RKC 103 The big consequences for the West of losing "small wars" (like Algeria, Vietnam, or Afghanistan) are due to the constitutive role of "the Orient" in Western identities. This talk will discuss how these identities are committed, in diverse ways, to notions of Western vitality, strength and dominance over non-European peoples. There is no more obvious sign of Western weakness and "Oriental" strength than defeat in war or failure to obtain victory. Unsurprisingly then, such setbacks become sites of political and cultural disruption and production at all levels of Western society.Sponsored by: Co-sponsored by the Ukraine and Decolonial Thought Common Course, the Human Rights Project, and the Anthropology, Politics, and GIS Programs.
For more information, call 845-758-7662, or e-mail [email protected].
Gazing Back at the Compound Eye: The Estrangement of Surveillance Images in Xu Bing’s Dragonfly Eyes
By Luwei Wang, Ph.D. Candidate University of Wisconsin, Madison
Wednesday, April 2, 2025 5:30 pm
Olin Humanities, Room 102 The imagination of surveillance cameras and the digital media as “compound eyes” is a dominant motif in contemporary Chinese critical and cultural production. This concept resonates deeply within Chinese visual culture and film, where the compound eye functions as both a technological reality and a symbolic structure. In this talk, I examine this intersection through Xu Bing’s experimental art film Dragonfly Eyes (2017). My analysis focuses on Xu Bing’s distinctive approach of repurposing the found surveillance footage, through which he subverts traditional power dynamics, and transforms the surveillance apparatus into an object of critical reflection. By defamiliarizing audiences from the machine vision they have grown accustomed to, the film disrupts the neutrality of digital seeing. In doing so, it prompts reflection on deep- seated anxieties in the digital age—including the takeover of visual representation by digital media, the alienation from lived experience, the obsession with achieving a totalized and comprehensive replication of reality, and the estrangement from nature. I argue that Dragonfly Eyes fundamentally engages with these concerns by constructing an intricate relationship between surveillance footage, webcam recordings, the film’s protagonists, and the audience. Blurring the boundaries between viewing subject and object, the film positions its protagonists as both narrators and characters, oscillating between reality and fiction, observer and observed. Through this interplay, Dragonfly Eyes invites contemplation on the pervasive impact of digital surveillance and the shifting nature of visuality in the contemporary world.Sponsored by: Dean of the College, Division of Languages and Literature, Foreign Languages, Cultures, and Literatures (FLCL), and Chinese Studies.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Building a Career in Sustainability: Leveraging Your Peace Corps Experience
Learn how a group of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers leveraged their service into a successful and impactful career in sustainability.
Wednesday, April 2, 2025 7–8:30 pm
Online Event RSVP HERE for this free panel discussion
ABOUT THE EVENT: Interested in leveraging your past (or future) Peace Corps service into a sustainability career? Join the Bard Graduate Programs in Sustainability for a discussion with Returned Peace Corps Volunteers as they share how they successfully transitioned from service to impactful careers in sustainability. Hear their stories, insights, and advice on building a purpose-driven career. Panel will be held via Zoom, and attendees will have the opportunity to ask questions.
More information on the panelists coming soon!Sponsored by: Bard Center for Environmental Policy; Bard MBA in Sustainability.
Online Event Renowned dancer and teacher Edgardo Fernendez will discuss how “Using dance as an instrument, we make injustices visible: homophobia and transphobia, the right to identity, the abuse and abandonment of the elderly, the potential of people with disabilities to teach and to dance tango." Join us for this engaging conversation. Sponsored by: Center for Civic Engagement.
The Poetry of Physics: What Literature Can Teach Us About the Ultimate Nature of Reality
William Egginton, Decker Professor in the Humanities, Chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, and Director of the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute, Johns Hopkins University
Thursday, April 3, 2025 5:30–7 pm
Olin Humanities, Room 102 In this lecture I explore the two major physical theories of the twentieth century, relativity and quantum mechanics, by way of what we could call their poetic and philosophical foundations. Key to this approach will be the idea that reality isn’t an unfiltered picture of what’s out there, but rather a complex human construct, and that because of that we need essentially human means to understand it, among them literature and philosophy. In this light I argue that philosophers like Plato and Kant, and poets like Dante and Borges, are key to understanding the ideas of Albert Einstein and Werner Heisenberg.
William Egginton is the Decker Professor in the Humanities, Chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, and Director of the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of multiple books, including How the World Became a Stage (2003), Perversity and Ethics (2006), A Wrinkle in History (2007), The Philosopher’s Desire (2007), The Theater of Truth (2010), In Defense of Religious Moderation (2011), The Man Who Invented Fiction: How Cervantes Ushered in the Modern World (2016), The Splintering of the American Mind (2018), and The Rigor of Angels (2023), which was named to several best of 2023 lists, including The New York Times and The New Yorker. He is co-author with David Castillo of Medialogies: Reading Reality in the Age of Inflationary Media (2017) and What Would Cervantes Do? Navigating Post-Truth with Spanish Baroque Literature (2022). His most recent book, on the philosophical, psychoanalytic, and surrealist dimensions of the work of Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky, was published in January 2024.Sponsored by: Division of Languages and Literature; LAIS Program; Literature Program; Philosophy Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Center for Spiritual Life Buddhist Meditation Room Mondays: Guided Meditation 6-6:15 pm: Dharma words 6:15-6:45: Meditation 6:45-7 pm: Walking meditation and chanting Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and popcorn.
Thursdays: Silent Meditation 6-7 pm: Meditation in stillness Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and rice.
Join at any time and stay for any length of time.Sponsored by: Chaplaincy.
For more information, call 845-752-4619, or e-mail [email protected].
Public Debate and Expert Panel Double Feature: Opposition Under Authoritarianism
Thursday, April 3, 2025 7–9 pm
Campus Center, Weis Cinema In today’s political landscape, it can be challenging to know what our politicians, let alone the average person, can do to effect change and combat authoritarianism. Should opposition politicians be expected to respond openly and aggressively to every action taken by the government? How have other countries attempted to stymie their own recent shifts toward authoritarianism? To what extent are we really in a “constitutional crisis”?
In the first half of our event, members of the Bard Debate Union will debate the topic “In times of political instability, do opposition politicians have the responsibility to ‘swing at every pitch’?” In the second half, an expert panel consisting of Bard Professor of Politics, CCE Director, and Executive Vice President Jonathan Becker, Bard Associate Professor of Politics Michelle Murray, CEU Assistant Professor of International Relations Erzsebet Strausz, and Political Strategist Blake Zeff will discuss recent events and unpack the big questions that are defining our current political moment. For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
★★★★★ “Inspired interrogation of ‘the great male artist’” —The Stage
★★★★ “Scoring pertinent points about the abusiveness inherent in the genius cult” —The Guardian
Blending together Adrienne Truscott (Spiegeltent at Bard emcee, Wild Bore, Asking For It, The Wau Wau Sisters)’s genre-straddling work and savagely comedic discourse on gender with internationally renowned theatre company Brokentalkers’ (The Examination, Have I No Mouth, The Blue Boy) formally slippery dramaturgy, the award-winning Masterclass is a parody like no other—uncovering excruciating truths about privilege, gender, and power.
Taking shape as an interview, Masterclass doesn’t hold back. Performed by ‘fed-up feminist’ Adrienne Truscott and ‘all-around good guy’ Feidlim Cannon, Masterclass begins as a cockamamie masterclass between two familiar archetypes—the self-mythologizing male artist (Truscott) and a sycophantic interviewer (Cannon). It’s fun. It’s familiar. There are wigs. But there is something more at play.
This wickedly funny take-down of the macho artist has been performed to critical acclaim across the world, including the Sydney Opera House, Sydney Festival, RISING Melbourne, Southbank Centre London, Brighton Festival, Teatro do Bairro Alto Lisbon, and many more. Now it’s New York’s turn!
Woods Studio The members of the Abigail Lundquist Botstein Nursery School and The Bard Children's Center are proud to present their works of art that include paintings, drawings, sculptures, and 3D art. April 7–11, Woods Studio. A family reception will be held April 10 at 3:30pm. For more information, call 845-758-7444, or e-mail [email protected].
Central Asia at the Crossroads: Governance, Innovation, and Identity in Transition CONFERENCE
Friday, April 4, 2025 10 am – 5 pm
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium This conference brings together faculty, scholars, and administrators from the American University of Central Asia and Bard College (Annandale-on-Hudson, NY). As long-standing partners, Bard and AUCA have impacted the education and professional development of thousands of young people, responding to and contributing to the political, economic, and socio-cultural changes in the region. We will discuss the achievements and goals of the partnership, as well as issues of legal frameworks, cultural identity, and evolving geopolitical alignments that shape the future of Central Asia's regional stability and global influence. Over the course of a day, scholars will engage in dialogue about political participation and economic opportunity in Kyrgyzstan and Central Asia; the region's culture as it evolves in response to shifting geopolitical alignments; and the region's educational visions, ambitions, and hopes.
10.00 – 10.30 Opening remarks
10.30 – 12.00 Panel 1 LAW & SECURITY Moderated by Peter Rutland, Wesleyan University
Kamila Mateeva, Head of Law Division; Associate Professor of Law, AUCA “Evolving Legal Frameworks in Central Asia: Navigating Challenges and Seizing Opportunities”
Saniia Toktogazieva, Dean of Academic Planning and Strategic Partnerships; Associate Professor of Law, AUCA “Constitutionalism in Central Asia: Challenges and current trends”
Togzhan Kassenova (Senior Fellow, Project on International Security, Commerce and Economic Statecraft at the University of Albany) “Kazakhstan’s Nuclear Story: Reclaiming the Agency and National Identity Building”
1.30 – 3.15 Panel 2 ECONOMICS & THE ENVIRONMENT Moderated by Eban Goodstein, Bard College
Zarylbek Kudabaev, Head of the Applied Sciences Division; Professor of Economics, AUCA “Economic Transformations in Central Asia: Current Trends, Challenges, and Future Prospects”
Urmat Ryskulov, Chair of the School of Entrepreneurship and Business Administration; Associate Professor of Business and Finance, AUCA “Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Central Asia: Catalysts for Sustainable Development”
Aniruddha Mitra, Bard College (co-authors: James T. Bang, St. Ambrose University, Nurgul Ukueva, Associate Professor, Economics Department, American University of Central Asia, Visiting Associate Professor, Bard College) “Trust, Risk, and Attitudes toward Climate Change, Evidence from Kyrgyzstan”
Aisalkyn Botoeva, Co-Founder and Principal Researcher of Altai Atlantic research company “The Power of Narrative: Rethinking How We Share Knowledge about the Region.”
3.30 – 5.15 Panel 3 CULTURE & IDENTITY Moderated by Elena Kim, Bard College
Ruslan Rahimov, Head of the Division of Social Sciences, Associate Professor of Anthropology and International Development, AUCA “Reclaiming Identity: Decolonization Narratives and Cultural Reawakening in Central Asia”
Daniyar Karabaev, Head of the Division of Arts, Humanities and Communication; Assistant Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences, AUCA “Memory Politics: The Role of Oral History in Central Asia”
Marek Eby, Visiting Scholar, Columbia University Harriman Institute “Narratives of Soviet Kyrgyzstan through the Lens of Health: The Case of Malaria”
Jarkyn Shadymanova, Associate Professor, Sociology Department, AUCA, M.Ed. Candidate in Environmental Education, Bard College “NGOs at the Intersection of Drug Treatment and Infectious Disease Prevention: Practices from Central Asia and China”Sponsored by: REAS, CCE, and IILE.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Learn more about applying to Levy with Thomas Masterson, graduate program director, and Tyler Emerson, outreach and recruitment liaison.
Friday, April 4, 2025 12–1 pm
Online Event This information session with Graduate Program Director Thomas Masterson and Graduate Outreach and Recruitment Liaison Tyler Emerson provides an overview of the Levy academic programs, student life, admission requirements, enrollment steps, new scholarships, financial aid procedures, and immigration requirements for international students. Applicants who attend a virtual information session will have their application fees waived.
Works by Olivier Tarpaga, Michael Laurello, Dan Langa, and Nathalie Joachim.
Friday, April 4, 2025 7 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
★★★★★ “Inspired interrogation of ‘the great male artist’” —The Stage
★★★★ “Scoring pertinent points about the abusiveness inherent in the genius cult” —The Guardian
Blending together Adrienne Truscott (Spiegeltent at Bard emcee, Wild Bore, Asking For It, The Wau Wau Sisters)’s genre-straddling work and savagely comedic discourse on gender with internationally renowned theatre company Brokentalkers’ (The Examination, Have I No Mouth, The Blue Boy) formally slippery dramaturgy, the award-winning Masterclass is a parody like no other—uncovering excruciating truths about privilege, gender, and power.
Taking shape as an interview, Masterclass doesn’t hold back. Performed by ‘fed-up feminist’ Adrienne Truscott and ‘all-around good guy’ Feidlim Cannon, Masterclass begins as a cockamamie masterclass between two familiar archetypes—the self-mythologizing male artist (Truscott) and a sycophantic interviewer (Cannon). It’s fun. It’s familiar. There are wigs. But there is something more at play.
This wickedly funny take-down of the macho artist has been performed to critical acclaim across the world, including the Sydney Opera House, Sydney Festival, RISING Melbourne, Southbank Centre London, Brighton Festival, Teatro do Bairro Alto Lisbon, and many more. Now it’s New York’s turn!
A time to properly recycle household electronic waste, light bulbs and select batteries
Saturday, April 5, 2025 7:30 am – 1 pm
Red Hook Recycle Center, 23 Glen Pond Road For Bardians who live in Red Hook, this annual event is an important service to help recover critical metals found in electronic waste and prevent toxic materials from being landfilled or incinerated. For everyone: this is an opportunity for Bard community members to volunteer (see the volunteer info here).
This event supplements what can normally be brought to the Town Recycling Center. A list of acceptable waste (and items that will not be accepted) is on the Town website. Accepted household items include, but are not limited to, cameras, computers, copiers and printers, cables, CDs and cassettes, mobile phones, TVs, fluorescent bulbs, LED bulbs, certain batteries, and more. This event is a Red Hook residential service only. Some quantity limits may apply.Sponsored by: Bard Office of Sustainability.
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 M.A. candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Opening Reception for 15: The 2025 Graduate Student Curated Exhibitions
Saturday, April 5, 2025 1–4 pm
Hessel Museum of Art Opening Reception, Saturday, April 5, 1–4 pm.
Limited free seating is available on a roundtrip chartered bus from New York City for the April 5th opening. Reservations are required and can be made on this by calling +1 845-758-7598 or emailing Mary Rozell at [email protected]. For more information, call 845-758-7598, e-mail [email protected], or visit https://ccs.bard.edu/museum/exhibitions/1010-15.
★★★★★ “Inspired interrogation of ‘the great male artist’” —The Stage
★★★★ “Scoring pertinent points about the abusiveness inherent in the genius cult” —The Guardian
Blending together Adrienne Truscott (Spiegeltent at Bard emcee, Wild Bore, Asking For It, The Wau Wau Sisters)’s genre-straddling work and savagely comedic discourse on gender with internationally renowned theatre company Brokentalkers’ (The Examination, Have I No Mouth, The Blue Boy) formally slippery dramaturgy, the award-winning Masterclass is a parody like no other—uncovering excruciating truths about privilege, gender, and power.
Taking shape as an interview, Masterclass doesn’t hold back. Performed by ‘fed-up feminist’ Adrienne Truscott and ‘all-around good guy’ Feidlim Cannon, Masterclass begins as a cockamamie masterclass between two familiar archetypes—the self-mythologizing male artist (Truscott) and a sycophantic interviewer (Cannon). It’s fun. It’s familiar. There are wigs. But there is something more at play.
This wickedly funny take-down of the macho artist has been performed to critical acclaim across the world, including the Sydney Opera House, Sydney Festival, RISING Melbourne, Southbank Centre London, Brighton Festival, Teatro do Bairro Alto Lisbon, and many more. Now it’s New York’s turn!
TŌN’s tenth season at the Fisher Center concludes with a program of dazzling and colorful music by three European composers. The concert begins with Kaija Saariaho’sLaterna Magica, inspired by the autobiography of filmmaker Ingmar Bergman. Then the orchestra is joined by clarinetist Miles Wazni, a winner of the 2023 Bard Conservatory Concerto Competition, for Carl Maria von Weber’s virtuosic Clarinet Concerto No. 2. We close with the scintillating and revelatory third symphony of French composer Albéric Magnard.
★★★★★ “Inspired interrogation of ‘the great male artist’” —The Stage
★★★★ “Scoring pertinent points about the abusiveness inherent in the genius cult” —The Guardian
Blending together Adrienne Truscott (Spiegeltent at Bard emcee, Wild Bore, Asking For It, The Wau Wau Sisters)’s genre-straddling work and savagely comedic discourse on gender with internationally renowned theatre company Brokentalkers’ (The Examination, Have I No Mouth, The Blue Boy) formally slippery dramaturgy, the award-winning Masterclass is a parody like no other—uncovering excruciating truths about privilege, gender, and power.
Taking shape as an interview, Masterclass doesn’t hold back. Performed by ‘fed-up feminist’ Adrienne Truscott and ‘all-around good guy’ Feidlim Cannon, Masterclass begins as a cockamamie masterclass between two familiar archetypes—the self-mythologizing male artist (Truscott) and a sycophantic interviewer (Cannon). It’s fun. It’s familiar. There are wigs. But there is something more at play.
This wickedly funny take-down of the macho artist has been performed to critical acclaim across the world, including the Sydney Opera House, Sydney Festival, RISING Melbourne, Southbank Centre London, Brighton Festival, Teatro do Bairro Alto Lisbon, and many more. Now it’s New York’s turn!
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 M.A. candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Church of St. John the Evangelist, 1114 River Road, Barrytown Join us for services (Holy Communion) at the Episcopal Church of St. John the Evangelist (1114 River Road) in Barrytown. Rides to the church are provided every Sunday throughout the academic year. Please be at the Bard Chapel at 9:45 am to get picked up.
All are welcome!
Christians, non-Christians, spiritual but not religious, agnostics, believers, doubters, seekers, those who have questions about faith and religion, those struggling to understand where God is in our challenging world—anyone wanting to use their faith to change and act in the world! For more information, call 203-858-8800, or e-mail [email protected].
Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Library, First Floor Join us for a workshop to create beaded "Water Is Life" pins led by Rethinking Place 2025 Artist Fellow Sayo’:kla Kindness Williams. Registration required: register here.Sponsored by: American and Indigenous Studies Program; Center for Indigenous Studies.
Chapel of the Holy Innocents Catholic Mass will be available at 11:30 in the Holy Innocents Chapel. All are welcome! For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
TŌN’s tenth season at the Fisher Center concludes with a program of dazzling and colorful music by three European composers. The concert begins with Kaija Saariaho’sLaterna Magica, inspired by the autobiography of filmmaker Ingmar Bergman. Then the orchestra is joined by clarinetist Miles Wazni, a winner of the 2023 Bard Conservatory Concerto Competition, for Carl Maria von Weber’s virtuosic Clarinet Concerto No. 2. We close with the scintillating and revelatory third symphony of French composer Albéric Magnard.
★★★★★ “Inspired interrogation of ‘the great male artist’” —The Stage
★★★★ “Scoring pertinent points about the abusiveness inherent in the genius cult” —The Guardian
Blending together Adrienne Truscott (Spiegeltent at Bard emcee, Wild Bore, Asking For It, The Wau Wau Sisters)’s genre-straddling work and savagely comedic discourse on gender with internationally renowned theatre company Brokentalkers’ (The Examination, Have I No Mouth, The Blue Boy) formally slippery dramaturgy, the award-winning Masterclass is a parody like no other—uncovering excruciating truths about privilege, gender, and power.
Taking shape as an interview, Masterclass doesn’t hold back. Performed by ‘fed-up feminist’ Adrienne Truscott and ‘all-around good guy’ Feidlim Cannon, Masterclass begins as a cockamamie masterclass between two familiar archetypes—the self-mythologizing male artist (Truscott) and a sycophantic interviewer (Cannon). It’s fun. It’s familiar. There are wigs. But there is something more at play.
This wickedly funny take-down of the macho artist has been performed to critical acclaim across the world, including the Sydney Opera House, Sydney Festival, RISING Melbourne, Southbank Centre London, Brighton Festival, Teatro do Bairro Alto Lisbon, and many more. Now it’s New York’s turn!
Olin Hall In preparation for her Carnegie Hall debut recital, pianist Alexandra Balog presents a solo piano recital featuring works by Kodály, Mozart, Noah Max, and Schubert.
Free and open to the public.
Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space A program of classical musical theater selections, featuring the works of Stephen Sondheim, Frederick Loewe, Joseph Stein, Dave Malloy, Joe Masteroff, and Oscar Hammerstein II.
Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory website here.
Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Center for Spiritual Life Buddhist Meditation Room Mondays: Guided Meditation 6-6:15 pm: Dharma words 6:15-6:45: Meditation 6:45-7 pm: Walking meditation and chanting Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and popcorn.
Thursdays: Silent Meditation 6-7 pm: Meditation in stillness Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and rice.
Join at any time and stay for any length of time.Sponsored by: Chaplaincy.
For more information, call 845-752-4619, or e-mail [email protected].
Woods Studio The members of the Abigail Lundquist Botstein Nursery School and The Bard Children's Center are proud to present their works of art that include paintings, drawings, sculptures, and 3D art. April 7–11, Woods Studio. A family reception will be held April 10 at 3:30pm. For more information, call 845-758-7444, or e-mail [email protected].
Institute of Advanced Theology Spring Lecture Series
Monday, April 7, 2025 12:30–2 pm
Bard Hall A lecture series from Bruce Chilton, Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Philosophy and Religion; Director, Institute of Advanced Theology The Bible does not mean only what Christianity says it means, or only what Judaism says it means, or only what Islam says it means. Biblical meaning also cannot be reduced to the caricatures produced by a small but strident coterie of atheist Fundamentalists in recent years.
The Bible unfolded over the course of a millennium of development. During that process social forces in each phase shaped the texts as they stand today, and in some cases the texts can be seen to push back against their contexts. The formation of the Bible resulted in the evolution of a social message, what the Aramaic, and Hebrew, and Greek languages of composition call a “gospel.” Our series is designed to uncover the grounding principles of this gospel as it unfolded over time and was articulated by the Bible in its own terms, before Judaism, Christianity, and Islam emerged.Sponsored by: Institute of Advanced Theology.
For more information, call 845-758-7667, or e-mail [email protected].
Albee Basement (Chaplaincy Offices) Come by the Chaplaincy office (Albee Basement) to knit or learn how to knit! Crocheters and needleworkers are also invited. Materials including yarn and knitting needles are provided. Everyone is welcome.Sponsored by: Chaplaincy.
For more information, call 203-858-8800, or e-mail [email protected].
“All poetry is revolution”: Reading and Discussion of Anna Greki’s Algeria, Capital: Algiers with Marine Cornuet and Ammiel Alcalay
Monday, April 7, 2025 5:30–7 pm
Olin Humanities, Room 102 In 1963, a year after Algerian independence, Anna Greki, an Algerian poet of French descent living in exile in Tunisia, published Algeria, Capital: Algiers, her first poetry collection, in French and Arabic. Greki, 32 at the time, had participated in the Algerian revolution and was arrested, incarcerated and tortured by the French military for her activism. Algeria, Capital: Algiers, translated by Marine Cornuet, and introduced by Ammiel Alcalay, includes poems Greki wrote while in prison and is available in English for the first time. Please join us for a reading and discussion of Greki’s life and work, and of the translation itself.
