First-Year Seminar Required Texts

Required texts are available from the College Bookstore. Rely on the ISBN to be sure you are getting the correct edition.

Campus Bookstore

Photo by Karl Rabe

Fall 2020 Texts

Walcott, Derek, Omeros, 1992 ed. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 978-0374523503.
Carson, Anne, If Not Winter: Fragments of Sappho, Vintage. ISBN 978-0375724510.
Virgil, The Aeneid of Virgil, trans. Alle Mandelbaum. Random House. ISBN 978-0553210415.
Alighieri, Dante, The Inferno of Dante: A New Verse, trans. Robert Pinsky. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. ISBN 978-0374524524.
Leon-Portilla, Miguel, Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico, trans. Lysander Kemp, Beacon Press. ISBN 978-0807055007.
Shakespeare, William, The Tempest, ed. Peter Holland, Stephen Orgel, and A.R. Braunmuller. Penguin. ISBN: 978-0143128632.

Students should also purchase from the Bard Bookstore a copy of the custom First-Year Seminar Course Reader. This includes additional readings for both Fall and Spring semesters including Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, Primo Levi, and Martin Luther King Jr.

Contact Us

Program Directors
Omar Cheta
Lauren Curtis
Daniel Mendelsohn

The program directors hold regular office hours throughout the semester.
We welcome the chance to meet with the first-year class and talk with you about the course.

Fall Semester Directors' Office Hours: To be determined

Please note that this is in addition to your own FYSEM instructor's office hours, which you should attend with specific questions / concerns about your own FYSEM section and your own personal progress in the course.

For further information, contact Program Assistant Julie Cerulli
fysem@bard.edu | 845-758-7514