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 351-360 of 375
Roland Vazquez, Artist in Residence, Music
Website: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_Vazquez
Biography: expand/collapse
Roland Vazquez is a composer, drummer, producer, and educator who has been performing and recording his original Latin rhythmic chamber jazz for quintet, nonet, big band, and chamber ensembles for more than 40 years. He first worked as a drummer with R&B and rock groups in and around Los Angeles. He began writing for his jazz-fusion bands during the mid-70s, receiving an NEA Jazz Performance Grant in 1977, which led to the production of Urban Ensemble—the Music of Roland Vazquez, which Billboard called “a decade ahead of its time.” During those years, he did multiple studio projects and performed regularly with his band and with other bands in and around California, including the Shirley Walker Trio, Don Randi & Quest, Willie Bobo, and Clare Fischer’s legendary Salsa Picante.

After moving to New York City, his recordings Feel Your Dream (’82), The Tides of Time (’88), No Separate Love (’91), and Further Dance (’97) featured music for quintet, tentet, and big band. During the ’80s and ’90s, Vazquez performed regularly at jazz festivals, colleges, and New York City venues such as Mikell’s, Seventh Avenue South, the Bottom Line, and Village Gate. He also taught jazz ensemble at the Manhattan School of Music, where he received his master of music degree. In 2000, he joined the jazz faculty at the University of Michigan, where he established and directed multiple ensembles. In 2003, he received a Michigan Arts Council Grant in support of his Afro Latin chamber suite Music for Percussion Quartet & 3 Jazz Players. Among other honors, he was a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome (2005–06), where he composed and performed with various Italian and touring U.S. jazz artists; received a grant from the Aaron Copland Fund for Music supporting his big-band recording The Visitor (2010), for which Jazz Times called him a “visionary composer of contemporary big-band jazz”; and, in 2014, the Grammy Award-winning Afro Bop Alliance received funding from New Music USA to record three of Vazquez’s large works, which were then released on their CD Revelation.

Vazquez currently teaches at Bard and also performs regularly with his ensembles at clubs, colleges, and jazz festivals.

Tatjana Myoko von Prittwitz und Gaffron, Artist and Scholar in Residence; Buddhist Chaplain; Special Projects Adviser
Department(s): Chaplaincy, President's Office
Office: Fairbairn, 201
Phone: 845-752-4619
Biography: expand/collapse
B.A., University of Saarland, Saarbrücken, Germany; M.A., Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College; Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, University of Saarland. Curated exhibitions of contemporary art and published essays with research focusing on the concept of social sculpture by Joseph Beuys. Monograph on the main art critic of Beuys: "Kreativität als allgemeines Menschenrecht!" Georg Jappe. Curatorial Researcher, Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (1999-2008): Establishment, development, and organization of a collection of archives on the history of exhibition since 1960. Visiting Assistant Professor in First-Year Seminar with a focus on essay writing (2009-2022). Artist and Scholar in Residence in studio arts (2023 to present). Teaches classes combining the arts with spirituality. Buddhist Chaplain since 2013 and Soto Zen priest (see Bard chaplaincy website for further details). At Bard since 1999.

Olga Voronina, Professor of Russian
Office: Fairbairn, 303
Phone: 845-758-7391
Biography: expand/collapse
BA, MA, Herzen University, St. Petersburg, Russia; PhD, Harvard University. Research topics include the art and biography of Vladimir Nabokov; poetics of translation; Soviet and Post-Soviet literary institutions; ideological paradigms of Russia’s political, media, and literary discourses; relationship between rhetoric of power and the language of literature in totalitarian societies; Soviet and post-Soviet children’s literature. Translator, editor, with Brian Boyd, Letters to Vera (Penguin, 2014; Knopf, 2015). Trustee, Vladimir Nabokov Literary Foundation. At Bard since 2010.

Suzanne Vromen, Professor Emeritus of Sociology
Biography: expand/collapse
Licence ès Sciences Sociales and Première Licence ès Sciences Economiques, University of Brussels, Belgium; M.Sc., urban planning, Columbia University; M.A., Ph.D., sociology, New York University. National Endowment for the Humanities summer seminars (1976, 1984), summer stipend (1988). Fulbright Senior Specialist Grants (2004, 2006). Author: Hidden Children of the Holocaust: Belgian Nuns and Their Daring Rescue of Young Jews from the Nazis (Oxford University Press, 2008). Essays in Diverse Histories of American Sociology (Brill, 2005); Jewry Between Tradition and Secularism (Brill, 2006); Sociology Confronts the Holocaust (Duke University Press, 2007). Articles on Hannah Arendt, Georg Simmel, Rose Coser, Maurice Halbwachs, social theory, collective memory, and nostalgia in European Journal of Political Theory, History of European Ideas, Jewish Women in America, Comparative Social Research, Journal of Arts Management, others. Cofounder (1979) and coordinator (1982–90) of Women’s Studies Program, Bard College. (1978–2000) Professor Emeritus of Sociology.