Marine Cornuet is a Brooklyn-based translator, poet, and editor. Recent publications include Cloche Pèlerine (Le Castor Astral, 2024), a French translation of Kaveh Akbar’s poetry collection Pilgrim Bell, and Algeria, capital: Algiers (Pinsapo Press and Lost & Found, 2024), an English translation of Anna Gréki’s poetry collection Algérie, capitale Algers. She holds an MFA from Queens College, CUNY, and is the co-founder of the literary journal Clotheslines. She is a member of the working collective and an editor at Ugly Duckling Presse.
Poet, novelist, translator, essayist, critic, and scholar Ammiel Alcalay’s latest books are CONTROLLED DEMOLITION: a work in four books, his co-translation of Nasser Rabah’s Gaza: The Poem Said Its Piece, and the forthcoming Follow the Person: Archival Encounters. In 2017, he received an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation for his work as founder and General Editor of Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative; he is a Distinguished Professor at Queens College and the CUNY Graduate Center.Sponsored by: Bard Translation and Translatability Initiative, French Studies, Hannah Arendt Center, Middle Eastern Studies, and Pinsapo Press.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Woods Studio The members of the Abigail Lundquist Botstein Nursery School and The Bard Children's Center are proud to present their works of art that include paintings, drawings, sculptures, and 3D art. April 7–11, Woods Studio. A family reception will be held April 10 at 3:30pm. For more information, call 845-758-7444, or e-mail [email protected].
National Identity, National Minorities, and the Politics of Historical Memory
Memory-Studies Talk Series: Elise Giuliano
Tuesday, April 8, 2025 12:30–2:30 pm
Olin Humanities, Room 303 This talk discusses Dr Giuliano's current research about discourse among ethnic minority populations in Russia’s regions and how to think about the subjectivity and identity of ethnic minorities in multi-ethnic states. Following the end of communist rule in eastern Europe in 1989, most of the new nation-states dedicated themselves to reconstructing a history that viewed Soviet domination following WWII as a departure from their nation’s natural democratic path. Leaders in the post-Soviet states that emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 took a more differentiated approach, especially with regard to the recent Soviet past. In Ukraine, especially since Russia’s invasion in 2022, public memory about Soviet history has become more urgent and politicized. This talk will consider what varied interpretations of critical historical episodes mean for the attempt to define a coherent nation-state and discuss how citizens’ lived experiences and personal family histories interact with attempts by political authorities to define a common public memory.Sponsored by: Center for Civic Engagement; Historical Studies Program; Russian/Eurasian Studies Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
The Hindu Home Kitchen and the Internet of Landlords
Featuring Sucharita Kanjilal, Assistant Professor of Anthropology
Tuesday, April 8, 2025 5–6 pm
Blithewood Join the Levy Institute Research Program of Gender Equality and the Economy for a lecture and discussion with Sucharita Kanjilal, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Bard. Professor Kanjilal's presentation will be followed by an open Q&A session with audience members.
The emergence of the “creator economy”, the $100-billion global industry of monetized online content creation, raises critical questions about how platform economies articulate with social life. Some Marxist scholars argue that platforms act as rent-seeking landlords, inserting themselves as indispensable digital intermediaries between producers and consumers of services. Bringing a feminist, ethnographic lens to ‘the Internet of Landlords’, this presentation follows Indian creators who make food content on YouTube and Instagram in order to theorize creator labor as household industry, re-fashioned as the ‘household start-up’. It describes how creators perform home-based piecework, while their household infrastructures subsidize platforms’ production costs. How are situated relations of reproduction transmuted into the means of global content production? Why is the Hindu home kitchen, once a stubbornly guarded space of heterosexual caste-making, now open for business? Kanjilal posits, consequently, that reproductive relations of gender, caste and race are constitutive of the material relations of production within platforms’ rentier arrangements.
Sucharita Kanjilal is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Bard College. Her research focuses on feminist theories of global capitalism, shifting regimes of social reproduction, critical food studies, and contemporary caste-class relations in South Asia. She draws connections between feminist economic anthropology, anthropology of media, gender studies, the anthropology of food, and anti-caste epistemologies. Her current book manuscript, titled Home Chefs: Indian Households Produce for the Global Creator Economy, is an ethnographic study of Indian food media producers engaged in global platform-based industries of online content creation. Sponsored by: Levy Economics Institute.
Campus Center, Weis Cinema An Expert Witness Geomancer Mystic, as the artist describes, unites the forensic, spatial, and mystical elements of a place, giving testimony to concealed histories while constructing profound truths. They go beyond interpreting land to co-create spaces that are independent, sacred, and ecologically aligned, to protect and restore places as active sites of truth, continuity, and renewal. In this presentation, Hawai'i artist and building practitioner Sean Connelly of After Oceanic shares critical and projective work around creating “architecture for ‘āina” revealing a long disregarded history of US urbanism in Hawai'i and the community grassroots networks of collaborative care and native resurgence working to recover indigenous systems of sustenance for the future.Sponsored by: Center for Human Rights and the Arts.
For more information, call 518-495-9694, or e-mail [email protected].
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space On Tuesday, April 8 at 6pm, poet Mei-mei Berssenbrugge will read from her work. Introduced by David and Ruth Schwab Professor of Languages and Literature Ann Lauterbach, this reading is free and open to the public.
Born in Beijing, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge is the author of fourteen books of poetry, including Hello, the Roses,Empathy, and I Love Artists. Her latest collection, A Treatise on Stars, received the Bollingen Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, among others. Her collaborations include works in theater, dance, music, and the visual arts. Her poems were broadcast from a SpaceX flight in 2021 and her work with composer George Lewis and The Crossing Choir won a Grammy in 2025. She lives in northern New Mexico. Sponsored by: John Ashbery Poetry Series and Written Arts Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Bard Graduate Programs in Sustainability -- Online Info Session
Bard Graduate Programs in Sustainability holds online informational sessions for prospective students to learn more about graduate school.
Tuesday, April 8, 2025 7–8 pm
Online Event Bard Graduate Programs in Sustainability holds online informational sessions for prospective students to learn more about graduate school options in our MBA in Sustainability and Center for Environmental Policy programs.
Join us on Tuesday, April 8, 2024 at 7:00pm ET to learn about our programs directly from Director Eban Goodstein and the admissions team. There will be a time for questions at the end of the session. Register here!
WHAT WE COVER:
Overview of graduate program offerings
Alumni success and career outcomes
Admissions information
Financial aid and scholarships
Prerequisite course information
Tips for a standout application
A $65 application fee waiver is available to those who participate in the webinar.
REGISTER HERESponsored by: Bard Center for Environmental Policy; Bard Graduate Programs; Bard MBA in Sustainability.
Woods Studio The members of the Abigail Lundquist Botstein Nursery School and The Bard Children's Center are proud to present their works of art that include paintings, drawings, sculptures, and 3D art. April 7–11, Woods Studio. A family reception will be held April 10 at 3:30pm. For more information, call 845-758-7444, or e-mail [email protected].
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 M.A. candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Campus Center, Lobby Meet and speak with an admissions representative from Bard College's Graduate Programs. Learn about the many academic programs and gain insight into fields of study, application timelines, and options for Bard students. Bard Graduate Programs MA | MS | MM | MEd | MAT | MFA | MBA | MPhil | PhD Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts Master of Arts in Teaching Graduate Programs in Sustainability: Environmental Policy Environmental Science MBA in Sustainability Levy Economics Institute Graduate Programs in Economic Theory and Policy Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture Center for Curatorial Studies and Art in Contemporary Culture Graduate Vocal Arts Program at the Bard Conservatory Graduate Conducting Programs at the Bard Conservatory Chinese Music and Culture - The Chinese Music Institute The Orchestra Now Longy School of Music of Bard College Master of Music Program Center for Human Rights and The Arts M.A. in Global Studies
Two Lectures Presented by the Inaugural Anthony Lester Fellows in Human Rights
Promoting Legal Protections to Uphold the Ban on FGM in The Gambia (Hilina Degefa) and Training and Supporting Local Human Rights Defenders in Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Trinidad and Tobago (Marian Da Silva)
Wednesday, April 9, 2025 5–6:30 pm
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium Please join us for an evening with Hilina Berhanu Degefa and Marian Alejandra Da Silva Parra, our 2024–25 Lester Fellows in Human Rights. Degefa, an expert on women’s rights from Ethiopia, will discuss her work to combat proposals to legalize female genital mutilation in the Gambia. Da Silva Parra, a human rights lawyer from Venezuela, will discuss her project to train and support local human rights defenders in Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Trinidad and Tobago. The fellowships honor the memory and legacy of Anthony Lester QC (Lord Lester of Herne Hill), one of Britain’s most distinguished human rights lawyers. For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Campus Center, Weis Cinema If reparations are inversions of debt, what would it take to repair the paradigm of private property? The Broken Pitcher Forum traces the entangled histories of debt and property law from the banks and commissioners at the center of the film The Broken Pitcher (2022) to the colonial land surveys, loans, and tributes that transformed land into collateral.
The public program will begin with the film's opening sequence, which follows the rise of home foreclosures in Cyprus after the 2012–13 financial crisis. The screening will be followed by a conversation between the film’s co-directors, Natascha Sadr Haghighian and Marina Christodoulidou; writer and curator Adam HajYahia; and Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Bard College. The discussion will be moderated by filmmaker and scholar Argyro Nicolaou. Followed by the Numismatics lecture-performance by Emiddio Vasquez.
The forum approaches the film as a departure point, tracing these foreclosures through longer colonial histories of property and ownership in dialogue with each speaker’s ongoing research, from the effects of austerity and real estate speculation on life in Athens, to the psychic, materialist, and aesthetic formulations of the condition of debt. This public program is presented as part of the group exhibition Mutable Cycles on view April 5 – May 25, 2025, curated by Ariana Kalliga at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College. For more information, call 845-758-7573, e-mail [email protected], or visit https://ccs.bard.edu/museum/exhibitions/1076-mutable-cycles.
Blum Hall Bard Electronic Music is proud to present German electroacoustic artist Christoph Heemann's live performance in Blum Hall on Wednesday, April 9. A legendary figure in electronic music who has quietly produced a unique and vast body of work since his beginnings with the absurdist cutups of H.N.A.S. in the mid-1980s, Heemann has been active as a solo artist and in many groups including Mirror (with Andrew Chalk), Mimir (with Jim O’Rourke), and In Camera (with Timo van Luijk).
Christoph Heemann will also speak to Sarah Hennies’ Composing With Field Recordings class on April 10. Those wishing to attend this artist talk can get in touch with Professor Hennies at [email protected]. This event is free and open to the public. Sponsored by: Music Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Center for Spiritual Life Buddhist Meditation Room Mondays: Guided Meditation 6-6:15 pm: Dharma words 6:15-6:45: Meditation 6:45-7 pm: Walking meditation and chanting Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and popcorn.
Thursdays: Silent Meditation 6-7 pm: Meditation in stillness Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and rice.
Join at any time and stay for any length of time.Sponsored by: Chaplaincy.
For more information, call 845-752-4619, or e-mail [email protected].
Woods Studio The members of the Abigail Lundquist Botstein Nursery School and The Bard Children's Center are proud to present their works of art that include paintings, drawings, sculptures, and 3D art. April 7–11, Woods Studio. A family reception will be held April 10 at 3:30pm. For more information, call 845-758-7444, or e-mail [email protected].
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 M.A. candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Back in the day, art history was taught using mounted photos. These vintage photos of art, architecture and artifacts make great home decor. Proceeds benefit the AHVC program. Come on by!Sponsored by: Art History and Visual Culture Program.
For more information, call 845-758-7158, or e-mail [email protected].
Join us for a film screening of Artifact War and a Q&A with Dr. Amr Al-Azm who is featured in the film. Click here to watch the trailer.
Weis Theater, April 10, 5:30pm
Thursday, April 10, 2025 5:30–8 pm
An intrepid archeology professor and his team of students are the only ones who stand in the way of an ISIS illicit antiquities network. Faced with losing their cultural heritage they become spies, and they go undercover in ISIS territory. They dodge bombs and militia to create a system to monitor theft and destruction of Syrian antiquities. During this process, they discover more than they anticipated, discovering thousands of trafficked items and that the crimes committed are being enabled by terrorists and multinational corporations. The tragedy continues because the sale of illegal goods is uncovered in the most unsuspecting place.Sponsored by: Art History and Visual Culture Program; Center for Human Rights and the Arts; Experimental Humanities Program; Middle Eastern Studies Program.
For more information, call 845-758-7158, or e-mail [email protected].
RKC 200 When Carey Goldberg was growing up during the Cold War, US-Soviet relations loomed as critical for avoiding nuclear Armageddon. So she studied Russian and journalism in high school and college, and finagled a visa as a nanny to get to Moscow and start reporting. For more than six years she covered the former Soviet Union, its collapse and what came after, and was a Pulitzer finalist for group coverage of the 1991 coup. She then came home to work for The New York Times and went on to other jobs in journalism, but her time in Moscow remains her “glory days.” She will share some of her experiences and discuss the importance of Russian language skills for a successful career in international reporting.Sponsored by: Russian and Eurasian Studies.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Faculty Reading: Walk Her Way New York City with Jana Mader
Thursday, April 10, 2025 5:30–6:30 pm
Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Library, First Floor This Thursday, April 10 at 5:30 p.m., join Jana Mader, Director of Academic Programs at the Hannah Arendt Center and Visiting Assistant Professor in Environmental Humanities, for a conversation and reading from her new book, Walk Her Way New York City: A Walking Guide to Women's History (Hardie Grant Books, 2025). This engaging guide, co-authored by Jana Mader and Kaitlyn Allen and illustrated by Aja O'Han, features ten curated walking tours across the boroughs, revealing the remarkable contributions and lives of well-loved and unsung heroines who shaped the city’s story. Light refreshments will be provided as well as a book raffle for participants. This event is co-sponsored by the Office of the Dean of Inclusive Excellence, Stevenson Library, and the Hannah Arendt Center. For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Woods Studio The members of the Abigail Lundquist Botstein Nursery School and The Bard Children's Center are proud to present their works of art that include paintings, drawings, sculptures, and 3D art. April 7–11, Woods Studio. A family reception will be held April 10 at 3:30pm. For more information, call 845-758-7444, or e-mail [email protected].
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 M.A. candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Olin Hall Bard students, faculty, staff, and members of the Hudson Valley community are welcome to attend a free symposium centering on two environmental threats facing the Hudson/ Mahicantuck River. The primary purpose of the symposium is to facilitate public discussion— informed by science, environmental law, and best citizen advocacy practices—about how members of the community can effectively address and work together to curtail these threats. Morning presentations will be followed by an afternoon panel and public discussion.
The Threats:
• High levels of PCB contamination due to General Electric’s dumping of toxic material for 30 years and G.E.’s clean-up of PCBs between 2009 and 2015 that does not meet agreed upon environmental benchmarks. Continuing PCB contamination poses human health risks, causes ongoing extinction and disease to fish and wildlife, and damages river ecosystems, wetlands, and ground water. • “Bomb Trains”—overloaded freight trains carrying Bakken shale oil and unidentified chemicals along the eroding west bank of the river. A derailment would spell catastrophe.
Schedule:
10:00 - 10:10 Introduction to “The Fate of the River” symposium. 10:10 - 10: 35 Introduction and screening of Jon Bowermaster’s film "A Toxic Legacy about General Electric’s Contamination of the Hudson/ Mahicantuck River" 10:40 - 11:00 Jeremy Cherson, Associate Director of Government Affairs, Riverkeeper 11:05 to 11:25 Erin Doran, Faculty in Environmental Law, Bard Center for Environmental Policy, and Senior Staff Attorney, Food & Water Watch 11:35 -11:55 David Carpenter, Director of Institute for Health and the Environment, SUNY. Albany Noon to 1:00 LUNCH BREAK 1:05 - 1:25 Eli Dueker, Associate Professor of Environmental and Urban Studies, and Director of Bard Center for Environmental Sciences and Humanities 1:25 - 1:40 Introduction to and screening of Jon Bowermaster’s film Bomb Trains 1:45 - 2:05 Florence Murray, Partner of Murray & Murray Law Firm, represents stakeholders affected by the toxic aftermath of the 2023 derailment of a Norfolk Southern train in East Palestine, Ohio 2:15 - 2:35 COFFEE BREAK 2:40 - 4:00 Panel and Public Discussion: “Next Steps Toward a Healthier River”
Speakers:
Jon Bowermaster is a writer, filmmaker, and six-time grantee of the National Geographic Expeditions Council.
Jeremy Cherson earned his MS in Environmental Policy at the Bard Center for Environmental Policy and now serves as the Associate Director of Government Affairs working to advance Riverkeeper's priorities in Albany and Washington, DC.
Erin Doran is a Senior Staff Attorney at Food & Water Watch focusing on climate and energy matters. She was previously a Senior Attorney at Riverkeeper, where she advocated for clean water, healthy ecosystems, and resilient climate solutions in the Hudson Valley.
David O. Carpenter is a public health physician and is Director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University at Albany, as well as Professor of Environmental Health Sciences within the School of Public Health at the University at Albany. His research focuses on the environmental causes of human disease, both those directly caused by chemical exposure and those mediated via endocrine disruption.
Eli Dueker is an Associate Professor of Environmental and Urban Studies at Bard College and former executive director of Project Underground, an international environmental and human rights organization.
Florence Murray is a partner at Murray & Murray, Co. L.P.A., where her areas of practice include primarily traumatic brain injuries and wrongful death actions, civil rights violations with severe injuries, and trucking collisions. She is active with the Ohio Association for Justice, National Lawyers Guild, and the Brain Injury Association.
The Fate of the River symposium is the first in a series of public discussions on "Environmental Injustice Across the Americas" that focuses on state-sanctioned pollution, the poisoning of water, destruction of the commons, and the fight for justice. The Fate of the River is co-sponsored by Bard College’s Human Rights Program, Center for Civic Engagement, Center for Environmental Policy, Environmental Studies, and the Office of Sustainability. For more information, call 845-758-6822.
Unpacking the Trump Agenda: A Conversation with Walter Mead
Friday, April 11, 2025 12–1 pm
Olin Humanities, Room 104 The Center for Civic Engagement and the Alexander Hamilton Society at Bard are pleased to invite the Bard community to our upcoming speaker event with Walter Russell Mead for a discussion of the Trump Doctrine, the future of American power, and the unraveling of the liberal international order.
Since January 20, the Trump administration has stunned the world with its flood the zone strategy: upending institutional norms, ruthlessly exercising power at home by cracking down on elite law firms and universities, dismantling federal bureaucracies, moving aggressively to secure the border, and fundamentally altering US foreign policy in multiple pivotal regions around the world. Just last week, this unconventional approach to world politics took another turn as President Trump imposed a dizzying array of new tariffs on the global trade system—a system the United States has built and protected since its inception after the end of World War II.
Walter Russell Mead is the senior scholar, Center for Civic Engagement and Hannah Arendt Center, and the Ravenel B. Curry III Distinguished Fellow in Strategy and Statesmanship at Hudson Institute, the Alexander Hamilton Professor of Strategy and Statecraft with the Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida, and the “Global View” columnist at the Wall Street Journal.
Sponsored by the Center for Civic Engagement and the Alexander Hamilton Society at Bard For more information, call 845-758-7378, or e-mail [email protected].
Student Recital: Qijia Liu, violin, with Nomin Samdan, piano
Works by Ysaÿe, Mozart, Bach, and Stravinsky
Friday, April 11, 2025 1 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Join us for a student recital. Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Online Event We're reading The Life of the Mind, Hannah Arendt’s unfinished final work. In it, she focuses on three basic mental activities—thinking, willing, and judging—and their relation to the world of appearances and to the human capacity for moral and political action. The new critical edition makes available in print, for the first time, the text of the typescripts as Arendt left them, complemented by a wealth of previously unpublished material, detailed annotations, and extensive scholarly commentary. We will also be referring to Mary McCarthy's edition for increased accessibility.
Free to HAC members and to Bard students, staff, and faculty! Email [email protected] for the Zoom link.
Find the full Virtural Reading Group schedule: hac.bard.edu/programs/vrg/ Get the new critical edition of The Life of the Mindhere.
Don't worry if you miss a VRG meeting! We post them all on our YouTube channel the week after they're recorded. Or tune in to an edited version of the chapter readings plus bonus episodes on our podcast, Reading Hannah Arendt with Roger Berkowitz.Sponsored by: Hannah Arendt Center.
Moderated by Daniel Brinkerhoff Young, Visiting Assistant Professor in Philosophy at Union College
Friday, April 11, 2025 4–5:30 pm
Union College, Lippmann 100
Please join us for the third session of the Hudson Valley Political Theory Workshop this Friday, April 11. Spring Semester workshops will take place at Union College.
The Hudson Valley Political Theory Workshop is a new collaborative project launched by Bard College and Union College. The workshop aims to bring together political theorists working in or near the Hudson Valley Region in a series of workshops to share their work in progress, create new networks, and open up possibilities for new collaborative research projects that further advance humanities.
We are delighted to welcome Daniel Brinkerhoff Young, Visiting Assistant Professor in Philosophy at Union College.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 M.A. candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Saturday, April 12, 2025 – Sunday, April 13, 2025 12–12 pm
Memorial Hall (Old Gym) Presented by WXBC and Bard Electronic Music, 24 Hour Drone will be a full day (noon April 12 – noon April 13) of continuous musical performances by Bard students, faculty, and community members. More information here.Sponsored by: Music Program.
For more information, call 414-412-0775, or e-mail [email protected].
Required Recital: Riley Lyons, trombone, with Gabriele Zemaityte, piano
Featuring works by Kevin Day, Ferdinand David, and Stjepan Šulek
Saturday, April 12, 2025 1 pm
Olin Hall Join us for a student recital. Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space A showcase featuring compositions by Elena Hause, Lili M. Namazi, Rowan Robinson, Olivia Marhevka, Logan Rishard, Santiago Mieres, Artemy Muhkin, Steve Bonacci, Julian Raheb, Emily Ta, Sam Mutter, Faisal Jones, Drew Frankenberg, and Manar Hashmi. Free and open to the public.
Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube Channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music; Music Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
The Graduate Vocal Arts Program presents: "Music for Today"
Songs of Arnold Schoenberg and Charles Ives
Saturday, April 12, 2025 7:30 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building In honor of two iconic composers on the anniversary of their 150th birthdays, the young artists of the Vocal Arts Program and the Conservatory Piano Fellows present Schoenberg's Das Buch der hängenden Gärten (The Book of the Hanging Gardens) and a collection of songs of Charles Ives. Each composer found a new and highly individual musical language to respond to the rapidly changing world of the early 20th century, still highly relevant for our time.
Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube channel.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music; Bard Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Program; Bard Conservatory Post-Graduate Piano Fellowship.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 M.A. candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Church of St. John the Evangelist, 1114 River Road, Barrytown Join us for services (Holy Communion) at the Episcopal Church of St. John the Evangelist (1114 River Road) in Barrytown. Rides to the church are provided every Sunday throughout the academic year. Please be at the Bard Chapel at 9:45 am to get picked up.
All are welcome!
Christians, non-Christians, spiritual but not religious, agnostics, believers, doubters, seekers, those who have questions about faith and religion, those struggling to understand where God is in our challenging world—anyone wanting to use their faith to change and act in the world! For more information, call 203-858-8800, or e-mail [email protected].
