associate professor of film and electronic arts; director, Film and Electronic Arts Program. Photo by Chris Kayden

Bard Faculty

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

Faculty News

Bard College Professor Jenny Xie Selected for 2026 Howard Foundation Fellowship

Xie’s fellowship in the category of Poetry is one of 14 fellowships awarded by the foundation this year.

Bard College Professor Jenny Xie Selected for 2026 Howard Foundation Fellowship

Jenny Xie, assistant professor of written arts.

Jenny Xie, assistant professor of written arts at Bard College, has been announced as a recipient of a Howard Foundation Fellowship for 2026-27. Xie’s fellowship in the category of Poetry, conferred by the George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation, is one of 14 fellowships awarded by the foundation this year, which support independent creative and scholarly work on major projects by early mid-career individuals who have demonstrated potential to be future leaders in their fields.

During her fellowship, Xie will receive $40,000 in unrestricted funds to devote her time to researching, developing, and writing her third poetry collection, Dead Time, which delves into forms of directionless time, or time untroubled by plot and by imperatives of action. Xie is the author of two other collections of poetry. Eye Level (2018) was a finalist for the National Book Award, and the recipient of the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets and the Holmes National Poetry Prize from Princeton University. The Rupture Tense (2022) was a finalist for the National Book Award and the CLMP Firecracker Award, and a recipient of the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award. Xie has also been supported by fellowships and grants from Civitella Ranieri Foundation, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Kundiman, New York Foundation for the Arts, the Vilcek Foundation, and the Jerome Foundation.

The Howard Foundation is an independent agency administered at Brown University. Established in 1954, it awards annual, unrestricted fellowships to promising individuals in selected artistic and academic fields. Past fellows have authored bestsellers, directed Oscar nominated feature-length films, and earned some of the world’s most prestigious honors including Pulitzer Prizes, the Rome Prize, and the Whiting Award. For more information, visit howard-foundation.brown.edu.

Post Date: 06-04-2026

President Botstein Awarded Honorary Degree and Bard Medal

Botstein received an honorary Doctorate of Civil Law in recognition of his 51 years of transformative leadership. Botstein was also presented with the Bard Medal, which honors individuals whose efforts on behalf of Bard and whose achievements have significantly advanced the welfare of the College.

President Botstein Awarded Honorary Degree and Bard Medal

President Leon Botstein at Bard College’s 166th Commencement. Photo by Samuel Stuart Hollenshead

At Bard College’s 166th Commencement, President Leon Botstein, who became the College’s 14th president in 1975, was awarded an honorary degree and Bard Medal. Botstein received an honorary Doctorate of Civil Law in recognition of his 51 years of transformative leadership. Botstein was also presented with the Bard Medal, which honors individuals whose efforts on behalf of Bard and whose achievements have significantly advanced the welfare of the College.

The numerous Bard College initiatives designed and founded under his leadership encompass a wide range of educational work ranging from local community programs to international efforts with global impact. Bard High School Early Colleges have enlarged the opportunities available to talented high school students in under-resourced communities across the country. The Bard Prison Initiative has made a liberal arts education available to incarcerated learners hungry for meaning and hope in their lives. Bard’s renowned music programs, its internationally recognized Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, and its Center for Curatorial Studies and Art in Contemporary Culture offer unparalleled interdisciplinary education in the arts. Bard College Berlin, Al-Quds Bard College, and Bard’s other international programs offer an education across the world to students from places where access to a liberal arts education is otherwise unavailable or suppressed.

“Starting decades ago, with limited resources, President Botstein led Bard toward all these achievements,” states the citation for Botstein’s Doctor of Civil Law honorary degree. “Recently, aided by a generous match from the Open Society Foundations, he completed a boldly ambitious endowment campaign that goes a long way toward securing Bard’s future.” The citation for Botstein’s Bard College Award stated: “Over fifty-one years as president, Botstein has transformed Bard College into the extraordinary institution that it is today, and his work and leadership have defined Bard’s distinct and important mission.”

Post Date: 06-02-2026

More News

Bard Musician Franz Nicolay Testifies in Congress

Bard Musician Franz Nicolay Testifies in Congress

Franz Nicolay, visiting instructor of music.

