Fall 2026
| ANTH 210 Historical Archaeology at Montgomery Place: Gilson’s Conservatory & Home Professor Christopher Lindner We seek to uncover more stone foundations at the Conservatory ruins to better situate clusters of buried items that may have carried symbolic values. In doing so, we gain introductory training in methods of excavation and laboratory processes. Readings to discuss in seminar, of comparative cases along the Atlantic seaboard, provide a scholarly context to enable interpretation of our findings. ARCH 111 Architecture as Media: Working Drawings Professor Adare Brown This studio-based course introduces students to architectural tools of communication while presenting architecture as a field that is expansive—a field that engages not only with technical knowledge, but also with the making of public imaginaries, personal environments, cultural spatial aesthetics, and even the contested ground of the political, economic and social. The course is simultaneously an introduction to the techniques of representation that define the discipline of architecture and an opportunity to explore and question how architecture mediates the world. Students will learn and practice techniques of contemporary digital drafting, diagramming, mapping and compositional image-making. While the focus will be on an array of forms of architectural drawing, these techniques will be carefully positioned against a survey of paradigmatic moments and themes in the history of architecture that will help situate the practice today. Throughout the term, our design work will be supplemented by readings and periodic research work, and we will situate this against regular lectures that will introduce you to the broader culture of architecture. The course will provide a foundation of concepts and skills necessary to make architecture legible and to convey a spatial argument through design. No prerequisites. ART 107 Drawing I: Botanical Illustration Professor Mara Baldwin Plants have been an inspiration and source for investigation for artists for thousands of years. In this course, students, through field study and observational research, will discover how to create their own drawings and sense of personal style while getting acquainted with the multitude of patterns, shapes, colors, and textures of botanicals located on Bard’s campus as the seasons mature from late-Summer, into deepening Fall, and the earliest fits of Winter. Splitting time between field study and the classroom, students will develop fundamental artistic techniques for capturing plant forms using a variety of artistic methods (graphite, ink, silverpoint, watercolor, etc...) to render a diversity of living plant specimens and the ecological systems that depend upon them. Students will learn how to observe and represent the broad scale of botanical types, from the shapes of trees via field-based collection and journaling to the cells of mosses via microscope-to-paper transcription. Students will develop a practice of close observation that challenges their assumptions of how they see the natural world, will learn and flex the transformation of 3D natural forms to 2D. Students will be challenged to apply plant anatomical knowledge and form-function relationships to develop scientifically accurate, publication-quality illustrations for a myriad of research partners and stakeholders across campus including the campus Arboretum, Field Station Herbarium, and the collection and grounds of Montgomery Place. An art kit and hearty footwear are necessary for this course. Please Note: Students are responsible for purchasing an ‘Art Kit’ of supplies for this course. These kits are around $100. *The Fund for Visual Learning provides material support to students on need-based financial aid to help them with art supplies. Students taking a Level 1 Studio Art class may be eligible for this support for the supply “kit” for the class. Students are only eligible to receive one grant in this category. Interested students should contact the professor during Fall course registration. After the course registration period closes, late requests are not eligible for consideration. https://bardfvl.com ART 236 BG Bard Farm Natural Dye Garden Practicum Professor Beka Goedde Runs 8 weeks from the start of semester. This class works with the Bard Farm at the Community Garden site to identify, cultivate, maintain, harvest and process colorants derived from plants for use in Studio Arts department facilities and for students’ own studio practice work. We experiment together with extraction methods for natural dye for fabric and ink for paper and host a dye workshop open to fellow peers. Students will make a contribution to a group-chosen object of study (such as Madder, Goldenrod, Marigold, Chamomile, Yarrow, Turmeric, Indigo, Weld, Dyer’s Coreopsis) with botanical identification drawing, swatch book building, and lightfast testing. Students will take materials they gather and extract for their own practices, and present an art project for critique, informed by critical consideration of the value of impermanent color and material in temporary exhibitions. Tools and materials in this course to cost $50, and include paper, fabric, wool, silk, tincture containers, and a pair of garden clippers. Students are required to have taken at least one level I course previously in Studio Arts. ARTH 223 Wild Visions: Picturing Nature in Early Modern Northern Europe Professor Susan Merriam This class examines the extraordinary body of visual material representing the natural world created in Europe from 1500-1800. Still life paintings, study drawings, scientific illustrations, maps, and prints will serve as our focus. Questions we will address include: How did this body of visual material both reflect and produce beliefs about the natural world? What visual conventions did artists develop to depict nature, and how did these conventions inspire viewers to think about the natural world in new ways? How did colonial practices and discourses shape the visual record of nature in colonized landscapes? How were colonized peoples engaged in discourses about the natural world, and what role did they play in