Chapel of the Holy Innocents Catholic Mass will be available at 11:30 in the Holy Innocents Chapel. All are welcome! For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Saturday, April 12, 2025 – Sunday, April 13, 2025 12–12 pm
Memorial Hall (Old Gym) Presented by WXBC and Bard Electronic Music, 24 Hour Drone will be a full day (noon April 12 – noon April 13) of continuous musical performances by Bard students, faculty, and community members. More information here.Sponsored by: Music Program.
For more information, call 414-412-0775, or e-mail [email protected].
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC As the German Romantic movement took hold in the early 19th century, artists of all types began examining the relationship between nature and the human soul. Painter Caspar David Friedrich, widely considered the most important German artist of the era, portrayed nature as a setting for profound spiritual and emotional encounters. His compatriot, the renowned composer Robert Schumann, also took inspiration from the natural world. Upon moving to Düsseldorf, along the Rhine River, he wrote his buoyant Third Symphony, which he titled the Rhenish.
In the popular series Sight & Sound, The Orchestra Now explores the parallels between orchestral music and the visual arts. Each performance includes a Met curator introduction, a discussion with conductor and music historian Leon Botstein accompanied by on-screen exhibition images and live musical excerpts, then a full performance of the works and an audience Q&A.
Third Year Recital: Grace Trenouth, soprano, with Bat-Erdene Batbileg, piano
"Diva Down!": Works by Schubert, Britten, Viardot, Schmidt, Schumann, and Bolcom.
Sunday, April 13, 2025 3 pm
Olin Hall Join us for a student recital. Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Center for Spiritual Life Buddhist Meditation Room Mondays: Guided Meditation 6-6:15 pm: Dharma words 6:15-6:45: Meditation 6:45-7 pm: Walking meditation and chanting Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and popcorn.
Thursdays: Silent Meditation 6-7 pm: Meditation in stillness Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and rice.
Join at any time and stay for any length of time.Sponsored by: Chaplaincy.
For more information, call 845-752-4619, or e-mail [email protected].
Institute of Advanced Theology Spring Lecture Series
Monday, April 14, 2025 12:30–2 pm
Bard Hall A lecture series from Bruce Chilton, Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Philosophy and Religion; Director, Institute of Advanced Theology The Bible does not mean only what Christianity says it means, or only what Judaism says it means, or only what Islam says it means. Biblical meaning also cannot be reduced to the caricatures produced by a small but strident coterie of atheist Fundamentalists in recent years.
The Bible unfolded over the course of a millennium of development. During that process social forces in each phase shaped the texts as they stand today, and in some cases the texts can be seen to push back against their contexts. The formation of the Bible resulted in the evolution of a social message, what the Aramaic, and Hebrew, and Greek languages of composition call a “gospel.” Our series is designed to uncover the grounding principles of this gospel as it unfolded over time and was articulated by the Bible in its own terms, before Judaism, Christianity, and Islam emerged.Sponsored by: Institute of Advanced Theology.
For more information, call 845-758-7667, or e-mail [email protected].
Albee Basement (Chaplaincy Offices) Come by the Chaplaincy office (Albee Basement) to knit or learn how to knit! Crocheters and needleworkers are also invited. Materials including yarn and knitting needles are provided. Everyone is welcome.Sponsored by: Chaplaincy.
For more information, call 203-858-8800, or e-mail [email protected].
An hour-long program of short performances by Bard Conservatory students.
Monday, April 14, 2025 12 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-7196, or e-mail [email protected].
Traduttore, Traditore? Reflections on Translating Dante
by Joe Luzzi (Bard College)
Monday, April 14, 2025 6:30 pm
Olin Humanities, Room 102 The Italians have a saying traduttore, traditore – that is, the “translator" of a book can often be a “traitor” to it if he fails to capture both its letter and its spirit! In this event, Professor Joseph Luzzi will discuss his new translation of Dante’s Vita Nuova (Liveright/Norton, December 2024), which was Dante’s first book and a moving account of his youthful love for his muse, Beatrice, and his discovery of his passion for poetry. Professor Luzzi will show how his understanding of translation as a “way of thinking” also helped him complete his recent Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Biography (Princeton University Press, November 2024). Overall, he will share his experiences in trying to remain faithful to Dante’s original language, while at the same time bringing his own personal understanding and interpretation of the Vita Nuova, an early masterpiece by Italy’s so-called sommo poeta, supreme poet.Sponsored by: Italian Studies.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Bard Electronic Music Program presents: N119 Night
Monday, April 14, 2025 8–10 pm
Blum N119 Bard electronic music students present music, films, experiments, and drafts in an informal setting. This month's musicians include Iris Gross, Felix LeVeque, August Levine, and Ondina McDonald. Open and free to the public. Sponsored by: Music Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
April 15th Application Deadline | Levy Graduate Programs in Economic Theory and Policy
Tuesday, April 15, 2025
The Levy Economics Institute Graduate Programs in Economic Theory and Policy were created to offer students an alternative to mainstream programs in economics and finance. These innovative programs combine a rigorous course of study with the exceptional opportunity to participate in advanced economics research. Our application deadline is April 15th, 2025. Apply Now Sponsored by: Bard Graduate Programs; Levy Economics Institute; Levy Graduate Programs.
For more information, call 845-758-7776, or e-mail [email protected].
Red Hook Village CCE is excited to announce an open call for submissions from emerging artists to show their art to the local community. Artists are invited to create art to display in one of four art boxes located in publicly-accessible spaces around the Town and Village of Red Hook. Each unit is permanently mounted on a six-sided wooden pole at eye level to provide an intimate viewing opportunity for the visitor from Spring 2025 to Spring 2026. This year's theme is Flora and Fauna: Celebrating the Hudson Valley.
If you live, work or attend school in or around Red Hook, you are most likely artistically inspired by the natural beauty of the Hudson Valley and its rich biodiversity. This is an opportunity to share your work and inspiration with the community! Official opening is May 10.
Featuring Eri Yamamoto’s Colors of The Night Trio - Concert at 7:30 pm in the Lásló Z. Bitó '60 Performance Space, Lecture at 4pm in Blum N211, the Jazz room
Tuesday, April 15, 2025 4–8:30 pm
László Z. Bitó Conservatory Performance Space This special concert is dedicated to the memory of Richard Gordon, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Bard College and a consummate jazz pianist. His enduring contributions to both academia and the arts will be honored through this musical tribute. The series is generously supported by Bard Jazz Studies, the Bitó Conservatory of Music and private donations in his memory.
Join us for an Artist's talk with Eri Yamamoto at 4pm in Blum N211, then a concert at 7:30 pm in the Lásló Z. Bitó '60 Performance Space.Sponsored by: Music Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Richard Gordon Jazz Series Featuring Eri Yamamoto’s Colors of The Night Trio
Jazz at Bard and the László Z. Bitó Conservatory of Music Present
Tuesday, April 15, 2025 4–9 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Free and open to the public. Artist Talk with Eri Yamamoto: 4:00–5:00 PM, Blum N211 Concert: 7:30 PM, László Z. Bitó Conservatory Performance Space Featuring: Eri Yamamoto, piano; William Parker, bass; Ikuo Takeuchi, drums.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 201-577-1092, or e-mail [email protected].
Campus Center, Weis Cinema Daniel Mendelsohn and Robert Cioffi will read from Mendelsohn's edition of Homer’s Odyssey. Widely known for his essays on classical literature and culture in the New Yorker and many other publications, Mendelsohn gives us a line-for-line rendering of the Odyssey that is both engrossing as poetry and true to its source. Mendelsohn’s expansive six-beat line, far closer to the original than that of other recent translations, allows him to capture each of Homer’s dense verses without sacrificing the amplitude and shadings of the original. A discussion will follow.
Please register for this free event here. Sponsored by: Classical Studies, the Dean of the College, and Oblong Books.
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 M.A. candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Jim Ottaway Jr. Film Center A film about "Combatants for Peace," a joint Palestinian-Israeli organization of former fighters. Sponsored by the Office of the President, the Dean of the College, Sociology, Interdisciplinary Study of Religions, and Jewish Studies programs, and It’s Complicated from the Hannah Arendt Center.Sponsored by: Hannah Arendt Center.
For more information, call 202-320-6545, or e-mail [email protected].
Center for Spiritual Life Buddhist Meditation Room Mondays: Guided Meditation 6-6:15 pm: Dharma words 6:15-6:45: Meditation 6:45-7 pm: Walking meditation and chanting Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and popcorn.
Thursdays: Silent Meditation 6-7 pm: Meditation in stillness Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and rice.
Join at any time and stay for any length of time.Sponsored by: Chaplaincy.
For more information, call 845-752-4619, or e-mail [email protected].
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 M.A. candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Olin Hall Featuring Bat-Erdene Batbileg, piano, and Lap Yin Lee, violin. Join us for a student recital. Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube channel here. Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Led by Carlos Macías Prieto and Luis Chavez-Gonzalez
Thursday, April 17, 2025 1:30–2:30 pm
Olin 101 The Indigenous language of Nahuatl is currently spoken by over one and a half million people. Participants will learn basic greetings and expressions in modern Nahuatl. Presented as a part of Pueblos Originarios/Original Pueblos: Indigenous Perspectives from Turtle Island, Cemanahuac, and Abiayala.Sponsored by: American and Indigenous Studies Program.
For more information, call 860-992-6472, or e-mail [email protected].
Thursday, April 17, 2025 – Friday, April 18, 2025 3–12 pm
Campus Center, Multipurpose Room This two-day class provides a journey through our personal and professional experience within a binary society. We will reflect on how we have challenged pre-established norms to expand our expression in tango and in life.Sponsored by: Center for Civic Engagement; Student Activities.
For more information, call 503-901-0031, or e-mail [email protected].
Open Studios: Works In-Progress by First-Year MA Students in Human Rights & the Arts
Thursday, April 17, 2025 3–6 pm
Massena Campus First-year MA students at the Center for Human Rights and the Arts present works-in-progress developed in class, led by artists Robin Frohardt and Oscar Gardea. These works reflect their exploration of the potential of everyday objects and materials, with emphasis on repurposing discarded items and utilizing unconventional materials.
Material Storytelling, led by Robin Frohardt, delved into the use of discarded materials repurposed through various techniques to create narrative, build scenarios, and characters. Survey on Waste and the Supernatural, led by Oscar Gardea, observed the concept of waste as a strategy to reconfigure erased culture in zones of conflict. The showcased works range from puppetry to masks, object theater, costumes, and interactive installations, as employed to transform seemingly mundane or discarded materials into powerful tools for storytelling.
Parking is available on the Massena campus. The Bard Massena Shuttle offers transportation to Bard students, staff, and faculty between Kline Bus Stop (Southbound) and the Massena Campus Roundabout. Please see the shuttle schedule. For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
A journey to the south with Don Guaman Poma de Ayala
Thursday, April 17, 2025 3:30 pm
Olin 107 An urgent letter was sent in 1613 from Peru to the King of Spain. In this workshop, we will come together to uncover its urgency, painting images of the past that may help us to light our present.Sponsored by: American and Indigenous Studies Program.
For more information, call 860-992-6472, or e-mail [email protected].
A conversation with David Salle and Francine Prose
Thursday, April 17, 2025 5–7 pm
Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Library, First Floor David Salle and Francine Prose will discuss the artwork and writing of Janet Malcolm in conjunction with the exhibition Janet Malcolm: Critical Collage at Stevenson Library. David Salle, the subject of Malcolm’s 1994 New Yorker profile “Forty-One False Starts,” is one of America’s most esteemed painters. He is also the author of How to See: Looking, Talking, and Thinking About Art . Distinguished Writer in Residence at Bard Francine Prose is the author of numerous books of fiction and nonfiction, including Reading Like a Writer and The Lives of the Muses: Nine Women and the Artists They Inspired . She is the former president of the PEN American Center. All are welcome. For more information, call 845-758-6822.
Nahua (Aztec) Writing After the Conquest: Domingo Chimalpahin and the Cemanahuac Archive in Colonial Mexico
Thursday, April 17, 2025 6 pm
Olin 102 Part of Pueblos Originarios/Original Pueblos: Indigenous Perspectives from Turtle Island, Cemanahuac, and Abiayala. A gathering to foster dialogue about Indigeneity throughout the Americas.
This presentation examines the writings of don Domingo de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin (hereafter Chimalpahin), a Nahua tlacuilo (scribe) who produced the largest body of written texts in Nahuatl and Spanish among Nahua (Aztec) writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; it illustrates that Chimalpahin refutes Spanish historiography by revising and extending the narratives of Spanish, castizo, mestizo, and Indigenous authors, all while placing Indigenous history in a global context. By framing Chimalpahin’s work as a forward-looking endeavor, Chimalpahin’s writing encourages us to reconsider Nahua intellectual production at the turn of the seventeenth century and as a starting point from which to imagine alternative futures that support Indigenous struggles for land and self-determination.Sponsored by: American and Indigenous Studies Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Chapel of the Holy Innocents A gathering to celebrate Christ's command to love and God's covenant with Israel with a simple meal.Sponsored by: Chaplaincy.
For more information, call 203-858-8800, or e-mail [email protected].
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 M.A. candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Online Event We're reading The Life of the Mind, Hannah Arendt’s unfinished final work. In it, she focuses on three basic mental activities—thinking, willing, and judging—and their relation to the world of appearances and to the human capacity for moral and political action. The new critical edition makes available in print, for the first time, the text of the typescripts as Arendt left them, complemented by a wealth of previously unpublished material, detailed annotations, and extensive scholarly commentary. We will also be referring to Mary McCarthy's edition for increased accessibility.
Free to HAC members and to Bard students, staff, and faculty! Email [email protected] for the Zoom link.
Find the full Virtural Reading Group schedule: hac.bard.edu/programs/vrg/ Get the new critical edition of The Life of the Mindhere.
Don't worry if you miss a VRG meeting! We post them all on our YouTube channel the week after they're recorded. Or tune in to an edited version of the chapter readings plus bonus episodes on our podcast, Reading Hannah Arendt with Roger Berkowitz.Sponsored by: Hannah Arendt Center.
Thursday, April 17, 2025 – Friday, April 18, 2025 3–12 pm
Campus Center, Multipurpose Room This two-day class provides a journey through our personal and professional experience within a binary society. We will reflect on how we have challenged pre-established norms to expand our expression in tango and in life.Sponsored by: Center for Civic Engagement; Student Activities.
For more information, call 503-901-0031, or e-mail [email protected].
Chapel of the Holy Innocents A Good Friday Service remembering Christ’s crucifixion and the reading of The Passion according to the Gospel of John. All are welcome!Sponsored by: Chaplaincy.
For more information, call 203-858-8800, or e-mail [email protected].
Chapel of the Holy Innocents Student-led service with Gospel Choir, Stations of the Cross, Passion Reading, and Quaker Silence.Sponsored by: Chaplaincy.
For more information, call 203-858-8800, or e-mail [email protected].
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space FeaturingNeilson Chen, piano; Luca Sakon, violin; Lili Simon, violin; Nandor Burai, violin; Sándor Burka, violin; Jessica Ward, viola; Dari Batsaikhan, cello; Yu-Cih Chang, double bass; Ashley Lim, harp; and David Kéringer, conductor. Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Discussion with Comedian, Peace Builder, and Activist Noam Shuster Eliassi
Presented by Beyond the Binary
Friday, April 18, 2025 7 pm
Olin Humanities, Room 102 Join us for an evening of critical conversation and cultural insight with Noam Shuster Eliassi—comedian, activist, and cultural critic. Noam uses comedy to challenge systems of power and open space for dialogue on justice, identity, and coexistence. She grew up in Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, the only intentionally mixed Palestinian-Jewish community in Israel, and performs in Hebrew, Arabic, and English.
Her work spans stages across the globe, including the Palestine Comedy Festival, where she became the first Jewish performer to take the mic. With a background in peacebuilding and a sharp comedic voice, Noam brings together stories, satire, and social critique in a way that’s as entertaining as it is necessary.
This event is hosted by It’s Complicated, a student-led project of the Hannah Arendt Center, creating space for thoughtful learning, cross-perspective dialogue, and critical engagement around Israel/Palestine.Sponsored by: Hannah Arendt Center.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Performances by Riley Lyons, Ameya Natarajan, Christina Ng-Leyba, and Eli Rupper, tenor trombone; Yu-Tien James Chou, bass trombone; and Zander Grier, tuba and bass trombone.
Friday, April 18, 2025 7 pm
Olin Hall Featuring works by Mahler, Pergolesi, Theo Charlier, Ferdinand David, Don Haddad, Stjepan Sulek, Tchaikovsky, and Edward MacDowell.
Free and open to the public. Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
The Bard Theater & Performance Program presents Good Penny by DN Bashir, Assistant Professor of Theater & Performance at Bard College, and directed by Katherine Wilkinson.
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 M.A. candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
The Bard Theater & Performance Program presents Good Penny by DN Bashir, Assistant Professor of Theater & Performance at Bard College, and directed by Katherine Wilkinson.
Studio Art Senior Project Exhibition Opening Reception
Bard Exhibition Center, UBS Exhibition #2
Saturday, April 19, 2025 3–6 pm
Bard Exhibition Center Please join us to celebrate the work of our second group of senior students exhibiting in Red Hook at the Bard Exhibition Center: Tommy Bennett, Veritie Howard, Mya Muchineuta, Autumn Knight, Zoe Mogannam, Mia Natelli, Paulina Jamieson, Sammie Perez, Roma Taitwood, and Calum Tinker. For more information, call 845-758-7674, or e-mail [email protected].
The Bard Baroque Ensemble, under the direction of Renée Anne Louprette, presents its debut performance in the Fisher Center, featuring works by Bach, Handel, and Mozart dedicated to the memory of Frederick Fisher Hammond (1937–2023), Professor Emeritus and the Irma Brandeis Chair of Romance Cultures and Music History.
The program celebrates the restoration of Professor Hammond’s French double-manual and Italian single-manual harpsichords—now a part of Bard College’s collection of early keyboard instruments—featuring them in the Concerto for Two Harpsichords, Strings, and Continuo in C Minor, BWV 1060 by Johann Sebastian Bach, with Sophia Cornicello and Raymond Erickson as harpsichord soloists.
One of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s most popular and enduring works, Symphony No. 40 in G Minor, K. 550, opens the program, interpreted by the Ensemble with a Baroque sensibility. Bard faculty member and distinguished tenor Rufus Müller presents the ravishing opening aria from Handel’s Serse: Ombra mai fu (Never was a shade).
The program concludes with Bach’s Cantata No. 1: Wie schön leuchtet Der Morgenstern (How brightly shines the Morningstar), featuring the Bard Chamber Singers, Preparatory Division Children’s Chorus, and soloists from the Graduate Vocal Arts Program. This luminous chorale-cantata—originally conceived for the Feast of the Annunciation—is presented here in the context of transition from darkness to light, on the date of Holy Saturday within the Christian Church. Valentina Grasso, Assistant Professor of History at Bard, will present a reading from Dante’s Divine Comedy—in lieu of the traditional Lutheran sermon—at the center of Bach’s 1725 masterpiece.
Fisher Center, Sosnoff Theater The Bard Baroque Ensemble, under the direction of Renée Anne Louprette, presents its debut performance in the Fisher Center, featuring works by Bach, Handel, and Mozart dedicated to the memory of Frederick Fisher Hammond (1937–2023), Professor Emeritus and the Irma Brandeis Chair of Romance Cultures and Music History. The program celebrates the restoration of Professor Hammond’s French double-manual and Italian single-manual harpsichords, now a part of Bard College’s collection of early keyboard instruments, featuring them in the Concerto for Two Harpsichords, Strings, and Continuo in C Minor, BWV 1060 by Johann Sebastian Bach, with Sophia Cornicello and Raymond Erickson as harpsichord soloists.
The Bard Theater & Performance Program presents Good Penny by DN Bashir, Assistant Professor of Theater & Performance at Bard College, and directed by Katherine Wilkinson.
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 M.A. candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Church of St. John the Evangelist, 1114 River Road, Barrytown Join us for services (Holy Communion) at the Episcopal Church of St. John the Evangelist (1114 River Road) in Barrytown. Rides to the church are provided every Sunday throughout the academic year. Please be at the Bard Chapel at 9:45 am to get picked up.
All are welcome!
Christians, non-Christians, spiritual but not religious, agnostics, believers, doubters, seekers, those who have questions about faith and religion, those struggling to understand where God is in our challenging world—anyone wanting to use their faith to change and act in the world! For more information, call 203-858-8800, or e-mail [email protected].
Chapel of the Holy Innocents Catholic Mass will be available at 11:30 in the Holy Innocents Chapel. All are welcome! For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
The Bard Theater & Performance Program presents Good Penny by DN Bashir, Assistant Professor of Theater & Performance at Bard College, and directed by Katherine Wilkinson.
Degree Recital: Jalen Mims, clarinet, with Neilson Chen, piano
Works by Othmar Schoeck, Johannes Brahms, and Paquito D’Rivera.
Sunday, April 20, 2025 4 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Join us for a student recital. Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Center for Spiritual Life Buddhist Meditation Room Mondays: Guided Meditation 6-6:15 pm: Dharma words 6:15-6:45: Meditation 6:45-7 pm: Walking meditation and chanting Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and popcorn.
Thursdays: Silent Meditation 6-7 pm: Meditation in stillness Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and rice.
Join at any time and stay for any length of time.Sponsored by: Chaplaincy.
For more information, call 845-752-4619, or e-mail [email protected].
Institute of Advanced Theology Spring Lecture Series
Monday, April 21, 2025 12:30–2 pm
Bard Hall A lecture series from Bruce Chilton, Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Philosophy and Religion; Director, Institute of Advanced Theology The Bible does not mean only what Christianity says it means, or only what Judaism says it means, or only what Islam says it means. Biblical meaning also cannot be reduced to the caricatures produced by a small but strident coterie of atheist Fundamentalists in recent years.
The Bible unfolded over the course of a millennium of development. During that process social forces in each phase shaped the texts as they stand today, and in some cases the texts can be seen to push back against their contexts. The formation of the Bible resulted in the evolution of a social message, what the Aramaic, and Hebrew, and Greek languages of composition call a “gospel.” Our series is designed to uncover the grounding principles of this gospel as it unfolded over time and was articulated by the Bible in its own terms, before Judaism, Christianity, and Islam emerged.Sponsored by: Institute of Advanced Theology.
For more information, call 845-758-7667, or e-mail [email protected].
Albee Basement (Chaplaincy Offices) Come by the Chaplaincy office (Albee Basement) to knit or learn how to knit! Crocheters and needleworkers are also invited. Materials including yarn and knitting needles are provided. Everyone is welcome.Sponsored by: Chaplaincy.
For more information, call 203-858-8800, or e-mail [email protected].
Music Research Strategies' (Marshall Trammell) Grammar of Motives
Sawkill Watershed score visualization based on found data
Monday, April 21, 2025 1:30–3 pm
Sawkill Creek -- meet at the mushroom farm Music Research Strategies' (Marshall Trammell) Grammar of Motives is a hands-on, student-made, tactical media-making Insurgent Learning Workshop to create a graphic score music composition and conduction system for a faculty performance based on highlighting popular education and conservation inititiaves from the Bard Community Science Lab and the Saw Kill Watershed Community.
RSVP here. For more information, call 845-758-6822.
