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 161-170 of 375
Felicia Keesing, David and Rosalie Rose Distinguished Professor of Science, Mathematics, and Computing
Office: Reem-Kayden Center, 211
Phone: 845-752-2331
Website: https://www.feliciakeesing.com/
Biography: expand/collapse
B.S., Stanford University; Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley. Grants: National Geographic Society, National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Environmental Protection Agency, among others. Awards include the United States Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (2000). Coeditor, Infectious Disease Ecology: Effects of Ecosystems on Disease and of Disease on Ecosystems (Princeton University Press, 2008). Articles include contributions to Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Ecology Letters, Emerging Infectious Diseases, Proceedings of the Royal Society, Ecology, BioScience, Conservation Biology, Trends in Ecology & Evolution, Vector-Borne and Zoonotic Diseases, and Canadian Journal of Zoology. At Bard since 2000.

James Keller, Director, The Learning Commons; Visiting Associate Professor of Academic Writing; Senior Faculty Associate, Institute for Writing and Thinking
Department(s): Learning Commons
Office: Hoffman, 97 South Hoffman
Phone: 845-758-7051
Website: https://www.bard.edu/learningcommons/
Biography: expand/collapse
B.A., University of California, Berkeley; M.A., University of Montana; Ph.D., Stony Brook University, SUNY. Has taught and led workshops at Sullivan County Community College; Michigan State University; Stony Brook University; Bard’s Institute for Writing and Thinking (2005– ); and the Language and Thinking Program at Bard College (2001– ). Publications include Writing Plural Worlds in Contemporary U.S. Poetry: Innovative Identities (2009) and the following refereed articles and chapters: “Language as Visible Vapor: Skywriting through Lyn Hejinian’s Happily” in Poetry and Pedagogy: The Challenge of the Contemporary; and “Delmore Schwartz’s Strange Times,” in Reading the “Middle Generation” Anew: Culture, Community, and Form in Twentieth-Century American Poetry.

Robert Kelly, Asher B. Edelman Professor Emeritus of Literature
Office: Shafer House
Phone: 845-758-7205
Website: https://www.rk-ology.com
Biography: expand/collapse
B.A., City College of New York; graduate work, Columbia University. Litt.D. (honorary), SUNY Oneonta. Awards: National Endowment for the Arts, CAPS, Los Angeles Times Prize for Poetry (1980), award from American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Founding editor, Chelsea Review, Trobar, Matter. Contributing editor, Caterpillar, Sulfur, Alcheringa: Ethnopoetics, and Conjunctions. Major poetry books include The Common Shore, The Loom, Kill the Messenger, Not This Island Music, The Flowers of Unceasing Coincidence, A Strange Market, Red Actions, The Time of Voice, The Garden of Distances, Lapis, Runes, Threads, May Day. Fiction: A Transparent Tree, Doctor of Silence, Cat Scratch Fever, The Queen of Terrors, The Book from the Sky. Founding Director, Writing Program, Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts (1980–93). At Bard since 1961.

Pınar Kemerli, Assistant Professor of Political Theory
Office: Aspinwall, 302B
Biography: expand/collapse
Pınar Kemerli is Assistant Professor of Political Theory at Bard College. She completed her PhD in the Department of Government at Cornell University, and holds a BA from Boğaziçi University in Turkey and MA degrees from Goldsmiths College of the University of London and Cornell

University. She is the author of Resisting War: The Politics of Conscientious Objection (forthcoming from Duke University Press). Her articles and reviews addressing theories and practices of resistance and Middle Eastern politics have appeared in a range of journals including Political Theory, New Political Science, Radical Philosophy, Theory & Event, Millenium, and International Journal of Middle East Studies.

Franz R. Kempf, Professor Emeritus of German
Office: Aspinwall, 301
Phone: 845-758-7213
Biography: expand/collapse
Professor Franz Kempf is the author of Otherness as Lyric Writing: The German-Language Poet José F. A. Oliver (2024), Poetry, Painting, Park: Goethe and Claude Lorrain (2020), Everyone’s Darling: Kafka and the Critics of His Short Fiction (1994), Albrecht von Hallers Ruhm als Dichter: Eine Rezeptionsgeschichte (1986), and Deutsche Gegenwart (1985, with Robert E. Helbling). He holds an MA in German and MA in Russian from the University of Utah and a PhD from Harvard University. His work includes articles and papers on José F. A. Oliver, Goethe, Fontane, Kafka, Brecht, Dürrenmatt, von Haller, Wieland, and language pedagogy. Member of editorial advisory board, Die Unterrichtspraxis and Colloquia Germanica. President, Hudson Valley Chapter, American Association of Teachers of German (1990–92). At Bard since 1985.

