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 181-190 of 375
Benjamin La Farge, Professor Emeritus of English
Biography: expand/collapse
B.A., Harvard College; graduate study, Balliol College, Oxford University. Editorial experience at magazines and book publishers in Boston and New York (1957–67), including senior editor, Signet Classics. Poems in New Republic and other journals. Essays on comedy (2004), comic romance (2009), and comic anxiety and Kafka's black comedy (2011) in Philosophy and Literature. Articles on Irish fiction writer William Trevor and Irish poet Richard Murphy in British Writers, Supplement IV (1997) and Supplement V (1999); and American author John Jay Chapman as poet (1993) and moralist (1998) in Hudson Valley Regional Review. At Bard: 1968–2014.

Christopher LaFratta, Professor of Chemistry
Office: Reem-Kayden Center, 132
Phone: 845-752-2353
Biography: expand/collapse
BS, University of Massachusetts; PhD, University of Maryland. Research interests include physical chemistry and analytical chemistry; currently working to develop microfabrication technologies for lab-on-a-chip devices. Adjunct professor of chemistry, University of Massachusetts (2008). Author of over two dozen peer-reviewed publications and holder of five U.S. patents. At Bard since 2010.

Kristin Lane, Associate Professor of Psychology
Office: Preston, 106
Phone: 845-758-7224
Website: https://psychology.bard.edu/people/faculty
Biography: expand/collapse
BA, University of Virginia; MS, Yale University; PhD, Harvard University. Has taught at Harvard, Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth, and Tufts University. Recipient, Cabot Postdoctoral Fellowship for Innovation in Teaching, Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, Harvard (2006– ). Articles in Social Cognition, Natura Automatyzmow, other journals and publications. At Bard since 2007.

Ann Lauterbach, David and Ruth Schwab Professor of Languages and Literature; Faculty, Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts
Office: Shafer House, 201
Phone: 845-758-7241
Biography: expand/collapse
Ann Lauterbach is a poet and essayist. Her eleventh poetry collection, Door, was published in March 2023; previous volumes include Spell (2018), Under the Sign (2013), and Or to Begin Again (2009), which was nominated for a National Book Award. Her prose was collected in The Night Sky: Writings on the Poetics of Experience (2008) and The Given & The Chosen (2011). Recent essays include “Mina Loy: Art of the Unbeautiful True” in Mina Loy : Strangeness is Inevitable (2023) and Topos Non Topos: Notes on David Novros for the Paula Cooper Gallery (2023). Her poems have been translated into German, French and Spanish. Among her awards are a Guggenheim Fellowship and a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship. She was cochair of writing in Bard’s MFA Program from 1992 to 2020 and is Ruth and David Schwab Professor of Languages and Literature.

Theresa Law, Assistant Professor of Computer Science
Office: Reem-Kayden Center, 203
Website: https://theresa-law.com
Biography: expand/collapse
Theresa Law’s research interests focus on human-robot interaction, human-robot trust, and social robotics. Her work explores how we can investigate concerns such as mind, agency, intelligence, and consciousness through building and interacting with artificial agents, with the ultimate goal of designing robots that are maximally beneficial to people. She has served as a graduate research assistant in the Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) Lab at Tufts University, where she did her graduate studies; as research intern at the Future of Life Institute; and undergraduate research fellow at Vassar College, where she earned her BA in cognitive science. Publications include articles in International Journal of Social Robotics and Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction; and a chapter in Trust in Human-Robot Interaction (Elsevier, 2020).

BA, Vassar College; MS, PhD, Tufts University. At Bard since 2023.

Carolyn Lazard, Distinguished Visiting Professor of Studio Arts

An-My Le, Charles Franklin Kellogg and Grace E. Ramsey Kellogg Professor in the Arts
Office: Woods Studio, 105
Phone: 845-758-7330
Biography: expand/collapse
B.S. (biology), Stanford University; M.F.A., Yale University School of Art. Solo shows at Dia:Beacon (2006–07); Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago (2006); RISD Museum of Art, Providence, Rhode Island (2006); P.S. 1/MoMA Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City (2002–03). Group shows at Museum of Modern Art (2006); Whitney Museum of American Art (2005). Recipient, MacArthur Fellowship (2012), New York State Foundation for the Arts grant (1996), Guggenheim Fellowship (1997). At Bard since 1998.