First-Year Seminar • Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition
And the Artwork that Inspired it
Monday, April 21, 2025 5:15–6:45 pm
Fisher Center, Sosnoff Theater
This performance, featuring the Bard Conservatory Orchestra, is presented as part of the second-semester program for the First-Year Seminar.
This semester, the course invites students to engage with the complexities of democratic life—its challenges, responsibilities, and possibilities. Through foundational texts in literature, philosophy, history, and political theory, students explore enduring questions of citizenship, belonging, and the meaning of community.
Culture—including music—plays a vital role in shaping how we imagine and inhabit our shared world. This performance expands on that conversation, offering a powerful artistic lens through which to reflect on the human dimensions of civic life.
This performance, featuring the Bard Conservatory Orchestra, is presented as part of the second-semester program for the First-Year Seminar.
This semester, the course invites students to engage with the complexities of democratic life— its challenges, responsibilities, and possibilities. Through foundational texts in literature, philosophy, history, and political theory, students explore enduring questions of citizenship, belonging, and the meaning of community. Culture (including music) plays a vital role in shaping how we imagine and inhabit our shared world. This performance expands on that conversation, offering a powerful artistic lens through which to reflect on the human dimensions of civic life.
Attendance is mandatory for First-Year Seminar students.Sponsored by: First-Year Seminar.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Campus Center, Weis Cinema Screening of an Oscar-winning film about the destruction of the West Bank community of Masafer Yatta. Followed by a discussion with Sam Stein, a Palestinian Solidarity Activist working in Masafer Yatta.Sponsored by: Hannah Arendt Center.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Monday, 21 April, 5:30PM. Stevenson Library A Conversation between editor Bradford Morrow and critic Christian Lorentzen on the importance of literary journals for contemporary writers.
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Tuesday, 22 April, 5:00PM. Bito Conservatory Auditorium A Reading with special guests, including Forrest Gander, Shane McCrae, and Francine Prose.
Since 1981, Conjunctions, founded and edited by Bradford Morrow, has been the preeminent home for writers who challenge convention with works that are formally innovative and culturally transformative.
Bard has been publishing Conjunctions since 1990, beginning with issue #15 and running through to forthcoming issue #84 We Love All We Voices.
Conjunctions was Initially conceived as a festschrift for New Directions’ founder, James Laughlin. The inaugural issue included Tennessee Williams, John Hawkes, Denise Levertov, Kenneth Rexroth, and Paul Bowles. Since the journal has come to Bard, it has featured work by, among many others: Forrest Gander, Mary Caponegro, Joyce Carol Oats, Robert Creeley, Lydia Davis, Ben Okri, Jayne Anne Phillips, Ann Lauterbach, David Foster Wallace, Rick Moody, Peter Gizzi, Karen Russell, Nathanael Mackey and Shane McCrae. Sponsored by: Office of the President, Office of the Dean of the College, and Written Arts Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
The Graduate Vocal Arts Program Presents: First-Year Vocal Ensembles Concert
Tuesday, April 22, 2025 12 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space The first year students of the Graduate Vocal Arts program present a short lunchtime concert of 16th and 17th century unaccompanied madrigals and airs by composers including John Dowland and Henry Purcell.
Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music; Bard Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Jazz Room Music Research Strategies' (Marshall Trammell) Grammar of Motives is a hands-on, student-made, tactical media-making Insurgent Learning Workshop to create a graphic score music composition and conduction system for a faculty performance based on highlighting popular education and conservation inititiaves from the Bard Community Science Lab and the Saw Kill Watershed Community. Join us for drafting and rehearsal.
RSVP here. For more information, call 845-758-6822.
Richard Ellmann, James Joyce, and Literary Biography: A talk by Zachary Leader
Tuesday, April 22, 2025 5:30–7 pm
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium Richard Ellmann’s James Joyce has been called “the greatest literary biography of the twentieth century.” This talk, by the critic and biographer Zachary Leader, tells the story of the book and its maker, in the process arguing for the artistic claims not only of Ellmann himself, a remarkable man, but of literary biography in general.
Zachary Leader (born 1946) is an Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Roehampton. He was an undergraduate at Northwestern University, and did graduate work at Trinity College, Cambridge and Harvard University, where he was awarded a PhD in English in 1977. Although born and raised in the U.S. he has lived for over forty years in the U.K., and has dual British and American citizenship. His best-known works are The Letters of Kingsley Amis (2001), The Life of Kingsley Amis (2007), a finalist for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Biography, and The Life of Saul Bellow: To Fame and Fortune, 1915-1964 (2015), which was shortlisted for the Wingate Prize in the U.K. The Life of Saul Bellow: Love and Strife 1965 to 2005 was published in 2018. He has written and edited a dozen books, including both volumes of the Saul Bellow biography, and is General Editor of The Oxford History of Life-Writing, a seven-volume series published by OUP. A recipient of Guggenheim, Whiting, Huntington, Leverhulme and British Academy Fellowships, he is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Introduction: Gregory Moynahan, Associate Professor of History, Bard College Q&A Moderator: Elizabeth Frank, Joseph E. Harry Professor of Modern Languages and Literature, Bard CollegeSponsored by: Division of Languages and Literature; Division of Social Studies; German Studies Program; Hannah Arendt Center; Historical Studies Program; Human Rights Project; Irish and Celtic Studies (ICS) Program; Written Arts Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Online Event This month's special guest James Romm, in conversation about his forthcoming book, Plato and the Tyrant, with host Roger Berkowitz, Founder and Academic Director of the Hannah Arendt Center.
Plato and the Tyrant (Norton, May 2025) is a hard look at Plato's political misadventure in the Greek city of Syracuse, where Plato collaborated with a despotic regime in hopes of moderating its absolutism, and at the ways his Republic is connected, in disquieting ways, to that Syracusan episode.
James Romm is the James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Classics at Bard College and author of numerous books on topics from Greek history and culture. His essays and reviews appear regularly in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books.
For Love of the World, every fourth Tuesday from 6-6:30 pm on Radio Kingston is your portal to the bold ideas and respectful, deep conversations about contemporary issues that we’re having regularly at the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College. Join host Roger Berkowitz each month as we delve into the work of one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century, Hannah Arendt, with renowned scholars and public intellectuals, and exemplify what it means to have a conversation of patient humility, in the Arendtian tradition.
1490 AM | 107.9 FM | or stream online and anytime at radiokingston.orgSponsored by: Hannah Arendt Center.
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 M.A. candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Music Research Strategies: Performance of Selected Scores
Wednesday, April 23, 2025 4–5:30 pm
Olin Auditorium Music Research Strategies' (Marshall Trammell) Grammar of Motives is a hands-on, student-made, tactical media-making Insurgent Learning Workshop to create a graphic score music composition and conduction system for a faculty performance based on highlighting popular education and conservation inititiaves from the Bard Community Science Lab and the Saw Kill Watershed Community. Join us for a performance of the developed scores.
RSVP here.Sponsored by: American and Indigenous Studies Program; Center for Indigenous Studies.
The Preacher's Flow: Inspired Eloquence as the central skill of Mahāyāna Buddhist Preachers
A talk by Dr. Ralph Craig, Assistant Professor of Religion, Whitman College
Wednesday, April 23, 2025 5–6:30 pm
Olin Humanities, Room 102 This talk first discusses the South Asian Buddhist notion of pratibhāna-pratisaṃvid, or “skillful knowledge of inspired eloquence.” Then it turns to a discussion of how the concept of “inspired eloquence” informs and provides context for Turner’s sermonic stylings on her last recorded albums. It will conclude by considering what the notion of inspired eloquence offers to our understanding of the history of both South Asian Mahāyāna Buddhism and American Buddhism.
This talk is made possible through the generous support of the Warren Mills Hutcheson Endowed Fund in Religion. For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Five Disruptive Principles in the Liberal Arts Series: Agency and Responsibility
Wednesday, April 23, 2025 5–6:30 pm
Online Event 5 PM New York l 10 PM Vienna
AltLiberalArts' “Five Disruptive Principles in the Liberal Arts” series explores the core values that define an exceptional liberal arts education. The first event will explore "Agency/Responsibility" with moderator Susan Burns and panelists Sophia Brown and Dan Chambliss. Don’t miss this exciting opportunity to engage with innovative thought leaders as they share their vision of how these principles empower students and educators alike.
Susan Burns spent 34 years as a writer and editor for SagaCity Media (formerly Gulfshore Media) in Sarasota, where she was founding editor of a regional business magazine and editor-in-chief of Sarasota Magazine before retiring in 2022. A New College alum, she sat on the New College Foundation board from 2020 to 2024 and served as chair of the governance committee.
Sophia Brown is the Program Coordinator of PEN America Florida. She graduated from New College in 2023, where she studied English with a slash in Rhetoric in Writing and served as the Editor in Chief of the student-run newspaper, the Catalyst, from Fall 2021 to Spring 2023.
Daniel F. Chambliss (B.A. New College, 1975; PhD Yale University, 1982) is the Eugene M. Tobin Distinguished Professor of Sociology Emeritus at Hamilton College, and co-author, with his former student Chris Takacs, of How College Works. He is also co-author, with Russell Schutt, of Making Sense of the Social World, a research methods text currently in its fifth edition.
Join us for a talk by Director of Bard Globalization and the International Affairs Program Elmira Bayrasli.Sponsored by: Center for Civic Engagement; Hannah Arendt Center.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Recital and Masterclass: West Point Brass Quintet featuring Master Sergeant Yalin Chi
Wednesday, April 23, 2025 7 pm
Olin Hall
The West Point Brass Quintet is the primary chamber ensemble of the Army’s oldest musical organization, the West Point Band. Stationed at the United States Military Academy at West Point, the Quintet provides support for West Point ceremonies as well as other outreach events throughout the Northeast.
Master Sergeant Yalin Chi joined the West Point Band in 2007. She has appeared as a piano soloist with the Green Bay Orchestra, Hudson Valley Philharmonic, and the Juilliard Pre-College Orchestra, among others; and has performed at Alice Tully Hall, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, Gardner Museum, and Kumho Art Hall in Seoul, South Korea.
Free and open to the public.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Center for Spiritual Life Buddhist Meditation Room Mondays: Guided Meditation 6-6:15 pm: Dharma words 6:15-6:45: Meditation 6:45-7 pm: Walking meditation and chanting Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and popcorn.
Thursdays: Silent Meditation 6-7 pm: Meditation in stillness Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and rice.
Join at any time and stay for any length of time.Sponsored by: Chaplaincy.
For more information, call 845-752-4619, or e-mail [email protected].
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 M.A. candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Reem-Kayden Center Room 102 Please consider taking part in our group's final project for PSY 201. There are 2 time slots available: 10 am or 11 am. The experiment will take about 25 minutes. Anyone is eligible and everyone who takes part will automatically be entered into a raffle for a chance to win one of three gift cards! For more information, call 314-347-2286, or e-mail [email protected].
CfIS Alumni/ae Speaker Series with Candice Hopkins (Carcross/Tagish First Nation), Bard CCS ’03
Thursday, April 24, 2025 3:30 pm
Weis Cinema Candice Hopkins (she/her) serves as Forge Project's executive director and chief curator, working with contemporary Indigenous artists to shape one of the preeminent collections of Native art in the country. Candice is a citizen of the Carcross/Tagish First Nation, spent many years in New Mexico, Canada, and Europe before moving to the unceded lands of the Muh-he-con-ne-ok in upstate New York to help build Forge into what it is today.
“Forge has a unique vision and is unlike any other organization in the country," says Candice. "We are a small and dedicated team that is together looking to reshape dialogues on Indigenous culture. The absence of Indigenous voices from national conversations on history, politics, and culture broadly should not be tolerable. One question we ask ourselves at Forge is how we can create platforms for Indigenous leaders now and for those who will lead us in the future.”
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Disability as a Social Identity Protects Against Ableism
A talk by Dr. Kathleen Bogart, Oregon State University
Thursday, April 24, 2025 4 pm
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium The largest minority group in the United States, disability, is often overlooked in prejudice research. As with other socially constructed minorities, it is valuable to examine disability through a social identity lens. Recent research shows that experiencing ableism may prompt development of disability pride, which in turn protects self-esteem. Thus, we might resist ableism by fostering disability pride and increasing representation of the social model of disability.
This lecture is made possible through the generous support of the Andrew J. Bernstein Foundation. It is free and open to the public. Sponsored by: The Andrew J. Bernstein Foundation and Psychology Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Socialist F(r)action of Oil: Petropoetics of Early Soviet Culture
Lecture by preeminent Russian literary critic and scholar in exile Ilya Kalinin (Humboldt University and Bard College Berlin)
Thursday, April 24, 2025 5:30 pm
Olin Humanities, Room 205 In his lecture, Ilya Kalinin will explore the impact of the Bolshevik petroleum project - the extraction and use of oil - on the culture and ideology of the early Soviet state. Soviet society communicated with oil in the language of socialist transformation. But the sovietization of oil was broader than its technological and sociopolitical processing. For oil to flow from the wells and fill the arteries of the socialist economy, it had to permeate the discursive fabric of Soviet media and cultural production. Dr. Kalinin will discuss this complex relationship through an analysis of literary works, film, and visual art from the 1920s and beyond.Sponsored by: The Russian and Eurasian Studies program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Olin Humanities, Room 102 Join us for a talk by Senior Fellow at Bard Center for Civic Engagement Frederic C. Hof. For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 M.A. candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Online Event We're reading The Life of the Mind, Hannah Arendt’s unfinished final work. In it, she focuses on three basic mental activities—thinking, willing, and judging—and their relation to the world of appearances and to the human capacity for moral and political action. The new critical edition makes available in print, for the first time, the text of the typescripts as Arendt left them, complemented by a wealth of previously unpublished material, detailed annotations, and extensive scholarly commentary. We will also be referring to Mary McCarthy's edition for increased accessibility.
Free to HAC members and to Bard students, staff, and faculty! Email [email protected] for the Zoom link.
Find the full Virtural Reading Group schedule: hac.bard.edu/programs/vrg/ Get the new critical edition of The Life of the Mindhere.
Don't worry if you miss a VRG meeting! We post them all on our YouTube channel the week after they're recorded. Or tune in to an edited version of the chapter readings plus bonus episodes on our podcast, Reading Hannah Arendt with Roger Berkowitz.Sponsored by: Hannah Arendt Center.
Sidelines Redrawn: Re-examining the Role of Marginality in Ancient Greek Literature
*Note location change
Friday, April 25, 2025 9 am – 5 pm
Olin Humanities, Room 102 In our contemporary era, marginality typically refers to people that lie on the fringes or margins of society with regard to some socio-economic or socio-political characteristic. In the context of the ancient Greek world, it is fairly easy to assign groups to this marginal category. However, ancient literature tends to complicate this modern notion of marginality, and characters that would normally be considered marginal from a historical standpoint are often put in positions that allow them to influence others and act beyond the limitations of their societal station. This talk will discuss the disconnect between literature and historical reality when it comes to marginal characters and their potential for agency and efficacy. Reexamining ancient Greek literature with this in mind will provide another avenue of interpretation that will contribute to our understanding of these works.Sponsored by: Classical Studies and the Dean's Office.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Hybrid Event The 2025 April Conference is a full day workshop in small, interactive groups. It is a hybrid event, and participants can join us in person at Bard College or online. Participants read and write together in their workshop groups, drawing on a rich anthology of texts, and gather for a mid-morning plenary session that helps to anchor and inspire the day’s work. For more information, call 845-752-4516, e-mail [email protected], or visit https://iwt.bard.edu/april/.
State of Fracture: Thesis Exhibition of the MA in Human Rights & the Arts 2025
Runs through Sunday, May 4, 2025 3–7:30 pm
Massena Campus The MA Program at the Center for Human Rights & the Arts is pleased to announce the thesis exhibition of the MA in Human Rights & the Arts, Class of 2025.
The exhibition is taking place April 25 through May 4, 3–7:30 pm, across the Massena Campus at Bard College. The exhibition features installations, films, and written works by the graduating cohort. The artistic, academic, and hybrid theses are all based on original research by students. They make interventions at both the analytic and methodological levels of analysis.
Below is the program for the thesis exhibition, including a list of events and showcased works :
Opening Reception Friday, 25 April 2025 4pm–7pm Exhibition opening and food-for-purchase provided by Samosa Shack.
Lecture Performance Conducting Empire by Elinor Arden Friday 25 April, Sunday 27 April, Saturday 3 May 6:30 pm–7pm
Panel Presentation Featuring Miguel Angel Castañeda Barahona, Pyae Phyo Aung, and Arina Pshenichnaya Saturday, May 3 4 pm–5 pm
Written Theses Excerpts of these works are on display in the exhibition
“The Human Right to What?” Hunger, Food, and People: A Journey to the South Miguel Angel Castañeda Barahona
Sacred War as the Russian National Idea Arina Pshenichnaya
“Late pyar lone lar?” In Search of A Clear Conscience in Myanmar’s Spring Revolution Pyae Phyo Aung
A Baghdad Sin: Peregrinations in A Ruptured Geography Nabil Salih
Installations Open daily, 3–7:30 pm
FordDat Sariyah Abuzant
Livestreamed Genocide: TikTok LIVE in Gaza Sarah Al-Yahya
Calls from an Unseen Chorus Amr Amer
Conducting Empire Elinor Arden
The Land, Not a Film By Youssef Chahine Leil Zahra Mortada
Prison Rule 113.11 and Fugitive Tools Mauro Tosarelli
Thesis Project Abstracts
FordDat Sariyah Abuzant This installation features a docufiction video and explores the role of an unofficial taxi vehicle vital to mobility in occupied Palestine, using the cases of Abu Dis and Al-Eizariya, two towns located in Area C of the West Bank. Manufactured by Ford Motor Company, this US vehicle has unintentionally functioned as the connective tissue of a fragmented landscape, navigating an apartheid system reinforced by the Oslo Accords. Operating illegally for over thirty years, the Ford Transit has not only sustained movement but also emerged as a tool of cultural sovereignty, community-structured infrastructure, and self-governance. A time capsule of Oslo’s failures, this vehicle offers a lens into the lived realities of Palestinian daily resistance and the unyielding struggle for the right to move.
Livestreamed Genocide: TikTok LIVE in Gaza Sarah Al-Yahya This hybrid project, comprised of an interactive, web-based installation and research article, examines how “history’s first livestreamed genocide” in Gaza has been presented on TikTok LIVE. The work explores these streams, characterized by their low viewership as well as scattered and disorienting nature, arguing that they reshape our understanding of “livestreamed genocide” as a historical media paradigm. The installation foregrounds the tensions between a gamified platform and the realities of war on the Gaza Strip. In doing so, it examines the uneasy rise of TikTok’s algorithmically-driven platform as a space where social media visibility and atrocity merge, clash, and are reshaped by the logic of public engagement.
Calls from an Unseen Chorus Amr Amer Calls from an Unseen Chorus is a sound installation that resists the passive consumption of Palestine as an image of suffering, instead demanding engagement through the act of listening. Centering the auditory as a site of resistance, the work immerses audiences in the sonic realities of occupation and defiance—from the oppressive stasis of colonial checkpoints to the collective force of protest chants, resistance music, and the recorded wills of martyrs. These layered soundscapes challenge static representations of Palestinian struggle, asserting a mobilized, dissenting presence and an unceasing fight for liberation. By stripping away the visual, Calls from an Unseen Chorus transforms listening into an entry point for solidarity, where sound becomes both testimony and a call to resistance.
Conducting Empire Elinor Arden Conducting Empire is a research article and an installation-performance investigating the material history of the undersea cable network: the physical ‘backbone’ of the internet. The project explores what lies beneath Google’s marketing strategies for their new transatlantic cables, tracing the genealogy of this infrastructure to 19th-century Britain and the era of so-called abolition. A live activation of a sound sculpture exposes the metallic substance of the cable network and its transmission of historical records into the present. By linking claims of technological progress to imperial control, the work reframes the utopian ideal of global connectivity with evidence found in the British National Archives, from the Birmingham copper industry to a mass of colonial correspondences. Conducting Empire removes the network’s insulation to uncover how telecommunications were produced through a violent historical circuit.
“Late pyar lone lar?” In Search of A Clear Conscience in Myanmar’s Spring Revolution Pyae Phyo Aung This written thesis explores the question of morality and conscience in the anti-authoritarian revolution that took shape in response to the 2021 military coup in Myanmar. The term late pyar lone chin refers to the pride of performing a just action or the shame and guilt of not doing so, and the question, late pyar lone lar?, means roughly “do you have a clear conscience?” It is now widely used to testify to (or question) one’s stance and involvement in the revolution. Examining the digital artifacts and lived experiences of protestors, resistance fighters, and activist fundraisers, the thesis studies the role of calls to conscience in political mobilization and investigates how affect and morality have been activated through aesthetic means to shape the trajectory of the Spring Revolution in Myanmar.
“The Human Right to What?” Hunger, Food, and People: A Journey to the South. Miguel Angel Castañeda Barahona The public policy known as Areas of Protection for Food Production was launched in July of 2024 in the south of La Guajira, Colombia. It aims to focus land use on agricultural production and prohibit any type of mining exploitation. This transition is based on concepts such as the human right to food and food security. This written thesis explores the origins of these concepts, their scope, and their limitations. This is particularly relevant at a time when the La Guajira Corporation is about to grant approval to the mining company Best Coal Company to exploit millions of tons of coal in the Cañaverales Community. This thesis responds to the crisis and the difficulties of the energy transition from an epistemological point of view, through an analysis of archives and geopoetics.
The Land, Not a Film By Youssef Chahine Leil Zahra Mortada This hybrid project interrogates the role of Arab cultural production—particularly Egyptian songs and films about the Aswan High Dam—in shaping public history and contributing to Nubian dispossession. Building on an ongoing collaboration with Nubian activists, one component of this project is a research article that critiques nationalism and encourages a reflection on the power of cultural memory to perpetuate erasure or resist it. The second component of this project is an interactive installation titled The Land, Not a Film By Youssef Chahine, which examines state propaganda and confronts the failures of Arab liberation movements, while centering a Nubian narrative and presents a speculative grassroots response.
Sacred War as the Russian National Idea Arina Pshenichnaya Despite the secular image often associated with modern nationalism, the Russian state’s sacralization of war reveals the enduring power of religious symbols, rituals, and narratives in shaping national identity. This written thesis examines how the concept of sacred war has become central to the Russian national idea through a fusion of Orthodox theology, state power, and militarized aesthetics. It focuses on two key phenomena: the Main Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces, which presents war as a timeless and divine foundation of Russian identity; and front-line baptismal rituals, which transform soldiers into metaphysical agents of a civilizational mission. I analyze these practices through the writings of Aleksandr Dugin, whose metaphysical theory of civilizational conflict (noomachy) frames war not as a geopolitical act but as an ontological necessity. Dugin’s thought provides the ideological architecture through which Russia is positioned as a sacred civilization resisting Western nihilism, where war is not simply justified, but ritually and cosmologically required. In doing so, the study challenges secular readings of nationalism and highlights how authoritarian regimes can mobilize religious metaphysics to render war not only legitimate, but liturgically necessary.