Luwei Wang, Visiting Lecturer of Chinese Literature, Language, and Culture
Biography: expand/collapse
Luwei Wang is a scholar of modern and contemporary Chinese literature and culture, visual studies, and media studies. She specializes in contemporary Chinese visual culture, with particular attention to the intersections of digital media, documentary and art practices, and theorizations of visuality. She is currently working on her book project titled Compound Eyes: Critical Modes of Seeing in Twenty-first Century Chinese Independent Documentary and Art, which explores how practitioners of independent documentary and experimental art in China use digital media to critically reimagine modes of seeing by appropriating machinic vision to confront fractured realities, challenge dominant epistemologies, and open new possibilities for ethical engagement. Her articles are forthcoming in Camera Obscura and the edited volume of Speculative Fiction from the Sinophone.

BA, Dalian University of Foreign Languages; MA, Washington University in St. Louis; MA, PhD, University of Wisconsin Madison.

Sophia Ying Wang, Faculty in Chinese Language & Literature
Department(s): Simon's Rock at Bard College
Office: Massena East Wing, 383

Rupali Warke, Visiting Assistant Professor for the Bard Prison Initiative, BPI
Department(s): Bard Prison Initiative
Biography: expand/collapse
Professor Warke’s research and teaching interests in South Asian history include colonialism, gender, political economy, contemporary politics, modern vernacular and print culture, cinema, and popular culture. Her doctoral dissertation at the University of Texas at Austin addressed “Secluded Capital: Baizabai Shinde and the Transnational Opium Trade in Nineteenth-Century South Asia.” Academic presentations and guest talks at various conferences and symposia covered subjects such as “Pilgrimage as a Mode of Political Diplomacy”; “Indian-American Immigrants Post 1965: Moteliers and IT Professionals”: and the significance of Tarabai Shinde in Gender History. Works in progress include “Royal Power and a Piece of Bread: Sufi Discipleship and Dargah Worship in the Maratha Empire,” an article for South Asian Studies; and “Baizabai (1784–1863): Queen-Regent and the Transnational Opium Trade.” Teaching assistantships at the University of Texas included the courses An Introduction to Asian American History; The United States 1492–1865; and The United States since 1865.

BA, Ramnarain Ruia College, Mumbai; MA, MPhil, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi; PhD, University of Texas at Austin. At Bard: 2021–23.

Robert Warner, Visiting Artist in Residence

Hilton M. Weiss, Professor Emeritus of Chemistry; David and Rosalie Rose Research Professor
Office: Hegeman Science Hall
Phone: 845-876-5135
Website: https://chemistry.bard.edu
Biography: expand/collapse
ScB, Brown University; MS, University of Vermont; PhD, Rutgers University. At Bard: 1961–2008.

Julia Weist, Visiting Artist in Residence, Studio Arts
Biography: expand/collapse
Julia Weist is a visual artist whose work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, Art Institute of Chicago, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Jewish Museum, MIT List Visual Arts Center, and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (acquisition in progress) among others. Her work explores how the process of record-keeping reveals social truths around shared systems of knowledge and power. Recent exhibitions include Governing Body, Rachel Uffner Gallery, which focused on the relationship between artists and government; ARCA, in collaboration with Cuban artist Nestor Siré, at galleries in Havana and New York; and Parbunkells, 83 Pitt Street, New York. Public artworks include Campaign (Times Square) and Public Record, both in New York City; and View-Through, Miami. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at venues throughout the United States and internationally, including New York, Los Angeles, Berlin, Madrid, Taiwan, St. Louis, Antwerp, and Chicago. Commissions, grants, and residencies from Camargo Foundation, Cassis, France; Foundation for Contemporary Arts; Ox-Bow; City of New York Department of Records and Information Services; New York State Council on the Arts/Wave Farm; Jerome Foundation Fellowship at the Queens Museum; and many others. Weist’s writing has appeared in publications such as Triple Canopy, Frieze, Rhizome, Art in America, BOMB, and the artist book Sexy Librarian: A Novel, Critical Edition. She and her work have been the subject of articles in, among others, Artnet (“Artist Julia Weist Is Protesting the R Rating of Her New Film by Advertising the Project on a Times Square Billboard”); Document Journal (“Julia Weist’s Governing Body Questions What We Deem Indecent in the Scope of Mainstream Cinema”); Hyperallergic (“Julia Weist’s Public Record Probes the Impact of Artists on Cities”); Art in America (“Julia Weist Transforms New York City’s Archival Records into Artworks That Live in Digital Public Space”); and the New York Times (“Artists as ‘Creative Problem-Solvers’ at City Agencies”). She previously taught at Pratt Institute, and has served as MFA studio adviser at the Maine College of Art & Design. Weist also served as board member of Shandaken Projects from 2012 to 2021.

BFA, Cooper Union School of Art; MLIS, Pratt Institute. At Bard: Spring 2023.

Results 351-360 of 375