Soonyoung Lee, Visiting Assistant Professor of Korean Literature, Language, and Culture
Biography: expand/collapse
Professor Lee’s areas of research and teaching interests include contemporary Korean literature and film, Korean popular culture, East Asian film, Cold War studies, trans-Asian cultural studies, critical race theories, and postcolonial studies. She previously taught at the University of California, Riverside, where her doctoral dissertation analyzed “Cultural Representations of Youth in 1960s–1970s South Korea,” and at Seoul National University. Course subjects included Korean film and Korean language instruction. Her book review of Hansang Kim’s Cine-mobility: Twentieth-Century Transformations in Korea’s Film and Transportation is forthcoming in the Journal of Korean Studies. She has presented at conferences or annual meetings of the Korean Literature Association, American Comparative Literature Association, Association for Asian Studies, and Association of Korean Studies in Europe, among others.

BA, Korea University; MA, sociology, MA, comparative literature, Seoul National University; PhD, University of California, Riverside. At Bard since 2023.

Nancy Leonard, Professor Emeritus of English
Biography: expand/collapse
A.B. Smith College, Ph.D. Indiana University; Asst. Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania, Professor of English, Bard College, l977-2014. Author of articles on early modern poetry and drama in various journals and edited books; author of poetry in small-press publication;member of Language and Thinking faculty 1982-2012, Institute of Writing and Thinking faculty; founding faculty of Bard's MAT program in English.

Gideon Lester, Artistic Director, Fisher Center; Professor of Theater and Performance; Senior Curator, Center for Human Rights and the Arts
Department(s): Arts, Fisher Center for the Performing Arts
Office: Fisher Center for the Performing Arts
Phone: 845-758-7949
Biography: expand/collapse
Gideon Lester is Artistic Director and Chief Executive of the Fisher Center at Bard, and Senior Curator at the Open Society University Network’s Center for the Arts and Human Rights. A Tony and Olivier award-winning creative producer, festival director, and dramaturg, he has collaborated with and commissioned a broad range of American and international artists across disciplines, including Romeo Castellucci, Justin Vivian Bond, Tania El Khoury, Brice Marden, Sarah Michelson, Claudia Rankine, Kaija Saariaho, Peter Sellars, and Anna Deavere Smith.

Recent projects include the world premiere of Justin Peck and Sufjan Steven’s Illinoise; Common Ground, an international festival on the politics of land and food; Daniel Fish’s Oklahoma! (Tony award; Olivier Award); Pam Tanowitz’s Four Quartets and Song of Songs; Ronald K. Brown and Meshell Ndegeocello’s Grace and Mercy; and Peter Sellars’ film This body is so impermanent…

Productions he has developed and commissioned have toured to theaters and art centers around the world, including BAM (Brooklyn); Circle in the Square (Broadway); CAP-UCLA (Los Angeles); the Kennedy Center; St Ann’s Warehouse (Brooklyn); New York City Center; Barbican (London); Walker Art Center (Minneapolis); Spielart (Munich); Onassis Cultural Center (Athens); Edinburgh International Festival, and many others. He was previously co-curator of Crossing the Line Festival, and Acting Artistic Director and Dramaturg at the American Repertory Theatre.

A professor at Bard College, he was director of Bard’s undergraduate Theater and Performance Program from 2012-2020, and has previously held faculty positions at Harvard and Columbia, where he founded and directed an interdisciplinary arts collaboration lab at the Graduate School of the Arts.

As a writer for the stage, his translations include Moliere’s Dom Juan; The Island of Slaves and The Dispute by Marivaux, Büchner’s Woyzeck, and Brecht’s Mother Courage, and his adaptations include Kafka’s Amerika, Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire, and Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita.

Lester received his BA and MA from Oxford University, and completed graduate training at Harvard, where he was a Fulbright and Frank Knox Scholar.

Results 181-190 of 375