A Baghdad Sin: Peregrinations in a Ruptured Geography Nabil Salih Aftermaths are deceptive. They obscure and conceal. This text, weaved along a photographic inquiry, troubles the notion of quietude. Together, they try to point to what lurks and haunts in the crevices of a wounded urbanscape. Twenty-one years after the invasion and occupation of Iraq, what litter and refuse remain in Baghdad today? In a time of rapid urban reconfiguration, what do the residual wartime rubble and the paraphernalia of security regimes tell us of the present, its politics, and relationship to the past? Put differently, what forces and apparatuses obstruct an Iraqi’s walk? Standing by the ruins is an old tradition dating to pre-Islamic poetry and the laments of ancient Mesopotamia. This essay follows suit but goes beyond. Its fragments narrate my auto-ethnographic and ethnographic walks and rides in Baghdad, where I investigate the constellations of rubble, the affects they discharge, and the memories they awaken in a given locale. Much ink and blood were spilled on the streets of Baghdad and world newspapers; this endeavor asks what Iraqis are left with today. The photographs aspire to a private archive for public loss, each being an obstinate interlocutor tested for what eludes vision and what is thought to be seen.
Prison Rule 113.11 and Fugitive Tools Mauro Tosarelli Prisons are not just spaces of deprivation and submission but environments where survival gives rise to new forms of expression and interaction. Despite spatial, social, and political constraints, prisoners cultivate communication networks through sound, imagery, and handmade tools. This installation reframes prison life by focusing on acquired culture and produced knowledge rather than narratives of marginalization. Prison Rule 113.11 highlights both clandestine tools of disobedience—tattoo guns, fishing lines, and makeshift speakers—and the coercion tools manufactured through prison labor. These objects are not merely functional but symbolic of defiance and connection. By amplifying sound rather than retreating into silence, prisoners reclaim their lives and assert their resistance to isolation. Positioning these tools as ‘fugitive objects’, this work reveals how incarcerated individuals are not merely passive subjects but a challenge to the very structures designed to contain them.Sponsored by: Center for Human Rights and the Arts.
State of Fracture: Thesis Exhibition of the MA in Human Rights and the Arts, 2025
Runs through Sunday, May 4, 2025 3–7:30 pm
Massena Campus The MA Program at the Center for Human Rights and the Arts is pleased to announce its Class of 2025 MA thesis exhibition.
The exhibition is taking place April 25 through May 4, 3 – 7:30 pm, across the Massena Campus at Bard. The exhibition features installations, films, and written works by the graduating cohort. The artistic, academic, and hybrid theses are all based on original research by students.Sponsored by: Center for Human Rights and the Arts.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Works by Hansen, Blume, Piazzolla, Dvořák, Wolf, Beach, Poulenc, Debussy, Franck, and more!
Friday, April 25, 2025 4–9 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space
This concert is a part of the Conservatory’s Chamber Music Program, which all instrumental and studio faculty support through their generous coaching and mentorship. Please note that there will be a break in the program from approximately 5:30 PM - 7:00 PM.
Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube Channel here.
Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 M.A. candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
State of Fracture: Thesis Exhibition of the MA in Human Rights & the Arts 2025
Runs through Sunday, May 4, 2025 3–7:30 pm
Massena Campus The MA Program at the Center for Human Rights & the Arts is pleased to announce the thesis exhibition of the MA in Human Rights & the Arts, Class of 2025.
The exhibition is taking place April 25 through May 4, 3–7:30 pm, across the Massena Campus at Bard College. The exhibition features installations, films, and written works by the graduating cohort. The artistic, academic, and hybrid theses are all based on original research by students. They make interventions at both the analytic and methodological levels of analysis.
Below is the program for the thesis exhibition, including a list of events and showcased works :
Opening Reception Friday, 25 April 2025 4pm–7pm Exhibition opening and food-for-purchase provided by Samosa Shack.
Lecture Performance Conducting Empire by Elinor Arden Friday 25 April, Sunday 27 April, Saturday 3 May 6:30 pm–7pm
Panel Presentation Featuring Miguel Angel Castañeda Barahona, Pyae Phyo Aung, and Arina Pshenichnaya Saturday, May 3 4 pm–5 pm
Written Theses Excerpts of these works are on display in the exhibition
“The Human Right to What?” Hunger, Food, and People: A Journey to the South Miguel Angel Castañeda Barahona
Sacred War as the Russian National Idea Arina Pshenichnaya
“Late pyar lone lar?” In Search of A Clear Conscience in Myanmar’s Spring Revolution Pyae Phyo Aung
A Baghdad Sin: Peregrinations in A Ruptured Geography Nabil Salih
Installations Open daily, 3–7:30 pm
FordDat Sariyah Abuzant
Livestreamed Genocide: TikTok LIVE in Gaza Sarah Al-Yahya
Calls from an Unseen Chorus Amr Amer
Conducting Empire Elinor Arden
The Land, Not a Film By Youssef Chahine Leil Zahra Mortada
Prison Rule 113.11 and Fugitive Tools Mauro Tosarelli
Thesis Project Abstracts
FordDat Sariyah Abuzant This installation features a docufiction video and explores the role of an unofficial taxi vehicle vital to mobility in occupied Palestine, using the cases of Abu Dis and Al-Eizariya, two towns located in Area C of the West Bank. Manufactured by Ford Motor Company, this US vehicle has unintentionally functioned as the connective tissue of a fragmented landscape, navigating an apartheid system reinforced by the Oslo Accords. Operating illegally for over thirty years, the Ford Transit has not only sustained movement but also emerged as a tool of cultural sovereignty, community-structured infrastructure, and self-governance. A time capsule of Oslo’s failures, this vehicle offers a lens into the lived realities of Palestinian daily resistance and the unyielding struggle for the right to move.
Livestreamed Genocide: TikTok LIVE in Gaza Sarah Al-Yahya This hybrid project, comprised of an interactive, web-based installation and research article, examines how “history’s first livestreamed genocide” in Gaza has been presented on TikTok LIVE. The work explores these streams, characterized by their low viewership as well as scattered and disorienting nature, arguing that they reshape our understanding of “livestreamed genocide” as a historical media paradigm. The installation foregrounds the tensions between a gamified platform and the realities of war on the Gaza Strip. In doing so, it examines the uneasy rise of TikTok’s algorithmically-driven platform as a space where social media visibility and atrocity merge, clash, and are reshaped by the logic of public engagement.
Calls from an Unseen Chorus Amr Amer Calls from an Unseen Chorus is a sound installation that resists the passive consumption of Palestine as an image of suffering, instead demanding engagement through the act of listening. Centering the auditory as a site of resistance, the work immerses audiences in the sonic realities of occupation and defiance—from the oppressive stasis of colonial checkpoints to the collective force of protest chants, resistance music, and the recorded wills of martyrs. These layered soundscapes challenge static representations of Palestinian struggle, asserting a mobilized, dissenting presence and an unceasing fight for liberation. By stripping away the visual, Calls from an Unseen Chorus transforms listening into an entry point for solidarity, where sound becomes both testimony and a call to resistance.
Conducting Empire Elinor Arden Conducting Empire is a research article and an installation-performance investigating the material history of the undersea cable network: the physical ‘backbone’ of the internet. The project explores what lies beneath Google’s marketing strategies for their new transatlantic cables, tracing the genealogy of this infrastructure to 19th-century Britain and the era of so-called abolition. A live activation of a sound sculpture exposes the metallic substance of the cable network and its transmission of historical records into the present. By linking claims of technological progress to imperial control, the work reframes the utopian ideal of global connectivity with evidence found in the British National Archives, from the Birmingham copper industry to a mass of colonial correspondences. Conducting Empire removes the network’s insulation to uncover how telecommunications were produced through a violent historical circuit.
“Late pyar lone lar?” In Search of A Clear Conscience in Myanmar’s Spring Revolution Pyae Phyo Aung This written thesis explores the question of morality and conscience in the anti-authoritarian revolution that took shape in response to the 2021 military coup in Myanmar. The term late pyar lone chin refers to the pride of performing a just action or the shame and guilt of not doing so, and the question, late pyar lone lar?, means roughly “do you have a clear conscience?” It is now widely used to testify to (or question) one’s stance and involvement in the revolution. Examining the digital artifacts and lived experiences of protestors, resistance fighters, and activist fundraisers, the thesis studies the role of calls to conscience in political mobilization and investigates how affect and morality have been activated through aesthetic means to shape the trajectory of the Spring Revolution in Myanmar.
“The Human Right to What?” Hunger, Food, and People: A Journey to the South. Miguel Angel Castañeda Barahona The public policy known as Areas of Protection for Food Production was launched in July of 2024 in the south of La Guajira, Colombia. It aims to focus land use on agricultural production and prohibit any type of mining exploitation. This transition is based on concepts such as the human right to food and food security. This written thesis explores the origins of these concepts, their scope, and their limitations. This is particularly relevant at a time when the La Guajira Corporation is about to grant approval to the mining company Best Coal Company to exploit millions of tons of coal in the Cañaverales Community. This thesis responds to the crisis and the difficulties of the energy transition from an epistemological point of view, through an analysis of archives and geopoetics.
The Land, Not a Film By Youssef Chahine Leil Zahra Mortada This hybrid project interrogates the role of Arab cultural production—particularly Egyptian songs and films about the Aswan High Dam—in shaping public history and contributing to Nubian dispossession. Building on an ongoing collaboration with Nubian activists, one component of this project is a research article that critiques nationalism and encourages a reflection on the power of cultural memory to perpetuate erasure or resist it. The second component of this project is an interactive installation titled The Land, Not a Film By Youssef Chahine, which examines state propaganda and confronts the failures of Arab liberation movements, while centering a Nubian narrative and presents a speculative grassroots response.
Sacred War as the Russian National Idea Arina Pshenichnaya Despite the secular image often associated with modern nationalism, the Russian state’s sacralization of war reveals the enduring power of religious symbols, rituals, and narratives in shaping national identity. This written thesis examines how the concept of sacred war has become central to the Russian national idea through a fusion of Orthodox theology, state power, and militarized aesthetics. It focuses on two key phenomena: the Main Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces, which presents war as a timeless and divine foundation of Russian identity; and front-line baptismal rituals, which transform soldiers into metaphysical agents of a civilizational mission. I analyze these practices through the writings of Aleksandr Dugin, whose metaphysical theory of civilizational conflict (noomachy) frames war not as a geopolitical act but as an ontological necessity. Dugin’s thought provides the ideological architecture through which Russia is positioned as a sacred civilization resisting Western nihilism, where war is not simply justified, but ritually and cosmologically required. In doing so, the study challenges secular readings of nationalism and highlights how authoritarian regimes can mobilize religious metaphysics to render war not only legitimate, but liturgically necessary.
A Baghdad Sin: Peregrinations in a Ruptured Geography Nabil Salih Aftermaths are deceptive. They obscure and conceal. This text, weaved along a photographic inquiry, troubles the notion of quietude. Together, they try to point to what lurks and haunts in the crevices of a wounded urbanscape. Twenty-one years after the invasion and occupation of Iraq, what litter and refuse remain in Baghdad today? In a time of rapid urban reconfiguration, what do the residual wartime rubble and the paraphernalia of security regimes tell us of the present, its politics, and relationship to the past? Put differently, what forces and apparatuses obstruct an Iraqi’s walk? Standing by the ruins is an old tradition dating to pre-Islamic poetry and the laments of ancient Mesopotamia. This essay follows suit but goes beyond. Its fragments narrate my auto-ethnographic and ethnographic walks and rides in Baghdad, where I investigate the constellations of rubble, the affects they discharge, and the memories they awaken in a given locale. Much ink and blood were spilled on the streets of Baghdad and world newspapers; this endeavor asks what Iraqis are left with today. The photographs aspire to a private archive for public loss, each being an obstinate interlocutor tested for what eludes vision and what is thought to be seen.
Prison Rule 113.11 and Fugitive Tools Mauro Tosarelli Prisons are not just spaces of deprivation and submission but environments where survival gives rise to new forms of expression and interaction. Despite spatial, social, and political constraints, prisoners cultivate communication networks through sound, imagery, and handmade tools. This installation reframes prison life by focusing on acquired culture and produced knowledge rather than narratives of marginalization. Prison Rule 113.11 highlights both clandestine tools of disobedience—tattoo guns, fishing lines, and makeshift speakers—and the coercion tools manufactured through prison labor. These objects are not merely functional but symbolic of defiance and connection. By amplifying sound rather than retreating into silence, prisoners reclaim their lives and assert their resistance to isolation. Positioning these tools as ‘fugitive objects’, this work reveals how incarcerated individuals are not merely passive subjects but a challenge to the very structures designed to contain them.Sponsored by: Center for Human Rights and the Arts.
State of Fracture: Thesis Exhibition of the MA in Human Rights and the Arts, 2025
Runs through Sunday, May 4, 2025 3–7:30 pm
Massena Campus The MA Program at the Center for Human Rights and the Arts is pleased to announce its Class of 2025 MA thesis exhibition.
The exhibition is taking place April 25 through May 4, 3 – 7:30 pm, across the Massena Campus at Bard. The exhibition features installations, films, and written works by the graduating cohort. The artistic, academic, and hybrid theses are all based on original research by students.Sponsored by: Center for Human Rights and the Arts.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Bring your broken but beloved items for free fixings by volunteer coaches.
Saturday, April 26, 2025 10 am – 1 pm
Red Hook Community Center, 59 Fisk St, Red Hook A Repair Café is a free meeting place where people come together to repair "broken but beloved" things. We love keeping fixable things out of the landfill! We will have volunteers with repair skills ("Repair Coaches") in all kinds of fields ready to fix. Sometimes they can just provide advice, and sometimes more parts are needed than they have, but they have a good time trying!Sponsored by: Bard Office of Sustainability.
Works by Bourgeois, Beethoven, Debussy, Bizet, Prokofiev, and Brahms.
Saturday, April 26, 2025 3–5 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space
This concert is a part of the Conservatory’s Chamber Music Program, which all instrumental and studio faculty support through their generous coaching and mentorship.
Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube Channel here.
Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Saturday, April 26, 2025 – Sunday, April 27, 2025 7:30–8:30 pm
Fisher Center, Sosnoff Theater A play performed, directed, and designed by students of the Musical Theater Performance Workshop. Runtime is approximately 105 minutes with no intermission.
This show contains material that might be triggering for some audience members. For more information, please contact [email protected].Sponsored by: Music Program.
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 M.A. candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Church of St. John the Evangelist, 1114 River Road, Barrytown Join us for services (Holy Communion) at the Episcopal Church of St. John the Evangelist (1114 River Road) in Barrytown. Rides to the church are provided every Sunday throughout the academic year. Please be at the Bard Chapel at 9:45 am to get picked up.
All are welcome!
Christians, non-Christians, spiritual but not religious, agnostics, believers, doubters, seekers, those who have questions about faith and religion, those struggling to understand where God is in our challenging world—anyone wanting to use their faith to change and act in the world! For more information, call 203-858-8800, or e-mail [email protected].
Chapel of the Holy Innocents Catholic Mass will be available at 11:30 in the Holy Innocents Chapel. All are welcome! For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
State of Fracture: Thesis Exhibition of the MA in Human Rights & the Arts 2025
Runs through Sunday, May 4, 2025 3–7:30 pm
Massena Campus The MA Program at the Center for Human Rights & the Arts is pleased to announce the thesis exhibition of the MA in Human Rights & the Arts, Class of 2025.
The exhibition is taking place April 25 through May 4, 3–7:30 pm, across the Massena Campus at Bard College. The exhibition features installations, films, and written works by the graduating cohort. The artistic, academic, and hybrid theses are all based on original research by students. They make interventions at both the analytic and methodological levels of analysis.
Below is the program for the thesis exhibition, including a list of events and showcased works :
Opening Reception Friday, 25 April 2025 4pm–7pm Exhibition opening and food-for-purchase provided by Samosa Shack.
Lecture Performance Conducting Empire by Elinor Arden Friday 25 April, Sunday 27 April, Saturday 3 May 6:30 pm–7pm
Panel Presentation Featuring Miguel Angel Castañeda Barahona, Pyae Phyo Aung, and Arina Pshenichnaya Saturday, May 3 4 pm–5 pm
Written Theses Excerpts of these works are on display in the exhibition
“The Human Right to What?” Hunger, Food, and People: A Journey to the South Miguel Angel Castañeda Barahona
Sacred War as the Russian National Idea Arina Pshenichnaya
“Late pyar lone lar?” In Search of A Clear Conscience in Myanmar’s Spring Revolution Pyae Phyo Aung
A Baghdad Sin: Peregrinations in A Ruptured Geography Nabil Salih
Installations Open daily, 3–7:30 pm
FordDat Sariyah Abuzant
Livestreamed Genocide: TikTok LIVE in Gaza Sarah Al-Yahya
Calls from an Unseen Chorus Amr Amer
Conducting Empire Elinor Arden
The Land, Not a Film By Youssef Chahine Leil Zahra Mortada
Prison Rule 113.11 and Fugitive Tools Mauro Tosarelli
Thesis Project Abstracts
FordDat Sariyah Abuzant This installation features a docufiction video and explores the role of an unofficial taxi vehicle vital to mobility in occupied Palestine, using the cases of Abu Dis and Al-Eizariya, two towns located in Area C of the West Bank. Manufactured by Ford Motor Company, this US vehicle has unintentionally functioned as the connective tissue of a fragmented landscape, navigating an apartheid system reinforced by the Oslo Accords. Operating illegally for over thirty years, the Ford Transit has not only sustained movement but also emerged as a tool of cultural sovereignty, community-structured infrastructure, and self-governance. A time capsule of Oslo’s failures, this vehicle offers a lens into the lived realities of Palestinian daily resistance and the unyielding struggle for the right to move.
Livestreamed Genocide: TikTok LIVE in Gaza Sarah Al-Yahya This hybrid project, comprised of an interactive, web-based installation and research article, examines how “history’s first livestreamed genocide” in Gaza has been presented on TikTok LIVE. The work explores these streams, characterized by their low viewership as well as scattered and disorienting nature, arguing that they reshape our understanding of “livestreamed genocide” as a historical media paradigm. The installation foregrounds the tensions between a gamified platform and the realities of war on the Gaza Strip. In doing so, it examines the uneasy rise of TikTok’s algorithmically-driven platform as a space where social media visibility and atrocity merge, clash, and are reshaped by the logic of public engagement.
Calls from an Unseen Chorus Amr Amer Calls from an Unseen Chorus is a sound installation that resists the passive consumption of Palestine as an image of suffering, instead demanding engagement through the act of listening. Centering the auditory as a site of resistance, the work immerses audiences in the sonic realities of occupation and defiance—from the oppressive stasis of colonial checkpoints to the collective force of protest chants, resistance music, and the recorded wills of martyrs. These layered soundscapes challenge static representations of Palestinian struggle, asserting a mobilized, dissenting presence and an unceasing fight for liberation. By stripping away the visual, Calls from an Unseen Chorus transforms listening into an entry point for solidarity, where sound becomes both testimony and a call to resistance.
Conducting Empire Elinor Arden Conducting Empire is a research article and an installation-performance investigating the material history of the undersea cable network: the physical ‘backbone’ of the internet. The project explores what lies beneath Google’s marketing strategies for their new transatlantic cables, tracing the genealogy of this infrastructure to 19th-century Britain and the era of so-called abolition. A live activation of a sound sculpture exposes the metallic substance of the cable network and its transmission of historical records into the present. By linking claims of technological progress to imperial control, the work reframes the utopian ideal of global connectivity with evidence found in the British National Archives, from the Birmingham copper industry to a mass of colonial correspondences. Conducting Empire removes the network’s insulation to uncover how telecommunications were produced through a violent historical circuit.
“Late pyar lone lar?” In Search of A Clear Conscience in Myanmar’s Spring Revolution Pyae Phyo Aung This written thesis explores the question of morality and conscience in the anti-authoritarian revolution that took shape in response to the 2021 military coup in Myanmar. The term late pyar lone chin refers to the pride of performing a just action or the shame and guilt of not doing so, and the question, late pyar lone lar?, means roughly “do you have a clear conscience?” It is now widely used to testify to (or question) one’s stance and involvement in the revolution. Examining the digital artifacts and lived experiences of protestors, resistance fighters, and activist fundraisers, the thesis studies the role of calls to conscience in political mobilization and investigates how affect and morality have been activated through aesthetic means to shape the trajectory of the Spring Revolution in Myanmar.
“The Human Right to What?” Hunger, Food, and People: A Journey to the South. Miguel Angel Castañeda Barahona The public policy known as Areas of Protection for Food Production was launched in July of 2024 in the south of La Guajira, Colombia. It aims to focus land use on agricultural production and prohibit any type of mining exploitation. This transition is based on concepts such as the human right to food and food security. This written thesis explores the origins of these concepts, their scope, and their limitations. This is particularly relevant at a time when the La Guajira Corporation is about to grant approval to the mining company Best Coal Company to exploit millions of tons of coal in the Cañaverales Community. This thesis responds to the crisis and the difficulties of the energy transition from an epistemological point of view, through an analysis of archives and geopoetics.
The Land, Not a Film By Youssef Chahine Leil Zahra Mortada This hybrid project interrogates the role of Arab cultural production—particularly Egyptian songs and films about the Aswan High Dam—in shaping public history and contributing to Nubian dispossession. Building on an ongoing collaboration with Nubian activists, one component of this project is a research article that critiques nationalism and encourages a reflection on the power of cultural memory to perpetuate erasure or resist it. The second component of this project is an interactive installation titled The Land, Not a Film By Youssef Chahine, which examines state propaganda and confronts the failures of Arab liberation movements, while centering a Nubian narrative and presents a speculative grassroots response.
Sacred War as the Russian National Idea Arina Pshenichnaya Despite the secular image often associated with modern nationalism, the Russian state’s sacralization of war reveals the enduring power of religious symbols, rituals, and narratives in shaping national identity. This written thesis examines how the concept of sacred war has become central to the Russian national idea through a fusion of Orthodox theology, state power, and militarized aesthetics. It focuses on two key phenomena: the Main Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces, which presents war as a timeless and divine foundation of Russian identity; and front-line baptismal rituals, which transform soldiers into metaphysical agents of a civilizational mission. I analyze these practices through the writings of Aleksandr Dugin, whose metaphysical theory of civilizational conflict (noomachy) frames war not as a geopolitical act but as an ontological necessity. Dugin’s thought provides the ideological architecture through which Russia is positioned as a sacred civilization resisting Western nihilism, where war is not simply justified, but ritually and cosmologically required. In doing so, the study challenges secular readings of nationalism and highlights how authoritarian regimes can mobilize religious metaphysics to render war not only legitimate, but liturgically necessary.
A Baghdad Sin: Peregrinations in a Ruptured Geography Nabil Salih Aftermaths are deceptive. They obscure and conceal. This text, weaved along a photographic inquiry, troubles the notion of quietude. Together, they try to point to what lurks and haunts in the crevices of a wounded urbanscape. Twenty-one years after the invasion and occupation of Iraq, what litter and refuse remain in Baghdad today? In a time of rapid urban reconfiguration, what do the residual wartime rubble and the paraphernalia of security regimes tell us of the present, its politics, and relationship to the past? Put differently, what forces and apparatuses obstruct an Iraqi’s walk? Standing by the ruins is an old tradition dating to pre-Islamic poetry and the laments of ancient Mesopotamia. This essay follows suit but goes beyond. Its fragments narrate my auto-ethnographic and ethnographic walks and rides in Baghdad, where I investigate the constellations of rubble, the affects they discharge, and the memories they awaken in a given locale. Much ink and blood were spilled on the streets of Baghdad and world newspapers; this endeavor asks what Iraqis are left with today. The photographs aspire to a private archive for public loss, each being an obstinate interlocutor tested for what eludes vision and what is thought to be seen.
