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

Spring 2021 Texts

  • Mary Shelley, Frankenstein:  The 1818 Text. Penguin. ISBN 978-0143131847.
  • Frederick Douglass, The Portable Frederick Douglas, ed. J. Stauffer & H.L. Gates, Jr. Penguin. ISBN 978-0143106814.
  • Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto,  ed. D. McLellan. Oxford. ISBN 978-0199535712.
  • Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, 1st ed. Mariner Books. ISBN 978-0156628709.
  • Rabindranath Tagore, The Home and the World, trans. S. Tagore, ed. W. Radice. Penguin . ISBN: 978-01400449860.
  • Homer, The Odyssey, trans. R. Fitzgerald. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 978-0374525743.
In addition to the above texts, readings from the First-Year Seminar: The Self in the World 2020-2021 course reader will also be used.

Contact Us

Program Directors
Omar Cheta
Lauren Curtis
Daniel Mendelsohn (on sabbatical, Fall 2020)

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:  Wednesdays 9-10am EST
(Instructions for joining: please email lcurtis@bard.edu or ocheta@bard.edu for a Zoom link in advance)

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