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
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
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
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 61-70 of 375
Anne Hunnell Chen, Assistant Professor of Art History and Visual Culture
Office: Fisher Annex, 111
Website: https://duraeuroposarchive.org
Biography: expand/collapse
Dr. Chen specializes in the art and archaeology of the globally-connected Roman world, and is committed to exploring how low-barrier Linked Open Usable Data (LOUD) can be harnessed not only to provide more equitable access to archaeological data in the digital realm, but also to empower stakeholder audiences as collaborative curators. She is the founder and co-director of the NEH-funded International Digital Dura-Europos Archive (IDEA), an archaeological data accessibility project whose documentation efforts are aimed at sharing-out workflows that help to overcome disciplinary data silos and work to dislodge enduring impacts of colonialism.

Thanks to her work on IDEA, her role as the Co-Chair and Annotations Activity co-coordinator for the international Pelagios Network, and time spent as a fellow in the Department of the Ancient Near East at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Dr. Chen has extensive experience working with GLAM professionals and collections. Additionally, she has published on Roman, Persian, and Digital Humanities topics, and taught equally wide-ranging coursework. She also serves as an historical consultant for the Virtual Center for Late Antiquity (VCLA).

Bruce Chilton, Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Philosophy and Religion; Director, Institute of Advanced Theology
Department(s): Chaplaincy, Institute of Advanced Theology
Office: The Observatory
Phone: 845-758-7335
Biography: expand/collapse
B.A., Bard College; M.Div., General Theological Seminary, ordination to the diaconate and the priesthood; Ph.D., Cambridge University. Books include Abraham’s Curse; Rabbi Jesus: An Intimate Biography; God in Strength; Rabbi Paul: An Intellectual Biography; Judaic Approaches to the Gospels; Mary Magdalene: A Biography; Revelation; Trading Places; Jesus’ Prayer and Jesus’ Eucharist; Forging a Common Future; Jesus’ Baptism and Jesus’ Healing; Visions of the Apocalypse; and Christianity: the Basics. Editor in chief, Bulletin for Biblical Research; founding editor, Journal for the Study of the New Testament, Studying the Historical Jesus series (E. J. Brill and Eerdmans). Fellowships and awards: with Jacob Neusner, Choice magazine award, best academic book (1998); Evangelical Scholars Fellowship, Whitney Humanities Center (Yale University); Heinrich Hertz Stiftung; Theological Development Fund of the Episcopal Church; National Conference of Christians and Jews; Doctor of Divinity (General Theological Seminary, 2011). At Bard since 1987.

Odile S. Chilton, Visiting Associate Professor of French
Phone: 845-758-7278
Biography: expand/collapse
Licence ès Lettres, Mâitrise ès Lettres, Université du Maine, Le Mans. Teaching assistant, University of Sheffield. At Bard since 1987.

Robert Cioffi, Assistant Professor of Classics
Office: Aspinwall, 111
Phone: 845-758-7083
Website: https://www.robertcioffi.com
Biography: expand/collapse
Robert Cioffi’s research interests include Greek literature, travel and ethnography in the ancient world, the history of the novel, Greek and Roman religion, Greek and Egyptian cultural interactions, and papyrology. He teaches Greek and Latin at all levels, as well as courses in translation on topics such as Greek mythology, introductory Greek history and culture, and the invention of difference in the ancient world. He is the author of articles, reviews, and encyclopedia entries published in Oxford Handbooks Online, Journal of Hellenic Studies, Ancient Narrative, Mnemosyne, Gnomon, and The Virgil Encyclopedia, among others. In addition to his scholarly publications, he is a contributor to the London Review of Books. Honors and awards include: Loeb Classical Library Fellowship, Center for Hellenic Studies Fellowship, Frank Knox Memorial Fellowship, and Clarendon Fund Fellowship at Oxford. He previously served as lecturer in the Department of Classics at Dartmouth College.

BA, Harvard University; MSt, Greek and Latin Languages and Literatures, University of Oxford; PhD, Harvard University. At Bard: 2013–15, 2016– .

Emanuele Citera, Assistant Professor of Economics
Office: Albee, 204
Phone: 845-758-7243
Biography: expand/collapse
Emanuele Citera is an assistant professor of economics at Bard College. He previously spent two years at St. Lawrence University, where he contributed to developing the finance major and taught courses on corporate finance, financial crises, the history of finance, and introduction to finance.

Citera received a PhD and MPhil in economics from the New School for Social Research, an MA in economics and complexity from Collegio Carlo Alberto, and an MSc and BSc in business economics from the University of Bologna. Later, he served as a teaching fellow at Eugene Lang College for Liberal Arts and a research fellow at the Fondazione Luigi Einaudi Onlus (Turin, Italy).

His primary field of research is financial economics. In particular, he focuses on the stochastic structure of financial markets and investors’ behavior. He investigates this by applying information theory and statistical equilibrium methodology. He also adopts historical and institutional approaches to analyze the evolution of the financial system. Other research areas of interest include monetary economics, complexity economics, and the history of economics.

His work has been published in various academic journals, including Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, the Review of Political Economy, and the Annals of the Fondazione Luigi Einaudi.

At Bard since 2024.