Prison Rule 113.11 and Fugitive Tools Mauro Tosarelli Prisons are not just spaces of deprivation and submission but environments where survival gives rise to new forms of expression and interaction. Despite spatial, social, and political constraints, prisoners cultivate communication networks through sound, imagery, and handmade tools. This installation reframes prison life by focusing on acquired culture and produced knowledge rather than narratives of marginalization. Prison Rule 113.11 highlights both clandestine tools of disobedience—tattoo guns, fishing lines, and makeshift speakers—and the coercion tools manufactured through prison labor. These objects are not merely functional but symbolic of defiance and connection. By amplifying sound rather than retreating into silence, prisoners reclaim their lives and assert their resistance to isolation. Positioning these tools as ‘fugitive objects’, this work reveals how incarcerated individuals are not merely passive subjects but a challenge to the very structures designed to contain them.Sponsored by: Center for Human Rights and the Arts.
State of Fracture: Thesis Exhibition of the MA in Human Rights and the Arts, 2025
Runs through Sunday, May 4, 2025 3–7:30 pm
Massena Campus The MA Program at the Center for Human Rights and the Arts is pleased to announce its Class of 2025 MA thesis exhibition.
The exhibition is taking place April 25 through May 4, 3 – 7:30 pm, across the Massena Campus at Bard. The exhibition features installations, films, and written works by the graduating cohort. The artistic, academic, and hybrid theses are all based on original research by students.Sponsored by: Center for Human Rights and the Arts.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Saturday, April 26, 2025 – Sunday, April 27, 2025 7:30–8:30 pm
Fisher Center, Sosnoff Theater A play performed, directed, and designed by students of the Musical Theater Performance Workshop. Runtime is approximately 105 minutes with no intermission.
This show contains material that might be triggering for some audience members. For more information, please contact [email protected].Sponsored by: Music Program.
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Works by Logan Settle Rishard, Manar Hashmi, Jenni Brandon, William Hurlstone, and Charles Koechlin. Featuring Katriel Kirk, bassoon; Chloe Brill, bassoon; Adelaide Braunhill, bassoon; and Kyeongji Koh, piano.
Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Heaven in a Wild Flower: The Earthly and the Divine
A Graduate Conducting Degree Recital with The Orchestra Now
Sunday, April 27, 2025 2–3 pm
Fisher Center, Sosnoff Theater
The Degree Recital is the culminating project of the Graduate Conducting Program. Given during the second year of study, students have the opportunity to conduct the repertoire of their choice in this concert.
Join The Orchestra Now and the Graduate Conducting Program’s class of 2025 on a journey through the spiritual and the mundane, and their essential roles in the human experience. Featuring works from Mozart to Ginastera, this program explores the joy of life, the solemnity of death, and the hope for renewal.
Works by Gliére, Strauss, Mozart, Chopin, and Hindemith.
Sunday, April 27, 2025 4 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Featuring Gabriele Zemaityte, Alberto Arias-Flores, Felix Johnson, Robert Santini, and Sabrina Schettler.
Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Olin Hall A composer showcase free and open to the public. Livestreaming here on the Conservatory YouTube Channel.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Center for Spiritual Life Buddhist Meditation Room Mondays: Guided Meditation 6-6:15 pm: Dharma words 6:15-6:45: Meditation 6:45-7 pm: Walking meditation and chanting Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and popcorn.
Thursdays: Silent Meditation 6-7 pm: Meditation in stillness Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and rice.
Join at any time and stay for any length of time.Sponsored by: Chaplaincy.
For more information, call 845-752-4619, or e-mail [email protected].
Albee Basement (Chaplaincy Offices) Come by the Chaplaincy office (Albee Basement) to knit or learn how to knit! Crocheters and needleworkers are also invited. Materials including yarn and knitting needles are provided. Everyone is welcome.Sponsored by: Chaplaincy.
For more information, call 203-858-8800, or e-mail [email protected].
State of Fracture: Thesis Exhibition of the MA in Human Rights & the Arts 2025
Runs through Sunday, May 4, 2025 3–7:30 pm
Massena Campus The MA Program at the Center for Human Rights & the Arts is pleased to announce the thesis exhibition of the MA in Human Rights & the Arts, Class of 2025.
The exhibition is taking place April 25 through May 4, 3–7:30 pm, across the Massena Campus at Bard College. The exhibition features installations, films, and written works by the graduating cohort. The artistic, academic, and hybrid theses are all based on original research by students. They make interventions at both the analytic and methodological levels of analysis.
Below is the program for the thesis exhibition, including a list of events and showcased works :
Opening Reception Friday, 25 April 2025 4pm–7pm Exhibition opening and food-for-purchase provided by Samosa Shack.
Lecture Performance Conducting Empire by Elinor Arden Friday 25 April, Sunday 27 April, Saturday 3 May 6:30 pm–7pm
Panel Presentation Featuring Miguel Angel Castañeda Barahona, Pyae Phyo Aung, and Arina Pshenichnaya Saturday, May 3 4 pm–5 pm
Written Theses Excerpts of these works are on display in the exhibition
“The Human Right to What?” Hunger, Food, and People: A Journey to the South Miguel Angel Castañeda Barahona
Sacred War as the Russian National Idea Arina Pshenichnaya
“Late pyar lone lar?” In Search of A Clear Conscience in Myanmar’s Spring Revolution Pyae Phyo Aung
A Baghdad Sin: Peregrinations in A Ruptured Geography Nabil Salih
Installations Open daily, 3–7:30 pm
FordDat Sariyah Abuzant
Livestreamed Genocide: TikTok LIVE in Gaza Sarah Al-Yahya
Calls from an Unseen Chorus Amr Amer
Conducting Empire Elinor Arden
The Land, Not a Film By Youssef Chahine Leil Zahra Mortada
Prison Rule 113.11 and Fugitive Tools Mauro Tosarelli
Thesis Project Abstracts
FordDat Sariyah Abuzant This installation features a docufiction video and explores the role of an unofficial taxi vehicle vital to mobility in occupied Palestine, using the cases of Abu Dis and Al-Eizariya, two towns located in Area C of the West Bank. Manufactured by Ford Motor Company, this US vehicle has unintentionally functioned as the connective tissue of a fragmented landscape, navigating an apartheid system reinforced by the Oslo Accords. Operating illegally for over thirty years, the Ford Transit has not only sustained movement but also emerged as a tool of cultural sovereignty, community-structured infrastructure, and self-governance. A time capsule of Oslo’s failures, this vehicle offers a lens into the lived realities of Palestinian daily resistance and the unyielding struggle for the right to move.
Livestreamed Genocide: TikTok LIVE in Gaza Sarah Al-Yahya This hybrid project, comprised of an interactive, web-based installation and research article, examines how “history’s first livestreamed genocide” in Gaza has been presented on TikTok LIVE. The work explores these streams, characterized by their low viewership as well as scattered and disorienting nature, arguing that they reshape our understanding of “livestreamed genocide” as a historical media paradigm. The installation foregrounds the tensions between a gamified platform and the realities of war on the Gaza Strip. In doing so, it examines the uneasy rise of TikTok’s algorithmically-driven platform as a space where social media visibility and atrocity merge, clash, and are reshaped by the logic of public engagement.
Calls from an Unseen Chorus Amr Amer Calls from an Unseen Chorus is a sound installation that resists the passive consumption of Palestine as an image of suffering, instead demanding engagement through the act of listening. Centering the auditory as a site of resistance, the work immerses audiences in the sonic realities of occupation and defiance—from the oppressive stasis of colonial checkpoints to the collective force of protest chants, resistance music, and the recorded wills of martyrs. These layered soundscapes challenge static representations of Palestinian struggle, asserting a mobilized, dissenting presence and an unceasing fight for liberation. By stripping away the visual, Calls from an Unseen Chorus transforms listening into an entry point for solidarity, where sound becomes both testimony and a call to resistance.
Conducting Empire Elinor Arden Conducting Empire is a research article and an installation-performance investigating the material history of the undersea cable network: the physical ‘backbone’ of the internet. The project explores what lies beneath Google’s marketing strategies for their new transatlantic cables, tracing the genealogy of this infrastructure to 19th-century Britain and the era of so-called abolition. A live activation of a sound sculpture exposes the metallic substance of the cable network and its transmission of historical records into the present. By linking claims of technological progress to imperial control, the work reframes the utopian ideal of global connectivity with evidence found in the British National Archives, from the Birmingham copper industry to a mass of colonial correspondences. Conducting Empire removes the network’s insulation to uncover how telecommunications were produced through a violent historical circuit.
“Late pyar lone lar?” In Search of A Clear Conscience in Myanmar’s Spring Revolution Pyae Phyo Aung This written thesis explores the question of morality and conscience in the anti-authoritarian revolution that took shape in response to the 2021 military coup in Myanmar. The term late pyar lone chin refers to the pride of performing a just action or the shame and guilt of not doing so, and the question, late pyar lone lar?, means roughly “do you have a clear conscience?” It is now widely used to testify to (or question) one’s stance and involvement in the revolution. Examining the digital artifacts and lived experiences of protestors, resistance fighters, and activist fundraisers, the thesis studies the role of calls to conscience in political mobilization and investigates how affect and morality have been activated through aesthetic means to shape the trajectory of the Spring Revolution in Myanmar.
“The Human Right to What?” Hunger, Food, and People: A Journey to the South. Miguel Angel Castañeda Barahona The public policy known as Areas of Protection for Food Production was launched in July of 2024 in the south of La Guajira, Colombia. It aims to focus land use on agricultural production and prohibit any type of mining exploitation. This transition is based on concepts such as the human right to food and food security. This written thesis explores the origins of these concepts, their scope, and their limitations. This is particularly relevant at a time when the La Guajira Corporation is about to grant approval to the mining company Best Coal Company to exploit millions of tons of coal in the Cañaverales Community. This thesis responds to the crisis and the difficulties of the energy transition from an epistemological point of view, through an analysis of archives and geopoetics.
The Land, Not a Film By Youssef Chahine Leil Zahra Mortada This hybrid project interrogates the role of Arab cultural production—particularly Egyptian songs and films about the Aswan High Dam—in shaping public history and contributing to Nubian dispossession. Building on an ongoing collaboration with Nubian activists, one component of this project is a research article that critiques nationalism and encourages a reflection on the power of cultural memory to perpetuate erasure or resist it. The second component of this project is an interactive installation titled The Land, Not a Film By Youssef Chahine, which examines state propaganda and confronts the failures of Arab liberation movements, while centering a Nubian narrative and presents a speculative grassroots response.
Sacred War as the Russian National Idea Arina Pshenichnaya Despite the secular image often associated with modern nationalism, the Russian state’s sacralization of war reveals the enduring power of religious symbols, rituals, and narratives in shaping national identity. This written thesis examines how the concept of sacred war has become central to the Russian national idea through a fusion of Orthodox theology, state power, and militarized aesthetics. It focuses on two key phenomena: the Main Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces, which presents war as a timeless and divine foundation of Russian identity; and front-line baptismal rituals, which transform soldiers into metaphysical agents of a civilizational mission. I analyze these practices through the writings of Aleksandr Dugin, whose metaphysical theory of civilizational conflict (noomachy) frames war not as a geopolitical act but as an ontological necessity. Dugin’s thought provides the ideological architecture through which Russia is positioned as a sacred civilization resisting Western nihilism, where war is not simply justified, but ritually and cosmologically required. In doing so, the study challenges secular readings of nationalism and highlights how authoritarian regimes can mobilize religious metaphysics to render war not only legitimate, but liturgically necessary.
A Baghdad Sin: Peregrinations in a Ruptured Geography Nabil Salih Aftermaths are deceptive. They obscure and conceal. This text, weaved along a photographic inquiry, troubles the notion of quietude. Together, they try to point to what lurks and haunts in the crevices of a wounded urbanscape. Twenty-one years after the invasion and occupation of Iraq, what litter and refuse remain in Baghdad today? In a time of rapid urban reconfiguration, what do the residual wartime rubble and the paraphernalia of security regimes tell us of the present, its politics, and relationship to the past? Put differently, what forces and apparatuses obstruct an Iraqi’s walk? Standing by the ruins is an old tradition dating to pre-Islamic poetry and the laments of ancient Mesopotamia. This essay follows suit but goes beyond. Its fragments narrate my auto-ethnographic and ethnographic walks and rides in Baghdad, where I investigate the constellations of rubble, the affects they discharge, and the memories they awaken in a given locale. Much ink and blood were spilled on the streets of Baghdad and world newspapers; this endeavor asks what Iraqis are left with today. The photographs aspire to a private archive for public loss, each being an obstinate interlocutor tested for what eludes vision and what is thought to be seen.
Prison Rule 113.11 and Fugitive Tools Mauro Tosarelli Prisons are not just spaces of deprivation and submission but environments where survival gives rise to new forms of expression and interaction. Despite spatial, social, and political constraints, prisoners cultivate communication networks through sound, imagery, and handmade tools. This installation reframes prison life by focusing on acquired culture and produced knowledge rather than narratives of marginalization. Prison Rule 113.11 highlights both clandestine tools of disobedience—tattoo guns, fishing lines, and makeshift speakers—and the coercion tools manufactured through prison labor. These objects are not merely functional but symbolic of defiance and connection. By amplifying sound rather than retreating into silence, prisoners reclaim their lives and assert their resistance to isolation. Positioning these tools as ‘fugitive objects’, this work reveals how incarcerated individuals are not merely passive subjects but a challenge to the very structures designed to contain them.Sponsored by: Center for Human Rights and the Arts.
State of Fracture: Thesis Exhibition of the MA in Human Rights and the Arts, 2025
Runs through Sunday, May 4, 2025 3–7:30 pm
Massena Campus The MA Program at the Center for Human Rights and the Arts is pleased to announce its Class of 2025 MA thesis exhibition.
The exhibition is taking place April 25 through May 4, 3 – 7:30 pm, across the Massena Campus at Bard. The exhibition features installations, films, and written works by the graduating cohort. The artistic, academic, and hybrid theses are all based on original research by students.Sponsored by: Center for Human Rights and the Arts.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
An hour-long program of short performances by Bard Conservatory students.
Monday, April 28, 2025 12 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube channel.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-7196, or e-mail [email protected].
Montgomery Place Estate Join William Mennerick ’24 for a guided bird and nature walk on the beautiful Montgomery Place grounds! We’ll meet at 12:30 pm at the Visitor Center. Binoculars are encouraged but not required. Come connect with nature and discover the wildlife around Bard. For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
State of Fracture: Thesis Exhibition of the MA in Human Rights & the Arts 2025
Runs through Sunday, May 4, 2025 3–7:30 pm
Massena Campus The MA Program at the Center for Human Rights & the Arts is pleased to announce the thesis exhibition of the MA in Human Rights & the Arts, Class of 2025.
The exhibition is taking place April 25 through May 4, 3–7:30 pm, across the Massena Campus at Bard College. The exhibition features installations, films, and written works by the graduating cohort. The artistic, academic, and hybrid theses are all based on original research by students. They make interventions at both the analytic and methodological levels of analysis.
Below is the program for the thesis exhibition, including a list of events and showcased works :
Opening Reception Friday, 25 April 2025 4pm–7pm Exhibition opening and food-for-purchase provided by Samosa Shack.
Lecture Performance Conducting Empire by Elinor Arden Friday 25 April, Sunday 27 April, Saturday 3 May 6:30 pm–7pm
Panel Presentation Featuring Miguel Angel Castañeda Barahona, Pyae Phyo Aung, and Arina Pshenichnaya Saturday, May 3 4 pm–5 pm
Written Theses Excerpts of these works are on display in the exhibition
“The Human Right to What?” Hunger, Food, and People: A Journey to the South Miguel Angel Castañeda Barahona
Sacred War as the Russian National Idea Arina Pshenichnaya
“Late pyar lone lar?” In Search of A Clear Conscience in Myanmar’s Spring Revolution Pyae Phyo Aung
A Baghdad Sin: Peregrinations in A Ruptured Geography Nabil Salih
Installations Open daily, 3–7:30 pm
FordDat Sariyah Abuzant
Livestreamed Genocide: TikTok LIVE in Gaza Sarah Al-Yahya
Calls from an Unseen Chorus Amr Amer
Conducting Empire Elinor Arden
The Land, Not a Film By Youssef Chahine Leil Zahra Mortada
Prison Rule 113.11 and Fugitive Tools Mauro Tosarelli
Thesis Project Abstracts
FordDat Sariyah Abuzant This installation features a docufiction video and explores the role of an unofficial taxi vehicle vital to mobility in occupied Palestine, using the cases of Abu Dis and Al-Eizariya, two towns located in Area C of the West Bank. Manufactured by Ford Motor Company, this US vehicle has unintentionally functioned as the connective tissue of a fragmented landscape, navigating an apartheid system reinforced by the Oslo Accords. Operating illegally for over thirty years, the Ford Transit has not only sustained movement but also emerged as a tool of cultural sovereignty, community-structured infrastructure, and self-governance. A time capsule of Oslo’s failures, this vehicle offers a lens into the lived realities of Palestinian daily resistance and the unyielding struggle for the right to move.
Livestreamed Genocide: TikTok LIVE in Gaza Sarah Al-Yahya This hybrid project, comprised of an interactive, web-based installation and research article, examines how “history’s first livestreamed genocide” in Gaza has been presented on TikTok LIVE. The work explores these streams, characterized by their low viewership as well as scattered and disorienting nature, arguing that they reshape our understanding of “livestreamed genocide” as a historical media paradigm. The installation foregrounds the tensions between a gamified platform and the realities of war on the Gaza Strip. In doing so, it examines the uneasy rise of TikTok’s algorithmically-driven platform as a space where social media visibility and atrocity merge, clash, and are reshaped by the logic of public engagement.
Calls from an Unseen Chorus Amr Amer Calls from an Unseen Chorus is a sound installation that resists the passive consumption of Palestine as an image of suffering, instead demanding engagement through the act of listening. Centering the auditory as a site of resistance, the work immerses audiences in the sonic realities of occupation and defiance—from the oppressive stasis of colonial checkpoints to the collective force of protest chants, resistance music, and the recorded wills of martyrs. These layered soundscapes challenge static representations of Palestinian struggle, asserting a mobilized, dissenting presence and an unceasing fight for liberation. By stripping away the visual, Calls from an Unseen Chorus transforms listening into an entry point for solidarity, where sound becomes both testimony and a call to resistance.
Conducting Empire Elinor Arden Conducting Empire is a research article and an installation-performance investigating the material history of the undersea cable network: the physical ‘backbone’ of the internet. The project explores what lies beneath Google’s marketing strategies for their new transatlantic cables, tracing the genealogy of this infrastructure to 19th-century Britain and the era of so-called abolition. A live activation of a sound sculpture exposes the metallic substance of the cable network and its transmission of historical records into the present. By linking claims of technological progress to imperial control, the work reframes the utopian ideal of global connectivity with evidence found in the British National Archives, from the Birmingham copper industry to a mass of colonial correspondences. Conducting Empire removes the network’s insulation to uncover how telecommunications were produced through a violent historical circuit.
“Late pyar lone lar?” In Search of A Clear Conscience in Myanmar’s Spring Revolution Pyae Phyo Aung This written thesis explores the question of morality and conscience in the anti-authoritarian revolution that took shape in response to the 2021 military coup in Myanmar. The term late pyar lone chin refers to the pride of performing a just action or the shame and guilt of not doing so, and the question, late pyar lone lar?, means roughly “do you have a clear conscience?” It is now widely used to testify to (or question) one’s stance and involvement in the revolution. Examining the digital artifacts and lived experiences of protestors, resistance fighters, and activist fundraisers, the thesis studies the role of calls to conscience in political mobilization and investigates how affect and morality have been activated through aesthetic means to shape the trajectory of the Spring Revolution in Myanmar.
“The Human Right to What?” Hunger, Food, and People: A Journey to the South. Miguel Angel Castañeda Barahona The public policy known as Areas of Protection for Food Production was launched in July of 2024 in the south of La Guajira, Colombia. It aims to focus land use on agricultural production and prohibit any type of mining exploitation. This transition is based on concepts such as the human right to food and food security. This written thesis explores the origins of these concepts, their scope, and their limitations. This is particularly relevant at a time when the La Guajira Corporation is about to grant approval to the mining company Best Coal Company to exploit millions of tons of coal in the Cañaverales Community. This thesis responds to the crisis and the difficulties of the energy transition from an epistemological point of view, through an analysis of archives and geopoetics.
The Land, Not a Film By Youssef Chahine Leil Zahra Mortada This hybrid project interrogates the role of Arab cultural production—particularly Egyptian songs and films about the Aswan High Dam—in shaping public history and contributing to Nubian dispossession. Building on an ongoing collaboration with Nubian activists, one component of this project is a research article that critiques nationalism and encourages a reflection on the power of cultural memory to perpetuate erasure or resist it. The second component of this project is an interactive installation titled The Land, Not a Film By Youssef Chahine, which examines state propaganda and confronts the failures of Arab liberation movements, while centering a Nubian narrative and presents a speculative grassroots response.
Sacred War as the Russian National Idea Arina Pshenichnaya Despite the secular image often associated with modern nationalism, the Russian state’s sacralization of war reveals the enduring power of religious symbols, rituals, and narratives in shaping national identity. This written thesis examines how the concept of sacred war has become central to the Russian national idea through a fusion of Orthodox theology, state power, and militarized aesthetics. It focuses on two key phenomena: the Main Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces, which presents war as a timeless and divine foundation of Russian identity; and front-line baptismal rituals, which transform soldiers into metaphysical agents of a civilizational mission. I analyze these practices through the writings of Aleksandr Dugin, whose metaphysical theory of civilizational conflict (noomachy) frames war not as a geopolitical act but as an ontological necessity. Dugin’s thought provides the ideological architecture through which Russia is positioned as a sacred civilization resisting Western nihilism, where war is not simply justified, but ritually and cosmologically required. In doing so, the study challenges secular readings of nationalism and highlights how authoritarian regimes can mobilize religious metaphysics to render war not only legitimate, but liturgically necessary.
A Baghdad Sin: Peregrinations in a Ruptured Geography Nabil Salih Aftermaths are deceptive. They obscure and conceal. This text, weaved along a photographic inquiry, troubles the notion of quietude. Together, they try to point to what lurks and haunts in the crevices of a wounded urbanscape. Twenty-one years after the invasion and occupation of Iraq, what litter and refuse remain in Baghdad today? In a time of rapid urban reconfiguration, what do the residual wartime rubble and the paraphernalia of security regimes tell us of the present, its politics, and relationship to the past? Put differently, what forces and apparatuses obstruct an Iraqi’s walk? Standing by the ruins is an old tradition dating to pre-Islamic poetry and the laments of ancient Mesopotamia. This essay follows suit but goes beyond. Its fragments narrate my auto-ethnographic and ethnographic walks and rides in Baghdad, where I investigate the constellations of rubble, the affects they discharge, and the memories they awaken in a given locale. Much ink and blood were spilled on the streets of Baghdad and world newspapers; this endeavor asks what Iraqis are left with today. The photographs aspire to a private archive for public loss, each being an obstinate interlocutor tested for what eludes vision and what is thought to be seen.