Erica Kiesewetter, Director of Orchestral Studies, Professor of Orchestral Practice
Department(s): Bard Conservatory of Music
Office: László Z. Bitó '60 Conservatory Building, 202
Phone: 201-601-7196
Website: https://www.ericakiesewetter.com/
Biography: expand/collapse
Former Concertmaster, American Symphony Orchestra, Northeastern Pennsylvania Philharmonic, Opera Orchestra of New York, New York Pops, Stamford Symphony, Long Island Philharmonic, and Amici New York. Former first violinist, Colorado Quartet, former member, Leonardo Trio; toured internationally and recorded with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra Studies at the The Juilliard School, where she studied with Ivan Galamian; also studied with Charles Castleman, Joyce Robbins, Emanuel Vardi, and Robert Mann... Faculty, Bard College Conservatory of Music. Continuing Associate Professor of Music and Director of Orchestral Studies since 2010.

Cara Kiewel, Program Manager for Bard MBA at NYPA
Department(s): MBA in Sustainability

Elena Kim, Visiting Associate Professor of Psychology (OSUN Faculty Exchange)
Office: Preston, Office 118
Phone: 845-758-7355
Biography: expand/collapse
Elena Kim is an educator and activist for knowledge, empowerment, and social justice. She comes to Bard from American University of Central Asia (AUCA), where she has served as chair of the Department of Psychology; cochair and cofounder of the Center for Critical Gender Studies; and head of the Division of Social Sciences. Her areas of research interest include gender studies, development and institutional ethnography, and violence. Recent journal articles include, among many others, “Bargaining with Virginity-Regulating Practices in Post-Socialist Kyrgyzstan,” Central Asian Affairs (2021); “Bound to Be Grooms: The Imbrication of Economy, Ecology, and Bride Kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan,” Gender, Place, and Society (2020); Re-Feminizing the Post-Soviet Women: Identity, Politics, and Virginity Ceremonies in Contemporary Kyrgyzstan,” Journal of Gender Studies (2020); and “Empowered by Electricity? The Political Economy of Gender and Energy in Rural Naryn,” Gender, Technology and Development (2019). She has authored and coauthored book chapters, monographs, and research reports on such issues as child marriage in Kyrgyzstan, violence against women and girls, crisis intervention, the implications of irrigation sustainability for women farmers in Uzbekistan, and psychiatry in the Kyrgyz Republic.

BA, American University of Central Asia; MA, Central European University; PhD, University of Bonn. (2021– ) At Bard: 2021–22.

Suzanne Kite, Distinguished Artist in Residence, Studio Arts; Assistant Professor of American and Indigenous Studies
Biography: expand/collapse
Suzanne Kite is an award-winning Oglála Lakȟóta artist, composer, and academic. Her scholarship and practice explore contemporary Lakȟóta ontology (the study of beinghood in Lakȟóta), artificial intelligence, and contemporary art and performance. She creates interfaces and arranges software systems that engage the whole body, in order to imagine new ethical AI protocols that interrogate past, present, and future Lakȟóta philosophies. Her interdisciplinary practice spans sound, video, performances, instrument building, wearable artwork, poetry, books, interactive installations, and more. Her work has been included in publications such as Atlas of Anomalous AI, Journal of Design and Science (MIT Press), and The Funambulist. Her award-winning article “Making Kin with Machines” and the sculpture Ínyan Iyé (Telling Rock) were featured on the cover of Canadian Art. Kite has been working with machine learning techniques since 2017 and developing body interfaces for performance since 2013. Her artwork and performance have been featured at numerous venues, including the Hammer Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, PS122, Anthology Film Archives, Chronus Art Center, and Toronto Biennial of Art. Honors include the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Scholarship; Tulsa Artist Fellowship; Sundance New Frontiers Story Lab Fellowship, which allowed her to collaborate with top experimental artists and develop a film with AI techniques, Fever Dream (2021); Women at Sundance |Adobe Fellowship; and Common Field Fellowship, among others. In fall 2022, she gave a talk at Bard as part of the Disturbance, Re-Animation, and Emergent Archives conference, hosted by the Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck, a three-year project that proposes a Native American and Indigenous Studies approach to revitalize the undergraduate American Studies Program.

BFA, California Institute of the Arts; MFA, Milton Avery Graduate School, Bard College; PhD candidate, Concordia University. At Bard since 2023.

Alex Kitnick, Associate Professor of Art History and Visual Culture; faculty, Center for Curatorial Studies
Office: Fisher Annex, 114
Phone: 845-758-6822
Biography: expand/collapse
Alex Kitnick completed his BA at Wesleyan University, attended the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program in New York, and received his PhD from the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University in 2010. Before coming to Bard, he taught at Otis College of Art and Design, School of Visual Arts, Vassar College, and UCLA.

His research interests focus on imbrications between art, architecture, design, and media in the postwar period, particularly in the US and England. He has edited a number of books including The Expendable Reader: Articles on Art, Architecture, Design, and Media 1951–1979, which assembles key writings by the artist and critic John McHale, and an October File on the artist Dan Graham. His scholarly articles have appeared in journals including Art Journal and October, and he is currently preparing a book based on his dissertation for publication. In addition to his work as a scholar, Kitnick is also an active critic of contemporary art, and has published essays and reviews in venues such as Artforum, Fillip, May, Parkett, and Texte zur Kunst. At Bard since 2013.

Results 161-170 of 375