Our Staff

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Molly Freitas

Dean of Academic Excellence
Visiting Assistant Professor of Humanities

Molly J. Freitas is Dean of Academic Excellence and Visiting Assistant Professor of Humanities at Bard. Molly’s greatest passion is helping students to develop the skills and confidence necessary to achieve their academic, personal, and professional goals. As Dean of Academic Excellence, she leads Bard's prestigious scholarship program (Rhodes, Fulbright, Watson, etc), coordinates Bard's internal prizes and awards, and works with the College's Executive Committee on academic policy initiatives.  As a faculty member, she teaches personal narrative, first-year seminar, and literature classes at Bard.  

Molly holds a PhD from Tufts University and an MA from Georgetown University, both in English. Prior to coming to Bard, Molly was an Assistant Professor of English and led the prestigious scholarship program at West Point, the United States Military Academy. She has also taught literature, critical thinking, and professional development courses at Tufts University, Emerson College, and the University of Illinois at Chicago and was a book editor at Oxford University Press. A feminist literary critic, Molly published an academic book, From Subjection to Survival: The Artistry of American Women Writers (Routledge 2023), on aesthetics and American women writers; she is currently at work on a novel. Her scholarly articles have also appeared in American Literary Realism, Soundings, and Studies in the Novel. She lives in Beacon, New York, with her husband and two young daughters, who are the light of her life.  


Email: [email protected]
Phone: 845-758-7854
Office: Sottery Hall 105