Prison Rule 113.11 and Fugitive Tools Mauro Tosarelli Prisons are not just spaces of deprivation and submission but environments where survival gives rise to new forms of expression and interaction. Despite spatial, social, and political constraints, prisoners cultivate communication networks through sound, imagery, and handmade tools. This installation reframes prison life by focusing on acquired culture and produced knowledge rather than narratives of marginalization. Prison Rule 113.11 highlights both clandestine tools of disobedience—tattoo guns, fishing lines, and makeshift speakers—and the coercion tools manufactured through prison labor. These objects are not merely functional but symbolic of defiance and connection. By amplifying sound rather than retreating into silence, prisoners reclaim their lives and assert their resistance to isolation. Positioning these tools as ‘fugitive objects’, this work reveals how incarcerated individuals are not merely passive subjects but a challenge to the very structures designed to contain them.Sponsored by: Center for Human Rights and the Arts.
State of Fracture: Thesis Exhibition of the MA in Human Rights and the Arts, 2025
Runs through Sunday, May 4, 2025 3–7:30 pm
Massena Campus The MA Program at the Center for Human Rights and the Arts is pleased to announce its Class of 2025 MA thesis exhibition.
The exhibition is taking place April 25 through May 4, 3 – 7:30 pm, across the Massena Campus at Bard. The exhibition features installations, films, and written works by the graduating cohort. The artistic, academic, and hybrid theses are all based on original research by students.Sponsored by: Center for Human Rights and the Arts.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Five Disruptive Principles in the Liberal Arts Series: Engagement
Tuesday, April 29, 2025 4–5:30 pm
Online Event 4 PM New York l 10 PM Vienna
AltLiberalArts' “Five Disruptive Principles in the Liberal Arts” series explores the core values that define an exceptional liberal arts education. The second event in the series will explore "Engagement." Carol Flint will moderate and Maureen T. Cannon and Maria Vesperi are panelists.
In student-driven learning environments, students aren’t treated as consumers of education, nor as vessels to be filled with information. Instead, they are expected to be active participants in their own academic journeys.
Carol Flint and Emmy Award winner who has written and produced over 400 hours of episodic prime time television, including the shows LA Law, ER, and the West Wing.
Maureen T. Cannon has practiced at both the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia and the Washington, D.C. law firm of Williams and Connolly. In her own law practice, she has represented leading executives in the fields of higher education and professional sports.
Maria Vesperi is an anthropologist and a professor at the University of South Florida and then a journalist for the Tampa Bay Times. She then joined the New College of Florida Anthropology department and helped students establish The Catalyst, a student-led newspaper.
CCS Bard, Classroom 102 As part of a series co-presented by Forge Project and CCS Bard, artist Marilou Schultz will speak about her work on April 29 at 5 pm.
Forge Project Talks are part of a set of broader initiatives at Bard College that seek to place Native American and Indigenous Studies at the heart of curricular innovation, which includes programming organized by the Center for Indigenous Studies and the Rethinking Place initiative. These programs are made possible by the Forge Endowed Fund for Indigenous Studies at Bard College, generously supported by the Gochman Family Foundation along with George Soros and the Open Society Foundations.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 M.A. candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
State of Fracture: Thesis Exhibition of the MA in Human Rights & the Arts 2025
Runs through Sunday, May 4, 2025 3–7:30 pm
Massena Campus The MA Program at the Center for Human Rights & the Arts is pleased to announce the thesis exhibition of the MA in Human Rights & the Arts, Class of 2025.
The exhibition is taking place April 25 through May 4, 3–7:30 pm, across the Massena Campus at Bard College. The exhibition features installations, films, and written works by the graduating cohort. The artistic, academic, and hybrid theses are all based on original research by students. They make interventions at both the analytic and methodological levels of analysis.
Below is the program for the thesis exhibition, including a list of events and showcased works :
Opening Reception Friday, 25 April 2025 4pm–7pm Exhibition opening and food-for-purchase provided by Samosa Shack.
Lecture Performance Conducting Empire by Elinor Arden Friday 25 April, Sunday 27 April, Saturday 3 May 6:30 pm–7pm
Panel Presentation Featuring Miguel Angel Castañeda Barahona, Pyae Phyo Aung, and Arina Pshenichnaya Saturday, May 3 4 pm–5 pm
Written Theses Excerpts of these works are on display in the exhibition
“The Human Right to What?” Hunger, Food, and People: A Journey to the South Miguel Angel Castañeda Barahona
Sacred War as the Russian National Idea Arina Pshenichnaya
“Late pyar lone lar?” In Search of A Clear Conscience in Myanmar’s Spring Revolution Pyae Phyo Aung
A Baghdad Sin: Peregrinations in A Ruptured Geography Nabil Salih
Installations Open daily, 3–7:30 pm
FordDat Sariyah Abuzant
Livestreamed Genocide: TikTok LIVE in Gaza Sarah Al-Yahya
Calls from an Unseen Chorus Amr Amer
Conducting Empire Elinor Arden
The Land, Not a Film By Youssef Chahine Leil Zahra Mortada
Prison Rule 113.11 and Fugitive Tools Mauro Tosarelli
Thesis Project Abstracts
FordDat Sariyah Abuzant This installation features a docufiction video and explores the role of an unofficial taxi vehicle vital to mobility in occupied Palestine, using the cases of Abu Dis and Al-Eizariya, two towns located in Area C of the West Bank. Manufactured by Ford Motor Company, this US vehicle has unintentionally functioned as the connective tissue of a fragmented landscape, navigating an apartheid system reinforced by the Oslo Accords. Operating illegally for over thirty years, the Ford Transit has not only sustained movement but also emerged as a tool of cultural sovereignty, community-structured infrastructure, and self-governance. A time capsule of Oslo’s failures, this vehicle offers a lens into the lived realities of Palestinian daily resistance and the unyielding struggle for the right to move.
Livestreamed Genocide: TikTok LIVE in Gaza Sarah Al-Yahya This hybrid project, comprised of an interactive, web-based installation and research article, examines how “history’s first livestreamed genocide” in Gaza has been presented on TikTok LIVE. The work explores these streams, characterized by their low viewership as well as scattered and disorienting nature, arguing that they reshape our understanding of “livestreamed genocide” as a historical media paradigm. The installation foregrounds the tensions between a gamified platform and the realities of war on the Gaza Strip. In doing so, it examines the uneasy rise of TikTok’s algorithmically-driven platform as a space where social media visibility and atrocity merge, clash, and are reshaped by the logic of public engagement.
Calls from an Unseen Chorus Amr Amer Calls from an Unseen Chorus is a sound installation that resists the passive consumption of Palestine as an image of suffering, instead demanding engagement through the act of listening. Centering the auditory as a site of resistance, the work immerses audiences in the sonic realities of occupation and defiance—from the oppressive stasis of colonial checkpoints to the collective force of protest chants, resistance music, and the recorded wills of martyrs. These layered soundscapes challenge static representations of Palestinian struggle, asserting a mobilized, dissenting presence and an unceasing fight for liberation. By stripping away the visual, Calls from an Unseen Chorus transforms listening into an entry point for solidarity, where sound becomes both testimony and a call to resistance.
Conducting Empire Elinor Arden Conducting Empire is a research article and an installation-performance investigating the material history of the undersea cable network: the physical ‘backbone’ of the internet. The project explores what lies beneath Google’s marketing strategies for their new transatlantic cables, tracing the genealogy of this infrastructure to 19th-century Britain and the era of so-called abolition. A live activation of a sound sculpture exposes the metallic substance of the cable network and its transmission of historical records into the present. By linking claims of technological progress to imperial control, the work reframes the utopian ideal of global connectivity with evidence found in the British National Archives, from the Birmingham copper industry to a mass of colonial correspondences. Conducting Empire removes the network’s insulation to uncover how telecommunications were produced through a violent historical circuit.
“Late pyar lone lar?” In Search of A Clear Conscience in Myanmar’s Spring Revolution Pyae Phyo Aung This written thesis explores the question of morality and conscience in the anti-authoritarian revolution that took shape in response to the 2021 military coup in Myanmar. The term late pyar lone chin refers to the pride of performing a just action or the shame and guilt of not doing so, and the question, late pyar lone lar?, means roughly “do you have a clear conscience?” It is now widely used to testify to (or question) one’s stance and involvement in the revolution. Examining the digital artifacts and lived experiences of protestors, resistance fighters, and activist fundraisers, the thesis studies the role of calls to conscience in political mobilization and investigates how affect and morality have been activated through aesthetic means to shape the trajectory of the Spring Revolution in Myanmar.
“The Human Right to What?” Hunger, Food, and People: A Journey to the South. Miguel Angel Castañeda Barahona The public policy known as Areas of Protection for Food Production was launched in July of 2024 in the south of La Guajira, Colombia. It aims to focus land use on agricultural production and prohibit any type of mining exploitation. This transition is based on concepts such as the human right to food and food security. This written thesis explores the origins of these concepts, their scope, and their limitations. This is particularly relevant at a time when the La Guajira Corporation is about to grant approval to the mining company Best Coal Company to exploit millions of tons of coal in the Cañaverales Community. This thesis responds to the crisis and the difficulties of the energy transition from an epistemological point of view, through an analysis of archives and geopoetics.
The Land, Not a Film By Youssef Chahine Leil Zahra Mortada This hybrid project interrogates the role of Arab cultural production—particularly Egyptian songs and films about the Aswan High Dam—in shaping public history and contributing to Nubian dispossession. Building on an ongoing collaboration with Nubian activists, one component of this project is a research article that critiques nationalism and encourages a reflection on the power of cultural memory to perpetuate erasure or resist it. The second component of this project is an interactive installation titled The Land, Not a Film By Youssef Chahine, which examines state propaganda and confronts the failures of Arab liberation movements, while centering a Nubian narrative and presents a speculative grassroots response.
Sacred War as the Russian National Idea Arina Pshenichnaya Despite the secular image often associated with modern nationalism, the Russian state’s sacralization of war reveals the enduring power of religious symbols, rituals, and narratives in shaping national identity. This written thesis examines how the concept of sacred war has become central to the Russian national idea through a fusion of Orthodox theology, state power, and militarized aesthetics. It focuses on two key phenomena: the Main Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces, which presents war as a timeless and divine foundation of Russian identity; and front-line baptismal rituals, which transform soldiers into metaphysical agents of a civilizational mission. I analyze these practices through the writings of Aleksandr Dugin, whose metaphysical theory of civilizational conflict (noomachy) frames war not as a geopolitical act but as an ontological necessity. Dugin’s thought provides the ideological architecture through which Russia is positioned as a sacred civilization resisting Western nihilism, where war is not simply justified, but ritually and cosmologically required. In doing so, the study challenges secular readings of nationalism and highlights how authoritarian regimes can mobilize religious metaphysics to render war not only legitimate, but liturgically necessary.
A Baghdad Sin: Peregrinations in a Ruptured Geography Nabil Salih Aftermaths are deceptive. They obscure and conceal. This text, weaved along a photographic inquiry, troubles the notion of quietude. Together, they try to point to what lurks and haunts in the crevices of a wounded urbanscape. Twenty-one years after the invasion and occupation of Iraq, what litter and refuse remain in Baghdad today? In a time of rapid urban reconfiguration, what do the residual wartime rubble and the paraphernalia of security regimes tell us of the present, its politics, and relationship to the past? Put differently, what forces and apparatuses obstruct an Iraqi’s walk? Standing by the ruins is an old tradition dating to pre-Islamic poetry and the laments of ancient Mesopotamia. This essay follows suit but goes beyond. Its fragments narrate my auto-ethnographic and ethnographic walks and rides in Baghdad, where I investigate the constellations of rubble, the affects they discharge, and the memories they awaken in a given locale. Much ink and blood were spilled on the streets of Baghdad and world newspapers; this endeavor asks what Iraqis are left with today. The photographs aspire to a private archive for public loss, each being an obstinate interlocutor tested for what eludes vision and what is thought to be seen.
Prison Rule 113.11 and Fugitive Tools Mauro Tosarelli Prisons are not just spaces of deprivation and submission but environments where survival gives rise to new forms of expression and interaction. Despite spatial, social, and political constraints, prisoners cultivate communication networks through sound, imagery, and handmade tools. This installation reframes prison life by focusing on acquired culture and produced knowledge rather than narratives of marginalization. Prison Rule 113.11 highlights both clandestine tools of disobedience—tattoo guns, fishing lines, and makeshift speakers—and the coercion tools manufactured through prison labor. These objects are not merely functional but symbolic of defiance and connection. By amplifying sound rather than retreating into silence, prisoners reclaim their lives and assert their resistance to isolation. Positioning these tools as ‘fugitive objects’, this work reveals how incarcerated individuals are not merely passive subjects but a challenge to the very structures designed to contain them.Sponsored by: Center for Human Rights and the Arts.
State of Fracture: Thesis Exhibition of the MA in Human Rights and the Arts, 2025
Runs through Sunday, May 4, 2025 3–7:30 pm
Massena Campus The MA Program at the Center for Human Rights and the Arts is pleased to announce its Class of 2025 MA thesis exhibition.
The exhibition is taking place April 25 through May 4, 3 – 7:30 pm, across the Massena Campus at Bard. The exhibition features installations, films, and written works by the graduating cohort. The artistic, academic, and hybrid theses are all based on original research by students.Sponsored by: Center for Human Rights and the Arts.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
RKC 103 The big consequences for the West of losing "small wars" (like Algeria, Vietnam, or Afghanistan) are due to the constitutive role of "the Orient" in Western identities. This talk will discuss how these identities are committed, in diverse ways, to notions of Western vitality, strength and dominance over non-European peoples. There is no more obvious sign of Western weakness and "Oriental" strength than defeat in war or failure to obtain victory. Unsurprisingly then, such setbacks become sites of political and cultural disruption and production at all levels of Western society.Sponsored by: Co-sponsored by the Ukraine and Decolonial Thought Common Course, the Human Rights Project, and the Anthropology, Politics, and GIS Programs.
For more information, call 845-758-7662, or e-mail [email protected].
Gazing Back at the Compound Eye: The Estrangement of Surveillance Images in Xu Bing’s Dragonfly Eyes
By Luwei Wang, Ph.D. Candidate University of Wisconsin, Madison
Wednesday, April 2, 2025 5:30 pm
Olin Humanities, Room 102 The imagination of surveillance cameras and the digital media as “compound eyes” is a dominant motif in contemporary Chinese critical and cultural production. This concept resonates deeply within Chinese visual culture and film, where the compound eye functions as both a technological reality and a symbolic structure. In this talk, I examine this intersection through Xu Bing’s experimental art film Dragonfly Eyes (2017). My analysis focuses on Xu Bing’s distinctive approach of repurposing the found surveillance footage, through which he subverts traditional power dynamics, and transforms the surveillance apparatus into an object of critical reflection. By defamiliarizing audiences from the machine vision they have grown accustomed to, the film disrupts the neutrality of digital seeing. In doing so, it prompts reflection on deep- seated anxieties in the digital age—including the takeover of visual representation by digital media, the alienation from lived experience, the obsession with achieving a totalized and comprehensive replication of reality, and the estrangement from nature. I argue that Dragonfly Eyes fundamentally engages with these concerns by constructing an intricate relationship between surveillance footage, webcam recordings, the film’s protagonists, and the audience. Blurring the boundaries between viewing subject and object, the film positions its protagonists as both narrators and characters, oscillating between reality and fiction, observer and observed. Through this interplay, Dragonfly Eyes invites contemplation on the pervasive impact of digital surveillance and the shifting nature of visuality in the contemporary world.Sponsored by: Dean of the College, Division of Languages and Literature, Foreign Languages, Cultures, and Literatures (FLCL), and Chinese Studies.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Building a Career in Sustainability: Leveraging Your Peace Corps Experience
Learn how a group of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers leveraged their service into a successful and impactful career in sustainability.
Wednesday, April 2, 2025 7–8:30 pm
Online Event RSVP HERE for this free panel discussion
ABOUT THE EVENT: Interested in leveraging your past (or future) Peace Corps service into a sustainability career? Join the Bard Graduate Programs in Sustainability for a discussion with Returned Peace Corps Volunteers as they share how they successfully transitioned from service to impactful careers in sustainability. Hear their stories, insights, and advice on building a purpose-driven career. Panel will be held via Zoom, and attendees will have the opportunity to ask questions.
More information on the panelists coming soon!Sponsored by: Bard Center for Environmental Policy; Bard MBA in Sustainability.
Online Event Renowned dancer and teacher Edgardo Fernendez will discuss how “Using dance as an instrument, we make injustices visible: homophobia and transphobia, the right to identity, the abuse and abandonment of the elderly, the potential of people with disabilities to teach and to dance tango." Join us for this engaging conversation. Sponsored by: Center for Civic Engagement.
The Poetry of Physics: What Literature Can Teach Us About the Ultimate Nature of Reality
William Egginton, Decker Professor in the Humanities, Chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, and Director of the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute, Johns Hopkins University
Thursday, April 3, 2025 5:30–7 pm
Olin Humanities, Room 102 In this lecture I explore the two major physical theories of the twentieth century, relativity and quantum mechanics, by way of what we could call their poetic and philosophical foundations. Key to this approach will be the idea that reality isn’t an unfiltered picture of what’s out there, but rather a complex human construct, and that because of that we need essentially human means to understand it, among them literature and philosophy. In this light I argue that philosophers like Plato and Kant, and poets like Dante and Borges, are key to understanding the ideas of Albert Einstein and Werner Heisenberg.
William Egginton is the Decker Professor in the Humanities, Chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, and Director of the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of multiple books, including How the World Became a Stage (2003), Perversity and Ethics (2006), A Wrinkle in History (2007), The Philosopher’s Desire (2007), The Theater of Truth (2010), In Defense of Religious Moderation (2011), The Man Who Invented Fiction: How Cervantes Ushered in the Modern World (2016), The Splintering of the American Mind (2018), and The Rigor of Angels (2023), which was named to several best of 2023 lists, including The New York Times and The New Yorker. He is co-author with David Castillo of Medialogies: Reading Reality in the Age of Inflationary Media (2017) and What Would Cervantes Do? Navigating Post-Truth with Spanish Baroque Literature (2022). His most recent book, on the philosophical, psychoanalytic, and surrealist dimensions of the work of Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky, was published in January 2024.Sponsored by: Division of Languages and Literature; LAIS Program; Literature Program; Philosophy Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Center for Spiritual Life Buddhist Meditation Room Mondays: Guided Meditation 6-6:15 pm: Dharma words 6:15-6:45: Meditation 6:45-7 pm: Walking meditation and chanting Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and popcorn.
Thursdays: Silent Meditation 6-7 pm: Meditation in stillness Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and rice.
Join at any time and stay for any length of time.Sponsored by: Chaplaincy.
For more information, call 845-752-4619, or e-mail [email protected].
Public Debate and Expert Panel Double Feature: Opposition Under Authoritarianism
Thursday, April 3, 2025 7–9 pm
Campus Center, Weis Cinema In today’s political landscape, it can be challenging to know what our politicians, let alone the average person, can do to effect change and combat authoritarianism. Should opposition politicians be expected to respond openly and aggressively to every action taken by the government? How have other countries attempted to stymie their own recent shifts toward authoritarianism? To what extent are we really in a “constitutional crisis”?
In the first half of our event, members of the Bard Debate Union will debate the topic “In times of political instability, do opposition politicians have the responsibility to ‘swing at every pitch’?” In the second half, an expert panel consisting of Bard Professor of Politics, CCE Director, and Executive Vice President Jonathan Becker, Bard Associate Professor of Politics Michelle Murray, CEU Assistant Professor of International Relations Erzsebet Strausz, and Political Strategist Blake Zeff will discuss recent events and unpack the big questions that are defining our current political moment. For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
★★★★★ “Inspired interrogation of ‘the great male artist’” —The Stage
★★★★ “Scoring pertinent points about the abusiveness inherent in the genius cult” —The Guardian
Blending together Adrienne Truscott (Spiegeltent at Bard emcee, Wild Bore, Asking For It, The Wau Wau Sisters)’s genre-straddling work and savagely comedic discourse on gender with internationally renowned theatre company Brokentalkers’ (The Examination, Have I No Mouth, The Blue Boy) formally slippery dramaturgy, the award-winning Masterclass is a parody like no other—uncovering excruciating truths about privilege, gender, and power.
Taking shape as an interview, Masterclass doesn’t hold back. Performed by ‘fed-up feminist’ Adrienne Truscott and ‘all-around good guy’ Feidlim Cannon, Masterclass begins as a cockamamie masterclass between two familiar archetypes—the self-mythologizing male artist (Truscott) and a sycophantic interviewer (Cannon). It’s fun. It’s familiar. There are wigs. But there is something more at play.
This wickedly funny take-down of the macho artist has been performed to critical acclaim across the world, including the Sydney Opera House, Sydney Festival, RISING Melbourne, Southbank Centre London, Brighton Festival, Teatro do Bairro Alto Lisbon, and many more. Now it’s New York’s turn!
Woods Studio The members of the Abigail Lundquist Botstein Nursery School and The Bard Children's Center are proud to present their works of art that include paintings, drawings, sculptures, and 3D art. April 7–11, Woods Studio. A family reception will be held April 10 at 3:30pm. For more information, call 845-758-7444, or e-mail [email protected].
Central Asia at the Crossroads: Governance, Innovation, and Identity in Transition CONFERENCE
Friday, April 4, 2025 10 am – 5 pm
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium This conference brings together faculty, scholars, and administrators from the American University of Central Asia and Bard College (Annandale-on-Hudson, NY). As long-standing partners, Bard and AUCA have impacted the education and professional development of thousands of young people, responding to and contributing to the political, economic, and socio-cultural changes in the region. We will discuss the achievements and goals of the partnership, as well as issues of legal frameworks, cultural identity, and evolving geopolitical alignments that shape the future of Central Asia's regional stability and global influence. Over the course of a day, scholars will engage in dialogue about political participation and economic opportunity in Kyrgyzstan and Central Asia; the region's culture as it evolves in response to shifting geopolitical alignments; and the region's educational visions, ambitions, and hopes.
10.00 – 10.30 Opening remarks
10.30 – 12.00 Panel 1 LAW & SECURITY Moderated by Peter Rutland, Wesleyan University
Kamila Mateeva, Head of Law Division; Associate Professor of Law, AUCA “Evolving Legal Frameworks in Central Asia: Navigating Challenges and Seizing Opportunities”
Saniia Toktogazieva, Dean of Academic Planning and Strategic Partnerships; Associate Professor of Law, AUCA “Constitutionalism in Central Asia: Challenges and current trends”
Togzhan Kassenova (Senior Fellow, Project on International Security, Commerce and Economic Statecraft at the University of Albany) “Kazakhstan’s Nuclear Story: Reclaiming the Agency and National Identity Building”
1.30 – 3.15 Panel 2 ECONOMICS & THE ENVIRONMENT Moderated by Eban Goodstein, Bard College
Zarylbek Kudabaev, Head of the Applied Sciences Division; Professor of Economics, AUCA “Economic Transformations in Central Asia: Current Trends, Challenges, and Future Prospects”
Urmat Ryskulov, Chair of the School of Entrepreneurship and Business Administration; Associate Professor of Business and Finance, AUCA “Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Central Asia: Catalysts for Sustainable Development”
Aniruddha Mitra, Bard College (co-authors: James T. Bang, St. Ambrose University, Nurgul Ukueva, Associate Professor, Economics Department, American University of Central Asia, Visiting Associate Professor, Bard College) “Trust, Risk, and Attitudes toward Climate Change, Evidence from Kyrgyzstan”
Aisalkyn Botoeva, Co-Founder and Principal Researcher of Altai Atlantic research company “The Power of Narrative: Rethinking How We Share Knowledge about the Region.”