Franz Nicolay, visiting instructor of music at Bard College, spoke at a Congressional hearing about a Live Nation/Ticketmaster antitrust case, reported Chronogram. The case concerned the merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster which has resulted in a monopoly on event ticket sales in the United States. “Live music hasn’t been a healthy competitive market,” said Nicolay during the hearing. “Instead, a vertically integrated corporation that controls venues and tour promotion and ticketing and artist management, to the almost total control of many music markets, is, to a comical degree, the epitome of the kind of monopolistic power that antitrust law was created to address.”

“We, as artists, simply don’t have the range of city-to-city, venue-to-venue choices that would constitute a healthy ecosystem,” Nicolay continued. “It’s a problem of affordability, in an economic climate which, through drastically increasing gas prices, airfare, postage and international shipping fees for merchandise, and hardening borders, is making the touring on which our livings depend increasingly unaffordable for musicians. And that increased overhead… has a corresponding effect on affordability and access for fans.”

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.

Read more in Chronogram

Further Reading in Rural Intelligence

Watch the Congressional Hearing

Post Date: 06-02-2026
Bard Artist in Residence Jonathan VanDyke MFA ’05 Awarded a Grant from the Gottlieb Foundation

Bard Artist in Residence Jonathan VanDyke MFA ’05 Awarded a Grant from the Gottlieb Foundation

Jonathan VanDyke MFA ’05, artist in residence. Photo by Shawn Poynter

Jonathan VanDyke MFA ’05, artist in residence at Bard College, was awarded a Gottlieb Foundation Individual Support Grant, a competitive arts grant for artists who have worked in their field for at least 20 years. The grant, which aims to “recognize and support the serious, fully-committed artist,” gives individuals $25,000 to fund their creative projects. VanDyke’s portfolio began in 2005, while he was pursuing an MFA at Bard focusing on painting and sculpture. He has presented major projects at The Museum of Art of Ravenna, The Columbus Museum, The Power Plant, The AKG Buffalo Art Museum, and many other institutions worldwide. “This award is especially meaningful for me in relation to Bard: to apply for this award you must submit 20 years of studio work, and so the first images in my portfolio came from my Bard MFA thesis exhibition, while the last images documented work I’ve made since joining the Bard faculty a few years ago,” VanDyke said.

VanDyke teaches in the Studio Arts Program at Bard, which provides a breadth of expanded offerings while retaining a strong core of courses that provide a firm grounding in basic techniques and principles, in an era when much contemporary art cannot be contained within the traditional categories and technology is transforming the production

Post Date: 06-01-2026
Hal Haggard's Research on Black Holes Featured on PBS Space Time

Hal Haggard's Research on Black Holes Featured on PBS Space Time

Hal Haggard, associate professor of physics.

Research by Associate Professor of Physics Hal Haggard was featured on Matt O’Dowd’s PBS Space Time, an informational show that introduces viewers to concepts in astrophysics. The episode focused on an idea Haggard helped pioneer about black holes: that instead of becoming singularities at the end of their lifetime, as was previously thought, they may instead lead into cores of energy, also known as “white holes.” Haggard’s research on these structures, also known as Planck stars, and black-to-white hole tunneling was discussed in the context of physicists’ anxieties around black holes and how the perception of them has changed in previous decades. The Planck star’s existence is “one of our final hopes,” O’Dowd says. “Let’s hope they’re real, for physics’ sake.”

Haggard teaches in Bard’s Physics Program, which is dedicated to helping students at all levels gain a better understanding of the universe and how it works.

Watch the Episode

Post Date: 06-01-2026
Composer in Residence Missy Mazzoli Profiled in the New York Times

Composer in Residence Missy Mazzoli Profiled in the New York Times

Composer in Residence Missy Mazzoli.

Bard Composer in Residence Missy Mazzoli was profiled in a New York Times article about the Luna Composition Lab, the mentorship program she founded with fellow composer Ellen Reid. They founded the lab after they realized they’d never experienced female mentorship in composing. “We took a good hard look at what we wished we had had,” said Mazzoli, and the two asked themselves, “What can we do to make this more diverse, more vital, more alive, more fun?” The Lab, which turns 10 this year, matches young and experienced composers who are female, nonbinary or gender nonconforming, and mentees receive eight months of mentorship and attend a music festival in New York. Now, Mazzoli and Reid are organizing musical events for LunaLab@10, an anniversary celebration of the program and its expanded reach. “We want the field to expand,” said Mazzoli, “and so bringing in gender diversity, racial diversity, economic income diversity, geographic diversity helps [the] field survive and thrive.”

