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Bard College Catalogue 2024–25
Interdisciplinary Curricular Initiatives
Calderwood Seminars
Calderwood Seminars are designed to help students translate their discipline (e.g., art history, biology, literature) to nonspecialists through different forms of public writing. Depending on the major, public writing might include policy papers, book reviews, blog posts, exhibition catalogue entries, grant reports, or editorials. Look for “Designated: Calderwood Seminar” throughout program course descriptions.
Common Courses
This suite of team-taught multidisciplinary courses was created in response to the existential challenges of the COVID-19 crisis. Designed primarily for Lower College students, the courses engage with themes and questions of the contemporary moment. The courses give students the opportunity to fulfill two distribution requirements with one 4-credit class. Common Course clusters include the following.Alternate Worlds
CC 101A-F
In his essay “On Fairy-Stories,” J. R. R. Tolkien responds to accusations that fantasy constitutes an irresponsible, “escapist” flight from reality. Comparing the dreary bridge at Bletchley railway station in England to the rainbow bridge Bifröst in Old Norse myth, he asks “whether railway engineers, if they had been brought up on more fantasy, might not have done better with all their abundant means than they commonly do.” This course explores the relation between imagination and reality by considering counterfactual histories, fantastical literary works, and utopias or dystopias. Course sections include H. G. Wells and the Discovery of the Future, Utopia and Dystopia in Modern Russia, Language of Alternate Worlds, Visitors from the Otherworld, and What If?
The Making of Citizens: Local, National, Global
CC 102A-D
This course interrogates and analyzes the concept of citizenship. Students are encouraged to think about how citizenship emerges, exists, and differs at the local, national, and global levels, and what forms of participation are necessary to sustain meaningful citizenship for themselves and others. Course sections include Citizenship as Exclusion; Citizenship in the Contemporary United States; Political Animals: Citizenship in Greece, Rome, and the Ancient Mediterranean; and Citizen Poet/Poet Citizen.
Future Commons: Homes, Borders, Climate
CC 103
The COVID-19 pandemic and the movement for racial justice brought to the fore a tremendous sense of uncertainty in the structures that govern our lives: how states value and order life; how we produce, distribute, and consume resources; and the systems that organize how we care for one another. The course calls on students to question these inherited economic and political configurations and reimagine how we live together. Through each module—homes, borders, climate—they also explore “commons” as a historically contested category through which we consider what we share and how we share in space.
Epidemics and Society
CC 104
What do epidemics tell us about microbes, markets, and ourselves? This course covers the science and art of protecting the health of populations and the social, political, philosophical, and cultural implications of public health catastrophes. Discussion and lab sections include Politics and Human Rights Aspects of Epidemics; Philosophy, Literature, and Art concerning Epidemics; Economic Aspects of Epidemics; Art and Epidemics; and Biology of Epidemics.
Resilience, Survival, and Extinction
CC 105
How do individuals, species, languages, and cultures survive, show resilience, and become extinct? The course introduces methods of biological analysis and cultural interpretation that explore the many ways we understand resilience, survival, and extinction. It focuses on the practical, creative forms of resilience developed by humans and animals. Discussion and lab sections include Literary Analysis, Practicing Art Studio, Laboratory Science, and Social Analysis.
Real and Imaginary Spaces: Multiarts Lab
CC 106
The houses we live in and the cities we inhabit are both ordinary, tangible spaces and richly poetic sources for our imaginations and artistic creation. “We live in houses and houses live in us,” noted philosopher Gaston Bachelard. His words carry new meaning after time spent confined to our homes, apartments, and dorms. Students explore works by artists inspired by the interplay of the real and imaginary, and create their own artistic responses to their dwelling places and daydreams of home.
Disability and Difference
CC 107
Through literature and popular media, students examine how the concept of “the human” is shaped by cultural assumptions about ability and normalcy. They explore “neutral” through body/mind-centered physical practices and consider work in the philosophy of medicine to ground contemporary disputes over the difference between the normal and the pathological.