creating visual material? Can we say that this visual record still resonates with contemporary views of nature? Weekly reading assignments and short papers. AHVC distribution: Post 1500; Europe ARTH 225 Art and Environment: Perspectives on Land, Landscape, and Ecology Professor Julia Rosenbaum If we want to understand ourselves, we would do well to take a searching look at our landscapes. –D.W. Meinig (paraphrasing Peirce Lewis), The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes This course explores the relationship between the natural world and United States culture, considering specifically the visual expression of that relationship: How have Americans imagined “nature” and represented it? How have concepts of land and landscape shaped perceptions about social order, identity, and sustainability? The course provides both a historical framework for thinking about these questions as well as a contemporary perspective, particularly in the context of a potential new era known as the “Anthropocene.” Scholars in the sciences and the humanities increasingly use this term to describe the current global impact of human-dominated ecosystems. Over the semester we will examine diverse imagery, from mound-building to mapmaking to landscape painting, and explore multiple perspectives, from indigenous practices to visual tools of settler colonialism to environmental art activism. The class will engage both past and present ideas and debates about the natural world through visual and textual analysis, writing exercises, local sites, and individual research. AHVC distribution: 1500-present, Americas BIO 104 Natural History of the Hudson Valley Professor Bruce Robertson This course trains students in the field, lab and museum skills of natural historians including how to identify plants and animals of the Hudson Valley. Shorter class meetings will introduce students to concepts in systematics and taxonomy, the value of natural history to science, and how to crowdsource natural history data to answer scientific questions. The laboratory portion of the course will focus on teaching students how to identify plants, birds, amphibians, aquatic and terrestrial insects, and fish. Students will learn how to use binoculars, dissecting scopes, traps, nets and other tools to visualize or capture specimens, and use field guides, phone apps, dichotomous keys and other resources to identify them. Field trips will take place on campus where students will practice their identification skills and where they will collect specimens to curate their own invertebate collection. Students will be graded on field and lab-based species identification practicals, their curated biological collection, short reading and writing assignments, and on a natural history guide they create for a focal taxonomic group of their choice. This course is designed for non-biology majors intending to explore these topics or to satisfy their laboratory science requirement. BIO 106 Mammals Professor Felicia Keesing In this course, intended for students who do not plan to major in biology, we will explore the biology of mammals. Mammals are a fairly specialized group of creatures with two notable features – they produce nutritious milk to feed their offspring and they maintain a constant internal body temperature, though doing so requires them to eat with near comical frequency. Despite our inherent familiarity with a number of mammalian traits, many people are unaware that some of our mammalian relatives lay eggs, others produce venomous saliva, and yet others live in ant-like colonies with a single queen surrounded by a worker caste whose members don’t reproduce. More surprising still might be that hundreds of new species of mammals have been described in the past 15 years. Yet compared to other forms of life, like plants or microbes or insects, mammals are extremely rare, representing just a tiny fraction of living organisms. In this course, we will explore the ecology, behavior, physiology, diversity, and evolution of mammals, and put these characteristics into context by considering how they compare to the characteristics of other groups. Most importantly, we will explore what focusing on mammals can teach us about life on Earth, particularly in the 21st century as the planet warms and little of the land or sea is untouched by the influence of humans, a particularly adaptable and abundant species of mammal. BIO 169 Wildlife Biology of the Hudson Valley Professor Bruce Robertson This course is designed to train students in the field, lab and museum skills of natural historians. Students will learn how to identify plants and animals of the Hudson Valley in the field and lab, and to do so while training them in the key basic skill sets of wildlife biologists. Shorter class meetings will have a central focus on using best practices in designing research projects and quantitatively asking and answering scientific questions using the natural data students gathered in the lab portion of class throughout campus. Depending on whether this course is taught in fall or spring, its taxonomic focus may shift amongst the following groups: Plants, mammals, birds, amphibians, aquatic and terrestrial insects, and/or fish. Students will learn how to use binoculars, dissecting scopes, traps, nets and other tools to visualize or capture specimens, and use field guides, phone apps, dichotomous keys and other resources to identify them. Students will build and curate a biological collection that will be added to Bard’s existing collections and use natural history information to answer some research questions about the trends in the distribution and abundance species that are active on campus during the semester they are taking the course. This course is designed for students intending to be biology majors. ES 100 Introduction to Environmental Studies Professors Beate Liepert Monique Segarra Humans have profoundly altered the character of the Earth’s system since the advent of agriculture and urbanization 10,000 years ago. This course explores how natural and human systems are connected, and how global problems such as climate change, biodiversity loss, species extinction