Mazzoli is a Grammy-nominated composer and musician who has written operas including Lincoln in the Bardo and Proving Up that are based on contemporary literature. She teaches in the Bard College Conservatory of Music, which provides the best possible preparation for a person dedicated to a life immersed in the creation and performance of music.

Read the Article

Post Date: 05-28-2026
Visiting Artist in Residence Beto O'Byrne Awarded Franklin Research Grant

Visiting Artist in Residence Beto O'Byrne Awarded Franklin Research Grant

Beto O'Byrne. Photo by Thomas Dunn

Beto O'Byrne, visiting artist in residence in theater and performance at Bard College, has been awarded a Franklin Research Grant by the American Philosophical Society. O'Byrne’s grant will support archival research and ethnographic fieldwork in San Antonio and Austin, Texas, in collaboration with Radical Evolution Performance Collective, toward the development of Forget the Alamo. This research-driven theatrical work reexamines the mythology surrounding the Alamo and the Texas Revolt, restoring Tejano, Black, and Indigenous perspectives long marginalized from state-sanctioned narratives, and grounding the performance in culturally specific aesthetics rooted in Tejano, Mexican American, and carpa traditions.

Established in 1933, the Franklin Research Grant program supports noncommercial research in all areas of knowledge. Awards are designed to help meet various related costs, such as for travel to libraries and archives, the purchase of microfilm, photocopies, or equivalent research materials, fieldwork, and laboratory research expenses.

Bard’s Theater and Performance Program offers an interdisciplinary, liberal arts-based approach to the making and study of theater and performance, and embraces a wide range of performance practices, from live art and interactive installation to classical theater from around the globe.

Post Date: 05-28-2026
Bard Scholar Tania El Khoury Honored With Two Residencies

Bard Scholar Tania El Khoury Honored With Two Residencies

Tania El Khoury.

Tania El Khoury, distinguished artist in residence, associate professor in theater and performance, and director of the Center for Human Rights and the Arts at Bard College, has been honored by two residencies, one with the École Universitaire de Recherche ArTeC, a research school that supports experimental practices, and one with Théâtre Chaillot, a program within the French National Theater of Dance. In April, El Khoury was appointed as one of three leading international scholars invited annually by ArTeC whose work involves a transdisciplinary approach. During this residency in Paris, she delivered a public lecture in French, led a public workshop, provided feedback to MA students, and participated in a creative research event with Performing Knowledge, where she is an associate artist.

El Khoury’s residency through Fabrique Chaillot, a selective program at Théâtre Chaillot within the French National Theater of Dance, provided her with three weeks to develop her new work, Choreography of State. The project deconstructs the embodied gestures of law enforcement and border patrol to reveal the dramaturgy of state violence. This multimedia installation performance approaches choreography as a forensic practice, inviting women choreographers from diverse practices around the world to create dance notations as evidence of power structures: scores of resistance to be activated by performers and embodied by the audience in a celebration of self-defense. Choreography of State is coproduced by the Théâtre Chaillot in Paris and the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College, as part of Evidence, an international festival by the Fisher Center LAB. The work will premiere at Théâtre Chaillot in Paris from October 8–10, 2026, with its US premiere at Evidence, Fisher Center LAB, at Bard College from December 4–6, 2026.

Post Date: 05-28-2026

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Results 131-140 of 375
Donna Ford Grover, Associate Research Professor of Literature and American Studies
Office: Fairbairn, 104
Phone: 845-758-7648
Biography: expand/collapse
B.A., Bard College; Ph.D., The Graduate Center, City University of New York. Reviewer, assistant examiner, Educational Testing Service, Princeton, New Jersey. Advertising and market research, Mapes & Ross, Inc., Princeton, New Jersey. At Bard since 1999.