The Courage to Be
CC 108
What does it mean to act courageously in the 21st century? Which crises, conditions, and causes most demand courageous action by individuals and groups? How does the scale and scope of courageous action change under different historical, cultural, and political contexts? Each of the distinct classes in this course—Risking the World; Achilles, Socrates, Antigone, Mother Courage, Barbara Lee; Black Contrarian Voices; Encounters in Exile; Transcending Self for the Benefit of All—explores the concept of courage from antiquity to our contemporary moment, as well as its relevance in fields such as law, literature, human rights, religion, politics, and philosophy.
Alchemy: From Magic to Science in Imagination, Practice, and Theory
CC 110
Far from being an antiquated relic, the ideas and allegories expressed in alchemy continue to influence contemporary culture in areas as diverse as gender studies and critical theory. Alchemy has been characterized in the modern period as the quest to produce gold, but it has long referred to a much wider engagement with transforming physical reality. This course explores three ways in which alchemy has persistently influenced civilization over time: by means of imaginary exploration in the arts, programmatic experimentation in the sciences, and philosophical reflection.
Science of Human Connection
CC 111
This course introduces theories that posit relational connection as a foundation of human development. Readings are drawn from texts including Frans de Waal’s The Age of Empathy (primatology), Matthew Lieberman’s Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect (neuroscience), and Dorothy Smith’s The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology (sociology). After considering this evidence, students consider: what gets in the way of human connection and how do we reconnect?
Improvisation and Multidisciplinary Art Practice
CC 113
How do we collaborate in performance across disciplines? By practicing modes of making, from graphic score creation to setting rules for happenings, students learn to apply performance techniques from traditions outside their primary field of study to their own practice. The class also analyzes the work of artists including Laurie Anderson, Trisha Brown, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Philip Glass, Yvonne Rainer, Carrie Mae Weems, and Sun Ra; and examines movements such as Black Mountain College and Fluxus as models of collaboration across disciplines.
Disability and Accessibility Studies Initiative (DASI)
This initiative supports coursework that examines disability and accessibility from a variety of practical, theoretical, and interdisciplinary perspectives. Look for “Designated: DASI Course” throughout program course description.
Engaged Liberal Arts and Sciences
Engaged Liberal Arts and Sciences (ELAS) courses are designed to link academic work and critical thinking skills from the classroom with civic and other forms of engagement activities. ELAS+ courses can include community-based research, fieldwork, internships, and other types of hands-on learning. Look for “Designated: ELAS Course” or “Designated: ELAS+ Course” throughout program course descriptions.
Hate Studies Initiative
Hate Studies Initiative (HSI) courses examine the human capacity to define, and then dehumanize or demonize, an ‘other,’ and the processes which inform and give expression to, or can curtail, control, or combat, that capacity. Look for “Designated: HSI Course” throughout program course descriptions.
Migration Initiative
Migration Initiative courses provide a conceptual framework for thinking about migration not as an isolated (or recent) phenomenon, but one that is deeply connected to historical, political, economic, legal, and environmental contexts and conditions that are best approached through interdisciplinary study. Equally important is the exploration of tensions and possibilities in scholarly, literary, artistic, and documentary representations of experiences of migration. Look for “Designated: Migration Initiative” throughout all program course descriptions.
Open Society University Network (OSUN) Courses
Students can take two kinds of OSUN courses:
OSUN Online Courses (OOCs) are fully synchronous online classes that are taught by faculty from across the Open Society University Network and enroll students from across the network. This gives students the opportunity to study with teachers from places with which they might not otherwise be familiar, learn alongside students who come from different geographies and traditions, and take courses in topics that are not typically taught in Annandale. Sample offerings include Ethical Hacking, from the American University of Afghanistan; Globalization in a Time of Transition, from National Sun Yat-Sen University in Taiwan; Human Rights and Health, from American University of Central Asia; Life Narratives and Human Rights, from Al-Quds Bard in East Jerusalem; and Religion and Society, from BRAC University in Bangladesh. Students can take OOCs every fall and spring semester as part of their regular program of study, and during the OSUN summer term.