are linked with one another and with social problems such as financial instability, widening economic inequality, food insecurity, intensifying conflict, and public health. We review the empirical evidence of these “wicked problems”, and introduce core concepts and methodologies from natural, and social sciences perspectives, together with practical skills that are required to tackle these issues. We will contemplate alternative political and socioeconomic options (from indigenous knowledge to shared socioeconomic pathways) and will explore how impacts of these decisions on future natural and human systems can be assessed (foresight work). Issues will be considered at a variety of scales—from the level of individual responsibility to the local, regional, national, and global dimensions. The course includes a community service component, labs, and guest lectures. It will be co-taught by instructors in the natural and social sciences. ES 206 Landscape Studies: The Hudson Valley Professor Jana Tirey For centuries, the land on which Bard College stands has been inhabited and shaped by diverse cultures. This course critically examines the existing landscape to uncover the “story” of the land we call home. Areas of study include the history of Native Americans, colonialism and slavery in the region, the Hudson Valley’s role in 19th-century American identity, native plants, and agriculture, the river and environmental activism, as well as green spaces and campus buildings. We will explore the past, present, and future of the Hudson Valley through primary and secondary sources, including Anne Whiston Spirn’s The Language of Landscape, Patrick Wolfe’s Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native, Myra Armstead’s From Property to Proprietor, Susan Fox Rogers’ My Reach, Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle, Lucy Sante’s 19 Reservoirs, and John Stilgoe’s The River. While some meetings will be in the classroom, we will also visit sites such as Old Growth Forest, Montgomery Place, Blithewood, Bard Farm, Bard Field Station, Tivoli Bays, and the Hessel Museum to analyze how the landscape has changed over time. Students will pursue semester-long research projects culminating in an exhibition. Walking-based learning activities will take place outdoors, requiring moderate-distance walking as part of our engagement with the land and course materials. ES 219 Feeding 10 Billion People Professor Gidon Eshel Local food systems, and the global one, cannot be scaled up in their current configurations to feed predicted future Earths in even remotely just and nutritionally adequate ways. If we try, they will clearly bump against Earth’s fundamental physical limits. Yet alternative configurations can easily do the job, and then some. In this course, we will explore those fundamental limits, the robust and weak elements of existing and envisioned food systems, and the design of a global food system that optimally builds on the robust elements while minimizing susceptibility to the weaknesses. Prerequisites: Completion of ES100 and at least one intro level course in any of the sciences as well as passing score on Part I of the Mathematics Placement and familiarity with Excel or Google Sheets. ES 321 GIS for Environmental Justice Professor Jordan Ayala In this course, we will explore how spatial data analysis and geographic information systems (GIS) can be used to assess environmental and spatial justice issues at local, regional, and global scales. Spatial data analysis provides an analytical approach for examining patterns and relationships across space, while geographic information systems provide tools for managing, visualizing, and analyzing spatial data. You will learn the fundamentals of spatial data analysis, how to analyze maps critically, and how to produce interactive map-based web applications. In the lab component of the course, you will engage in collecting, processing, and analyzing environmental data from sites in the Hudson Valley. This semester, we will study water quality in the Saw Kill Watershed and air quality in Kingston, NY, in collaboration with the Bard Community Sciences Lab. As part of a semester-long independent research project, you will apply spatial analysis and spatial thinking, drawing on analytical frameworks from human geography, environmental sciences, and urban studies, to examine a problem, research question, or policy issue. The course culminates in a presentation workshop and the creation of an interactive online story map to communicate your findings. You are encouraged to focus your work so that it allows for meaningful and productive engagement with a community affected by your chosen topic. PHYS 124 Global Warming and Climate Change Professor Gidon Eshel This lab course explores the physical principles underlying climate and anthropogenic climate change. We will start with a survey of the most compelling lines of evidence for climate change, how they are obtained/derived and some of their limitations. We will then discuss in some depth idealized one-dimensional planetary radiative and thermal balance, first in the absence of an atmosphere, and then in the presence of a radiatively active one, with variable number of layers. In this context, it will become interesting to explore atmospheric opacity with respect to various radiative types, and what natural and anthropogenic effects affect this opacity. A related topic will be natural feedbacks, such as water vapor and could feedbacks. We will next place current (modern) observations of climate change in the broader context of past climates, emphasizing the last couple millennia, hundreds of millennia, and finally the ten million-year scale geological record. We will conclude the course with some discussion about the objective of successful policy mitigation efforts, and their implementation obstacles. While not technical per se, participation in this course does require the ability to solve a couple of linear algebraic equations (like solving x + 4 = 2y and 2x – 3y = 6 for x and y) and to perform some very basic manipulation of data and plot the results (using, e.g., Microsoft’s Excel). | ||||||||||