Alma Guillermoprieto, Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Division of Languages and Literature
Biography: expand/collapse
Alma Guillermoprieto is a prize-winning journalist and author, and a former professional dancer with the National Ballet Company of Mexico. A native of Mexico who now lives in Colombia, she has written frequently about Latin America for the New Yorker, New York Review of Books, and National Geographic. Guillermoprieto began her reporting career in 1978, covering the conflict in Central America for the Guardian and, subsequently, the Washington Post. She was one of two journalists (the other, Raymond Bonner of the New York Times) who broke the story of the 1981 El Mozote massacre in San Salvador. As a dancer, she studied with Merce Cunningham in New York City and taught at the National School of the Arts in Havana. Her many honors include a MacArthur fellowship, George Polk Award for Foreign Reporting, two Overseas Press Club Awards, and a lifetime achievement award from the International Women’s Media Association. Her first book, Samba (Knopf, 1990), was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is also the author of two collections of essays originally written for the New Yorker and New York Review of Books: The Heart That Bleeds (Knopf/Vintage, 1994) and Looking for History (Vintage, 2001). A memoir, Dancing with Cuba: A Memoir of the Revolution (Pantheon), was named a New York Times Notable Book for 2004. In its review, Foreign Affairs described Guillermoprieto as “one of the most perceptive commentators on Latin America, a writer whose political analysis is sensitive to culture and history and punctuated by telling details that illuminate larger dilemmas,” and the memoir as “once begun, almost impossible to put down.” In Spanish, she has published several anthologies of her work and others; she also edited La Vida Toda, an anthology of 21st-century US journalism. Guillermoprieto served as the first visiting professor at Harvard’s Institute for the Humanities, teaching a course on Mexican cinema and history. She has also taught at the University of Chicago, University of California at Berkeley’s Center for Latin American Studies, University of Chicago, and Princeton University; in recent years, she’s taught online and physical journalism workshops throughout Latin America, the United States, and Spain. Guillermoprieto was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001. At Bard: Fall 2023.

Marka Gustavsson, Visiting Assistant Professor of Music; Associate Director, Bard College Conservatory of Music
Office: László Z. Bitó '60 Conservatory Building, 205
Phone: 203-623-3180
Biography: expand/collapse
B.M., Indiana University; M.M., Mannes College of Music; D.M.A., City University of New York. Violinist and violist, member of Colorado String Quartet. Active in commissioning and performing contemporary music, as chamber musician and soloist. Adjudicator, Banff International String Quartet Competition. Regular engagements at major halls in the United States and abroad. Recordings include Colorado String Quartet: Beethoven String Quartets, complete (Parnassus Records). At Bard since 2001.

Garry L. Hagberg, James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Aesthetics and Philosophy
Office: Aspinwall, 110
Phone: 845-758-7270
Biography: expand/collapse
B.A., M.A., Ph.D., University of Oregon. Postdoctoral research, Cambridge University. Author, Art as Language: Wittgenstein, Meaning, and Aesthetic Theory and Meaning and Interpretation: Wittgenstein, Henry James, and Literary Knowledge; contributions to Historical Reflections, Henry James Review, Philosophy, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Journal of Aesthetic Education, Mind, New Novel Review, Philosophical Quarterly, Ethics, Perspectives of New Music, Encyclopedia of the Essay, and Encyclopedia of Aesthetics. National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships and grants: Dartmouth College; Cambridge University Library; British Library, London; St. John's College, Cambridge University. At Bard since 1990.

Emily Hager, Assistant Professor of Biology

Hal Haggard, Associate Professor of Physics
Phone: 845-758-7302
Biography: expand/collapse
B.A., Reed College; M.A., Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley; international certificate of doctoral studies in physics, Universitá degli studi di Pavia; postdoctoral fellowship, Centre de Physique Théorique, Aix-Marseille Université. Theoretical physicist whose research interests include quantum gravity, physics education, semiclassical analysis, symmetry and integrable systems, and general-covariant statistical mechanics and thermodynamics. Work published in Physical Review Letters, Annales Henri Poincaré, and MNRAS (Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society), on subjects such as light curves of stars and exoplanets; chaos and quantum gravity, and black to white hole tunneling, among others. He has been an invited speaker at seminars and events in China, Canada, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, and at several meetings of the American Physical Society. Awards include a National Science Foundation research fellowship and a UC Berkeley Dissertation-Year Fellowship. Cofounder of the Compass Project at Berkeley, a program that supports diversity in the physical sciences and brings together undergraduate and graduate students through exceptional teaching and learning experiences. At Bard since 2014.