Network Collaborative Courses (NCCs) are developed collaboratively by faculty from multiple OSUN campuses and taught in-person on those campuses. While participating faculty teach their own syllabuses, the courses have a common theme, share common texts, and incorporate assignments and activities that connect students across campuses, synchronously and asynchronously, in collaborative study. Such connections might include collaborative annotation of shared texts, cross-campus discussion sessions, group attendance at lectures or viewings, development of course-related media, peer-to-peer interview assignments, and group projects. Sample offerings include Civic Engagement, Global Citizenship, Sustainable Local Food in a Global Context, and the 26th Amendment: Student Voting Rights and American Democracy. Students can take NCCs every fall and spring semester as a part of their regular program of study.
Racial Justice Initiative
Racial Justice Initiative (RJI) courses represent an interdisciplinary collaboration between students and faculty aimed at further understanding racial inequality and injustice in the United States and beyond.
Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck Initiative
Rethinking Place courses are part of a three-year project that, in part, proposes a Native American and Indigenous Studies approach to a revitalized American Studies curriculum. Rethinking Place courses ask what it would look like to truly acknowledge the land beneath us, its history, and to collaborate with its continuing stewards.
Thinking Animals Initiative
Participating faculty periodically offer a set of linked courses that introduce students to ways of thinking about animals that are both grounded in particular disciplines and encourage interdisciplinary connections. Look for “Designated: TAI Course” throughout program course descriptions.
What Is Religion?
These 1-credit courses meet once a week for five weeks.What Is the Bible?
Humanities 135A
The Bible is still the best-selling book in the world and its influence on cultures throughout the world is unprecedented. Why is this collection of ancient sacred texts so important even in this growing secular environment? Why and when was it written and by whom? How do the stories and narratives of the Bible continue to resonate with every generation?
What Is the Body?
Humanities 135B
Religious traditions tend to focus on the body for rituals, ceremonies, and sacred practices, but they also have theologies that inform how the body is treated and understood. How do we, as contemporary scholars, explore the rites of the body from both sacred and secular perspectives? This course examines the history of the body through the lens of the religious imagination.
What Is the Flower and Song of Spirit? Indigenous Spiritualities of the Americas
Humanities 135C
An introduction to diverse practices within Native American religion and spirituality. The course explores select religious/spiritual traditions, belief systems, and cosmovisiones (worldviews) of Native American/Indigenous peoples in the Americas from a comparative intertribal perspective.
What Is the Sabbath?
Humanities 135D
In this immersive study of Shabbat, the class explores the biblical prohibition against work on that day, subsequent rabbinic codification of its structure, and a multitude of other texts, Jewish and non-Jewish. The course looks at the larger concepts of rest, nondoing, and how we measure our lives.
What Are Angels and Demons?
Humanities 135E
What is an angel (or demon)? The real answer is more complex and far more interesting than many might suppose. Angels and demons may be found everywhere—in film, television, and novels, at any rate. But the authentic Abrahamic tradition is, in fact, little known and feebly understood. This course reconstructs that tradition, exploring the image of the angel in history, theology, psychology, art, and poetry, from its Mesopotamian and Greco-Roman prehistory through present-day manifestations.
What Is Fundamentalism?
Humanities 135F
Fundamentalism is frequently confused with literalism in general, or with traditional or militant forms of faith. Those intellectual mistakes frequently lead to bad social policy. Fundamentals were asserted in the United States during the 19th century as part of a response to two basic religious challenges: a historical reading of the New Testament, which was felt to undermine dogma; and a scientific reading of the universe, which was felt to undermine faith. Seeing how American intellectuals responded to those challenges opens fundamentalism to our understanding.
Who Are the Women of the Bible?
Humanities 135G
Women played significant roles in the biblical narratives and stories of Israel and Jesus, yet not much attention has been paid to them. Who are they, and what contributions did they make to these ancient texts? Why have their stories often been ignored, suppressed, or misinterpreted? How are they relevant to today’s culture and what can we learn from them in this age of feminism? This course addresses these and other questions.
What Is Satori? An Introduction to Zen through the Lens of Enlightenment
Humanities 135H
Enlightenment might be one of the most longed-for and mysterious mental states. This introductory Zen course looks at the various facets of enlightenment while studying the basic principles that constitute or lead up to satori. From Buddha’s enlightenment to classic accounts by contemporary practitioners, each session looks at texts that describe this transformation. The goals are to better understand enlightenment and acquire fundamental knowledge of the Zen Buddhist tradition.