Jace Clayton, Assistant Professor of Studio Arts; Director of Graduate Studies, Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts
Biography: expand/collapse
Jace Clayton is an artist and writer who is also known for his work as DJ /rupture. He is the author of Uproot: Travels in 21st-Century Music and Digital Culture (Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2016) and is at work on his second book, for which he was awarded the Andy Warhol Foundation Art Writers Grant. He writes regularly on contemporary culture for ARTFORUM, and his essays have been published in The New York Times Magazine, Washington Post, n+1, and Bidoun. His work has been exhibited at MassArt Art Museum; Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art (as a commissioned artist); Lightbox Gallery, Harvard Art Museums; Black Mountain College Museum and Arts Center; Queens Museum; Andy Warhol Museum; and internationally in Germany, United Arab Emirates, and Italy. He has performed in more than 40 countries, both solo and as director of performances such as The Julius Eastman Memorial Dinner. Recent performances and compositions include the soundtrack for Riotsville, USA, director Sierra Pettengill (2022); composition, sound design, and performance for Ashwini Ramaswamy’s Let the Crows Come, Baryshnikov Arts Center (2022); composer for Adam Pendleton’s Who Is Queen exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (2021), and collaborative concerns with Amazigh musician Hassan Wargui in Tunisia and Morocco (2019).

Professor Clayton, who previously taught or served as visiting critic at Columbia University, Yale School of Art, Bard’s MFA program, and Harvard University, among others, has also been music director or curator for projects including the 2020 Venice Biennale, Museum of Modern Art PS1’s summer series Warm Up, American Museum of Natural History, and Sonic Acts XI Festival Amsterdam. He also served as host and producer of Mudd Up!, a weekly radio show on the independent FM station WFMU. Selected discography includes the forthcoming Randall’s Island (Room40, CD); The Julius Eastman Memory Depot (New Amsterdam, CD); and as DJ/rupture, the CDs Uproot, Special Gunpowder, Minesweeper Suite, and Gold Teeth Thief. In addition to the Warhol grant, honors include an Art Writers Grant, New York Foundation for the Arts Nonfiction Literature Fellowship, Creative Capital Performing Arts Grant; and University of Southern California Annenberg/Getty Arts Journalism Fellowship, among others.

BA, Harvard University. At Bard since 2023.

Betsy Clifton, Lecturer in Architecture
Biography: expand/collapse
Betsy Clifton is an architectural and graphic designer working in New York. In 2021, she founded the design agency Associates And, where she continues to act as a coprincipal with Richard Williamson. Her areas of specialization include international exhibition design and concept development. She served as curatorial assistant for the Pavilion of Turkey in the 17th International Architecture Exhibition at La Biennale di Venezia in 2021 and has worked as the design lead for exhibitions at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, Citygroup, and Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery at Columbia GSAPP. She was cofounder of the experimental architectural practice A Weak Office with artist Jean-Pascal Flavien and architect Sam Chermayeff, which was active from 2018 to 2020.

MArch, University of California, Berkeley. At Bard since 2022.

Michael Robinson Cohen, Visiting Lecturer in Architecture
Biography: expand/collapse
Michael Robinson Cohen is a founding member of the New York City-based collective Citygroup and the author of the book Housing as Housing, published by Black Square in 2024. The collective was awarded the Architectural League Prize in 2022 and was a winner of the AIA New Practices New York competition in 2020. Michael earned an MPhil in Architecture and Urban Studies from the University of Cambridge, a Masters in Architecture from Yale, and a BA from Brown University. His research at the University of Cambridge was funded by the Bass Scholarship in Architecture granted by the Yale School of Architecture. Before graduate school, he served as the Community Coordinator for the Hollygrove Design Initiative, a neighborhood-based design organization funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. He is currently co-authoring a book on John Hejduk's housing projects with Pier Vittorio Aureli. His writing has been published in Burning Farm, Journal of Architecture, NYRA, AA Files, Pidgin, San Rocco, and Scroope.

Adriane Colburn, Artist in Residence
Office: Fisher Annex, 107
Phone: 845-758-6822
Website: https://adrianecolburn.com
Biography: expand/collapse
BFA, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago; MFA, Stanford University. Previously taught at University of Georgia, Athens. Selected exhibitions at ERES Foundation, Munich; Smack Mellon, Brooklyn; Center for Contemporary Arts, Santa Fe; Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley; Eleanor Harwood Gallery and Luggage Store Gallery, San Francisco; Royal Academy of Arts, London; Artisterium, Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia; and Museum of Craft and Folk Art, San Francisco; among others. Unfold, a cultural response to climate change, toured extensively, including stops in China, London, Edinburgh, New York, and Chicago. Residencies and awards include Best Exhibition Award, Dumbo Arts Festival, Brooklyn; artist in residence at Cannonball, Miami; Mustarinda, Finland; arctic nitrogen scientific research expedition with marine scientists from the University of Georgia in Barrow, Alaska; Cape Farewell Project Andes to Amazon expedition; Blue Mountain Center, New York; Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping, MacDowell Colony, others. At Bard: 2014– .

Cathy Collins, Associate Professor of Biology
Office: Reem-Kayden Center, RKC 209
Website: https://cathydcollins.com
Biography: expand/collapse
B.A., Pitzer College; M.S., University of Arizona; Ph.D., University of Kansas; postdoctoral research, Washington University. She previously taught at Colby College, where she was Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology. She has published in Forest Ecology and Management, AAAS-Science Advances 1, Oecologia, PLoS ONE, Biological Conservation, and Journal of Ecology, among others, on such subjects as fragmentation and its impact on Earth’s ecosystems, habitat specialization patterns of neotropical birds, historic agriculture, and land-use history. Honors include a National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates grant, which allowed her to conduct studies in South Gondar, Ethiopia; and numerous research and travel grants from Colby and the University of Kansas; and a Thomas J. Watson Foundation Fellowship (Australia). She has presented her work at the Ecological Society of America, American Ornithologists’ Union, Harvard University, Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, and at venues in Ethiopia, France, and Australia. At Bard: 2010–11; 2016– .

Results 61-70 of 375