Benjamin Hale, Writer in Residence
Phone: 845-758-4520
Biography: expand/collapse
B.A., Sarah Lawrence College; M.F.A., University of Iowa. Awards and honors include the Bard Fiction Prize for his first novel, The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore (Twelve, 2011); Michener-Copernicus Award; nominations for the Dylan Thomas Prize and the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award. His story collection, The Fat Artist, was published by Simon & Schuster in 2016. His fiction, essays, and reviews have appeared in Harper’s, the New York Times Book Review, Washington Post, Paris Review, Conjunctions, and Dissent; and he has been anthologized in Best American Science and Nature Writing 2013. Has taught writing and led fiction workshops at Sarah Lawrence’s Graduate Writing Program, Rutgers University Summer Writers’ Conference, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Iowa's Iowa Writers' Workshop. In addition to creative writing, his teaching interests include English literature, ancient Greek literature, biology, and philosophy of mind. At Bard since 2013.

Jeremiah Hall, Research, Education, and Digital Scholarship Librarian
Department(s): Library
Office: Stevenson Library, 103
Phone: 845-758-7675
Biography: expand/collapse
B.A., Bard College; M.A., The New School; M.S., SUNY Buffalo. Hall’s teaching interests include multiple literacies and the future of information. He has developed instructional classes at Bard on using library resources and conducting advanced research, in addition to providing in-person and virtual reference services for students, faculty, and staff. He also helps coordinate media technology for the library; administers Digital Commons, an online repository of student theses and other scholarly material; and coordinates electronic access to resources and services. Presentations include a talk at New York State’s Historical Association Annual Conference on intellectual property and copyright issues related to exhibits created by Bard students using the Omeka open source platform. He has taught courses on computer systems and applications, web page and new media design, and web and cyber art. At Bard since 1999.

Mark Halsey, Vice President for Institutional Planning and Research; Associate Professor of Mathematics
Department(s): Dean of the College, Master of Arts in Teaching
Office: Ludlow, 306
Phone: 845-752-2336
Website: https://www.bard.edu/doc
Biography: expand/collapse
B.A., Hobart College; A.M., Ph.D., Dartmouth College. Assistant professor, Worcester Polytechnic Institute (1984–89). Member, American Mathematical Society and Mathematical Association of America; full fellow, Institute for Combinatorics and Its Applications. Articles in Discrete Mathematics, Discrete Applied Mathematics, and Journal of Combinatorial Theory. National Science Foundation grants for pure and applied discrete mathematics research experience for undergraduates (1988–89) and advanced computing environment for the sciences (1991–93). Faculty, The Master of Arts in Teaching Program at Bard College. (1989– ) Associate Professor of Mathematics.

Ed Halter, Critic in Residence, Film and Electronic Arts
Office: Ottaway Film Center, 332
Phone: 845-758-7385
Website: https://edhalter.com
Biography: expand/collapse
Critic and curator Ed Halter is a founder and director of Light Industry, a venue for film and electronic art in Brooklyn, New York. His writing has appeared in Artforum, The Believer, Bookforum, Cinema Scope, frieze, Little Joe, Mousse, Rhizome, Triple Canopy, Village Voice, and elsewhere. His book From Sun Tzu to Xbox: War and Video Games was published in 2006; his current project is a critical history of contemporary experimental cinema in America. Honors include a Creative Capital | Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant (2009).

From 1995 to 2005, Halter programmed and oversaw the New York Underground Film Festival, and he has curated screenings and exhibitions at Artists Space, BAM, the Flaherty Film Seminar, ICA London, Museum of Modern Art, New Museum, PARTICIPANT INC., and Tate Modern, as well as the cinema for Greater New York 2010 at MoMA PS1 and the film and video program for the 2012 Whitney Biennial.

BA, Yale University; MA, New York University. At Bard since 2007.

Results 131-140 of 375