3.30 – 5.15 Panel 3 CULTURE & IDENTITY Moderated by Elena Kim, Bard College
Ruslan Rahimov, Head of the Division of Social Sciences, Associate Professor of Anthropology and International Development, AUCA “Reclaiming Identity: Decolonization Narratives and Cultural Reawakening in Central Asia”
Daniyar Karabaev, Head of the Division of Arts, Humanities and Communication; Assistant Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences, AUCA “Memory Politics: The Role of Oral History in Central Asia”
Marek Eby, Visiting Scholar, Columbia University Harriman Institute “Narratives of Soviet Kyrgyzstan through the Lens of Health: The Case of Malaria”
Jarkyn Shadymanova, Associate Professor, Sociology Department, AUCA, M.Ed. Candidate in Environmental Education, Bard College “NGOs at the Intersection of Drug Treatment and Infectious Disease Prevention: Practices from Central Asia and China”Sponsored by: REAS, CCE, and IILE.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Learn more about applying to Levy with Thomas Masterson, graduate program director, and Tyler Emerson, outreach and recruitment liaison.
Friday, April 4, 2025 12–1 pm
Online Event This information session with Graduate Program Director Thomas Masterson and Graduate Outreach and Recruitment Liaison Tyler Emerson provides an overview of the Levy academic programs, student life, admission requirements, enrollment steps, new scholarships, financial aid procedures, and immigration requirements for international students. Applicants who attend a virtual information session will have their application fees waived.
Works by Olivier Tarpaga, Michael Laurello, Dan Langa, and Nathalie Joachim.
Friday, April 4, 2025 7 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
★★★★★ “Inspired interrogation of ‘the great male artist’” —The Stage
★★★★ “Scoring pertinent points about the abusiveness inherent in the genius cult” —The Guardian
Blending together Adrienne Truscott (Spiegeltent at Bard emcee, Wild Bore, Asking For It, The Wau Wau Sisters)’s genre-straddling work and savagely comedic discourse on gender with internationally renowned theatre company Brokentalkers’ (The Examination, Have I No Mouth, The Blue Boy) formally slippery dramaturgy, the award-winning Masterclass is a parody like no other—uncovering excruciating truths about privilege, gender, and power.
Taking shape as an interview, Masterclass doesn’t hold back. Performed by ‘fed-up feminist’ Adrienne Truscott and ‘all-around good guy’ Feidlim Cannon, Masterclass begins as a cockamamie masterclass between two familiar archetypes—the self-mythologizing male artist (Truscott) and a sycophantic interviewer (Cannon). It’s fun. It’s familiar. There are wigs. But there is something more at play.
This wickedly funny take-down of the macho artist has been performed to critical acclaim across the world, including the Sydney Opera House, Sydney Festival, RISING Melbourne, Southbank Centre London, Brighton Festival, Teatro do Bairro Alto Lisbon, and many more. Now it’s New York’s turn!
A time to properly recycle household electronic waste, light bulbs and select batteries
Saturday, April 5, 2025 7:30 am – 1 pm
Red Hook Recycle Center, 23 Glen Pond Road For Bardians who live in Red Hook, this annual event is an important service to help recover critical metals found in electronic waste and prevent toxic materials from being landfilled or incinerated. For everyone: this is an opportunity for Bard community members to volunteer (see the volunteer info here).
This event supplements what can normally be brought to the Town Recycling Center. A list of acceptable waste (and items that will not be accepted) is on the Town website. Accepted household items include, but are not limited to, cameras, computers, copiers and printers, cables, CDs and cassettes, mobile phones, TVs, fluorescent bulbs, LED bulbs, certain batteries, and more. This event is a Red Hook residential service only. Some quantity limits may apply.Sponsored by: Bard Office of Sustainability.
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 M.A. candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Opening Reception for 15: The 2025 Graduate Student Curated Exhibitions
Saturday, April 5, 2025 1–4 pm
Hessel Museum of Art Opening Reception, Saturday, April 5, 1–4 pm.
Limited free seating is available on a roundtrip chartered bus from New York City for the April 5th opening. Reservations are required and can be made on this by calling +1 845-758-7598 or emailing Mary Rozell at [email protected]. For more information, call 845-758-7598, e-mail [email protected], or visit https://ccs.bard.edu/museum/exhibitions/1010-15.
★★★★★ “Inspired interrogation of ‘the great male artist’” —The Stage
★★★★ “Scoring pertinent points about the abusiveness inherent in the genius cult” —The Guardian
Blending together Adrienne Truscott (Spiegeltent at Bard emcee, Wild Bore, Asking For It, The Wau Wau Sisters)’s genre-straddling work and savagely comedic discourse on gender with internationally renowned theatre company Brokentalkers’ (The Examination, Have I No Mouth, The Blue Boy) formally slippery dramaturgy, the award-winning Masterclass is a parody like no other—uncovering excruciating truths about privilege, gender, and power.
Taking shape as an interview, Masterclass doesn’t hold back. Performed by ‘fed-up feminist’ Adrienne Truscott and ‘all-around good guy’ Feidlim Cannon, Masterclass begins as a cockamamie masterclass between two familiar archetypes—the self-mythologizing male artist (Truscott) and a sycophantic interviewer (Cannon). It’s fun. It’s familiar. There are wigs. But there is something more at play.
This wickedly funny take-down of the macho artist has been performed to critical acclaim across the world, including the Sydney Opera House, Sydney Festival, RISING Melbourne, Southbank Centre London, Brighton Festival, Teatro do Bairro Alto Lisbon, and many more. Now it’s New York’s turn!
TŌN’s tenth season at the Fisher Center concludes with a program of dazzling and colorful music by three European composers. The concert begins with Kaija Saariaho’sLaterna Magica, inspired by the autobiography of filmmaker Ingmar Bergman. Then the orchestra is joined by clarinetist Miles Wazni, a winner of the 2023 Bard Conservatory Concerto Competition, for Carl Maria von Weber’s virtuosic Clarinet Concerto No. 2. We close with the scintillating and revelatory third symphony of French composer Albéric Magnard.
★★★★★ “Inspired interrogation of ‘the great male artist’” —The Stage
★★★★ “Scoring pertinent points about the abusiveness inherent in the genius cult” —The Guardian
Blending together Adrienne Truscott (Spiegeltent at Bard emcee, Wild Bore, Asking For It, The Wau Wau Sisters)’s genre-straddling work and savagely comedic discourse on gender with internationally renowned theatre company Brokentalkers’ (The Examination, Have I No Mouth, The Blue Boy) formally slippery dramaturgy, the award-winning Masterclass is a parody like no other—uncovering excruciating truths about privilege, gender, and power.
Taking shape as an interview, Masterclass doesn’t hold back. Performed by ‘fed-up feminist’ Adrienne Truscott and ‘all-around good guy’ Feidlim Cannon, Masterclass begins as a cockamamie masterclass between two familiar archetypes—the self-mythologizing male artist (Truscott) and a sycophantic interviewer (Cannon). It’s fun. It’s familiar. There are wigs. But there is something more at play.
This wickedly funny take-down of the macho artist has been performed to critical acclaim across the world, including the Sydney Opera House, Sydney Festival, RISING Melbourne, Southbank Centre London, Brighton Festival, Teatro do Bairro Alto Lisbon, and many more. Now it’s New York’s turn!
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 M.A. candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Church of St. John the Evangelist, 1114 River Road, Barrytown Join us for services (Holy Communion) at the Episcopal Church of St. John the Evangelist (1114 River Road) in Barrytown. Rides to the church are provided every Sunday throughout the academic year. Please be at the Bard Chapel at 9:45 am to get picked up.
All are welcome!
Christians, non-Christians, spiritual but not religious, agnostics, believers, doubters, seekers, those who have questions about faith and religion, those struggling to understand where God is in our challenging world—anyone wanting to use their faith to change and act in the world! For more information, call 203-858-8800, or e-mail [email protected].
Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Library, First Floor Join us for a workshop to create beaded "Water Is Life" pins led by Rethinking Place 2025 Artist Fellow Sayo’:kla Kindness Williams. Registration required: register here.Sponsored by: American and Indigenous Studies Program; Center for Indigenous Studies.
Chapel of the Holy Innocents Catholic Mass will be available at 11:30 in the Holy Innocents Chapel. All are welcome! For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
TŌN’s tenth season at the Fisher Center concludes with a program of dazzling and colorful music by three European composers. The concert begins with Kaija Saariaho’sLaterna Magica, inspired by the autobiography of filmmaker Ingmar Bergman. Then the orchestra is joined by clarinetist Miles Wazni, a winner of the 2023 Bard Conservatory Concerto Competition, for Carl Maria von Weber’s virtuosic Clarinet Concerto No. 2. We close with the scintillating and revelatory third symphony of French composer Albéric Magnard.
★★★★★ “Inspired interrogation of ‘the great male artist’” —The Stage
★★★★ “Scoring pertinent points about the abusiveness inherent in the genius cult” —The Guardian
Blending together Adrienne Truscott (Spiegeltent at Bard emcee, Wild Bore, Asking For It, The Wau Wau Sisters)’s genre-straddling work and savagely comedic discourse on gender with internationally renowned theatre company Brokentalkers’ (The Examination, Have I No Mouth, The Blue Boy) formally slippery dramaturgy, the award-winning Masterclass is a parody like no other—uncovering excruciating truths about privilege, gender, and power.
Taking shape as an interview, Masterclass doesn’t hold back. Performed by ‘fed-up feminist’ Adrienne Truscott and ‘all-around good guy’ Feidlim Cannon, Masterclass begins as a cockamamie masterclass between two familiar archetypes—the self-mythologizing male artist (Truscott) and a sycophantic interviewer (Cannon). It’s fun. It’s familiar. There are wigs. But there is something more at play.
This wickedly funny take-down of the macho artist has been performed to critical acclaim across the world, including the Sydney Opera House, Sydney Festival, RISING Melbourne, Southbank Centre London, Brighton Festival, Teatro do Bairro Alto Lisbon, and many more. Now it’s New York’s turn!
Olin Hall In preparation for her Carnegie Hall debut recital, pianist Alexandra Balog presents a solo piano recital featuring works by Kodály, Mozart, Noah Max, and Schubert.
Free and open to the public.
Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space A program of classical musical theater selections, featuring the works of Stephen Sondheim, Frederick Loewe, Joseph Stein, Dave Malloy, Joe Masteroff, and Oscar Hammerstein II.
Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory website here.
Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Center for Spiritual Life Buddhist Meditation Room Mondays: Guided Meditation 6-6:15 pm: Dharma words 6:15-6:45: Meditation 6:45-7 pm: Walking meditation and chanting Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and popcorn.
Thursdays: Silent Meditation 6-7 pm: Meditation in stillness Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and rice.
Join at any time and stay for any length of time.Sponsored by: Chaplaincy.
For more information, call 845-752-4619, or e-mail [email protected].
Woods Studio The members of the Abigail Lundquist Botstein Nursery School and The Bard Children's Center are proud to present their works of art that include paintings, drawings, sculptures, and 3D art. April 7–11, Woods Studio. A family reception will be held April 10 at 3:30pm. For more information, call 845-758-7444, or e-mail [email protected].
Institute of Advanced Theology Spring Lecture Series
Monday, April 7, 2025 12:30–2 pm
Bard Hall A lecture series from Bruce Chilton, Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Philosophy and Religion; Director, Institute of Advanced Theology The Bible does not mean only what Christianity says it means, or only what Judaism says it means, or only what Islam says it means. Biblical meaning also cannot be reduced to the caricatures produced by a small but strident coterie of atheist Fundamentalists in recent years.
The Bible unfolded over the course of a millennium of development. During that process social forces in each phase shaped the texts as they stand today, and in some cases the texts can be seen to push back against their contexts. The formation of the Bible resulted in the evolution of a social message, what the Aramaic, and Hebrew, and Greek languages of composition call a “gospel.” Our series is designed to uncover the grounding principles of this gospel as it unfolded over time and was articulated by the Bible in its own terms, before Judaism, Christianity, and Islam emerged.Sponsored by: Institute of Advanced Theology.
For more information, call 845-758-7667, or e-mail [email protected].
Albee Basement (Chaplaincy Offices) Come by the Chaplaincy office (Albee Basement) to knit or learn how to knit! Crocheters and needleworkers are also invited. Materials including yarn and knitting needles are provided. Everyone is welcome.Sponsored by: Chaplaincy.
For more information, call 203-858-8800, or e-mail [email protected].
“All poetry is revolution”: Reading and Discussion of Anna Greki’s Algeria, Capital: Algiers with Marine Cornuet and Ammiel Alcalay
Monday, April 7, 2025 5:30–7 pm
Olin Humanities, Room 102 In 1963, a year after Algerian independence, Anna Greki, an Algerian poet of French descent living in exile in Tunisia, published Algeria, Capital: Algiers, her first poetry collection, in French and Arabic. Greki, 32 at the time, had participated in the Algerian revolution and was arrested, incarcerated and tortured by the French military for her activism. Algeria, Capital: Algiers, translated by Marine Cornuet, and introduced by Ammiel Alcalay, includes poems Greki wrote while in prison and is available in English for the first time. Please join us for a reading and discussion of Greki’s life and work, and of the translation itself.
Marine Cornuet is a Brooklyn-based translator, poet, and editor. Recent publications include Cloche Pèlerine (Le Castor Astral, 2024), a French translation of Kaveh Akbar’s poetry collection Pilgrim Bell, and Algeria, capital: Algiers (Pinsapo Press and Lost & Found, 2024), an English translation of Anna Gréki’s poetry collection Algérie, capitale Algers. She holds an MFA from Queens College, CUNY, and is the co-founder of the literary journal Clotheslines. She is a member of the working collective and an editor at Ugly Duckling Presse.
Poet, novelist, translator, essayist, critic, and scholar Ammiel Alcalay’s latest books are CONTROLLED DEMOLITION: a work in four books, his co-translation of Nasser Rabah’s Gaza: The Poem Said Its Piece, and the forthcoming Follow the Person: Archival Encounters. In 2017, he received an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation for his work as founder and General Editor of Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative; he is a Distinguished Professor at Queens College and the CUNY Graduate Center.Sponsored by: Bard Translation and Translatability Initiative, French Studies, Hannah Arendt Center, Middle Eastern Studies, and Pinsapo Press.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Woods Studio The members of the Abigail Lundquist Botstein Nursery School and The Bard Children's Center are proud to present their works of art that include paintings, drawings, sculptures, and 3D art. April 7–11, Woods Studio. A family reception will be held April 10 at 3:30pm. For more information, call 845-758-7444, or e-mail [email protected].
National Identity, National Minorities, and the Politics of Historical Memory
Memory-Studies Talk Series: Elise Giuliano
Tuesday, April 8, 2025 12:30–2:30 pm
Olin Humanities, Room 303 This talk discusses Dr Giuliano's current research about discourse among ethnic minority populations in Russia’s regions and how to think about the subjectivity and identity of ethnic minorities in multi-ethnic states. Following the end of communist rule in eastern Europe in 1989, most of the new nation-states dedicated themselves to reconstructing a history that viewed Soviet domination following WWII as a departure from their nation’s natural democratic path. Leaders in the post-Soviet states that emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 took a more differentiated approach, especially with regard to the recent Soviet past. In Ukraine, especially since Russia’s invasion in 2022, public memory about Soviet history has become more urgent and politicized. This talk will consider what varied interpretations of critical historical episodes mean for the attempt to define a coherent nation-state and discuss how citizens’ lived experiences and personal family histories interact with attempts by political authorities to define a common public memory.Sponsored by: Center for Civic Engagement; Historical Studies Program; Russian/Eurasian Studies Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
The Hindu Home Kitchen and the Internet of Landlords
Featuring Sucharita Kanjilal, Assistant Professor of Anthropology
Tuesday, April 8, 2025 5–6 pm
Blithewood Join the Levy Institute Research Program of Gender Equality and the Economy for a lecture and discussion with Sucharita Kanjilal, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Bard. Professor Kanjilal's presentation will be followed by an open Q&A session with audience members.
The emergence of the “creator economy”, the $100-billion global industry of monetized online content creation, raises critical questions about how platform economies articulate with social life. Some Marxist scholars argue that platforms act as rent-seeking landlords, inserting themselves as indispensable digital intermediaries between producers and consumers of services. Bringing a feminist, ethnographic lens to ‘the Internet of Landlords’, this presentation follows Indian creators who make food content on YouTube and Instagram in order to theorize creator labor as household industry, re-fashioned as the ‘household start-up’. It describes how creators perform home-based piecework, while their household infrastructures subsidize platforms’ production costs. How are situated relations of reproduction transmuted into the means of global content production? Why is the Hindu home kitchen, once a stubbornly guarded space of heterosexual caste-making, now open for business? Kanjilal posits, consequently, that reproductive relations of gender, caste and race are constitutive of the material relations of production within platforms’ rentier arrangements.
Sucharita Kanjilal is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Bard College. Her research focuses on feminist theories of global capitalism, shifting regimes of social reproduction, critical food studies, and contemporary caste-class relations in South Asia. She draws connections between feminist economic anthropology, anthropology of media, gender studies, the anthropology of food, and anti-caste epistemologies. Her current book manuscript, titled Home Chefs: Indian Households Produce for the Global Creator Economy, is an ethnographic study of Indian food media producers engaged in global platform-based industries of online content creation. Sponsored by: Levy Economics Institute.
Campus Center, Weis Cinema An Expert Witness Geomancer Mystic, as the artist describes, unites the forensic, spatial, and mystical elements of a place, giving testimony to concealed histories while constructing profound truths. They go beyond interpreting land to co-create spaces that are independent, sacred, and ecologically aligned, to protect and restore places as active sites of truth, continuity, and renewal. In this presentation, Hawai'i artist and building practitioner Sean Connelly of After Oceanic shares critical and projective work around creating “architecture for ‘āina” revealing a long disregarded history of US urbanism in Hawai'i and the community grassroots networks of collaborative care and native resurgence working to recover indigenous systems of sustenance for the future.Sponsored by: Center for Human Rights and the Arts.
For more information, call 518-495-9694, or e-mail [email protected].
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space On Tuesday, April 8 at 6pm, poet Mei-mei Berssenbrugge will read from her work. Introduced by David and Ruth Schwab Professor of Languages and Literature Ann Lauterbach, this reading is free and open to the public.
Born in Beijing, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge is the author of fourteen books of poetry, including Hello, the Roses,Empathy, and I Love Artists. Her latest collection, A Treatise on Stars, received the Bollingen Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, among others. Her collaborations include works in theater, dance, music, and the visual arts. Her poems were broadcast from a SpaceX flight in 2021 and her work with composer George Lewis and The Crossing Choir won a Grammy in 2025. She lives in northern New Mexico. Sponsored by: John Ashbery Poetry Series and Written Arts Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Bard Graduate Programs in Sustainability -- Online Info Session
Bard Graduate Programs in Sustainability holds online informational sessions for prospective students to learn more about graduate school.
Tuesday, April 8, 2025 7–8 pm
Online Event Bard Graduate Programs in Sustainability holds online informational sessions for prospective students to learn more about graduate school options in our MBA in Sustainability and Center for Environmental Policy programs.
Join us on Tuesday, April 8, 2024 at 7:00pm ET to learn about our programs directly from Director Eban Goodstein and the admissions team. There will be a time for questions at the end of the session. Register here!
WHAT WE COVER:
Overview of graduate program offerings
Alumni success and career outcomes
Admissions information
Financial aid and scholarships
Prerequisite course information
Tips for a standout application
A $65 application fee waiver is available to those who participate in the webinar.
REGISTER HERESponsored by: Bard Center for Environmental Policy; Bard Graduate Programs; Bard MBA in Sustainability.
Woods Studio The members of the Abigail Lundquist Botstein Nursery School and The Bard Children's Center are proud to present their works of art that include paintings, drawings, sculptures, and 3D art. April 7–11, Woods Studio. A family reception will be held April 10 at 3:30pm. For more information, call 845-758-7444, or e-mail [email protected].
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 M.A. candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Campus Center, Lobby Meet and speak with an admissions representative from Bard College's Graduate Programs. Learn about the many academic programs and gain insight into fields of study, application timelines, and options for Bard students. Bard Graduate Programs MA | MS | MM | MEd | MAT | MFA | MBA | MPhil | PhD Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts Master of Arts in Teaching Graduate Programs in Sustainability: Environmental Policy Environmental Science MBA in Sustainability Levy Economics Institute Graduate Programs in Economic Theory and Policy Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture Center for Curatorial Studies and Art in Contemporary Culture Graduate Vocal Arts Program at the Bard Conservatory Graduate Conducting Programs at the Bard Conservatory Chinese Music and Culture - The Chinese Music Institute The Orchestra Now Longy School of Music of Bard College Master of Music Program Center for Human Rights and The Arts M.A. in Global Studies
Two Lectures Presented by the Inaugural Anthony Lester Fellows in Human Rights
Promoting Legal Protections to Uphold the Ban on FGM in The Gambia (Hilina Degefa) and Training and Supporting Local Human Rights Defenders in Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Trinidad and Tobago (Marian Da Silva)
Wednesday, April 9, 2025 5–6:30 pm
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium Please join us for an evening with Hilina Berhanu Degefa and Marian Alejandra Da Silva Parra, our 2024–25 Lester Fellows in Human Rights. Degefa, an expert on women’s rights from Ethiopia, will discuss her work to combat proposals to legalize female genital mutilation in the Gambia. Da Silva Parra, a human rights lawyer from Venezuela, will discuss her project to train and support local human rights defenders in Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Trinidad and Tobago. The fellowships honor the memory and legacy of Anthony Lester QC (Lord Lester of Herne Hill), one of Britain’s most distinguished human rights lawyers. For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Campus Center, Weis Cinema If reparations are inversions of debt, what would it take to repair the paradigm of private property? The Broken Pitcher Forum traces the entangled histories of debt and property law from the banks and commissioners at the center of the film The Broken Pitcher (2022) to the colonial land surveys, loans, and tributes that transformed land into collateral.
The public program will begin with the film's opening sequence, which follows the rise of home foreclosures in Cyprus after the 2012–13 financial crisis. The screening will be followed by a conversation between the film’s co-directors, Natascha Sadr Haghighian and Marina Christodoulidou; writer and curator Adam HajYahia; and Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Bard College. The discussion will be moderated by filmmaker and scholar Argyro Nicolaou. Followed by the Numismatics lecture-performance by Emiddio Vasquez.
The forum approaches the film as a departure point, tracing these foreclosures through longer colonial histories of property and ownership in dialogue with each speaker’s ongoing research, from the effects of austerity and real estate speculation on life in Athens, to the psychic, materialist, and aesthetic formulations of the condition of debt. This public program is presented as part of the group exhibition Mutable Cycles on view April 5 – May 25, 2025, curated by Ariana Kalliga at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College. For more information, call 845-758-7573, e-mail [email protected], or visit https://ccs.bard.edu/museum/exhibitions/1076-mutable-cycles.
Blum Hall Bard Electronic Music is proud to present German electroacoustic artist Christoph Heemann's live performance in Blum Hall on Wednesday, April 9. A legendary figure in electronic music who has quietly produced a unique and vast body of work since his beginnings with the absurdist cutups of H.N.A.S. in the mid-1980s, Heemann has been active as a solo artist and in many groups including Mirror (with Andrew Chalk), Mimir (with Jim O’Rourke), and In Camera (with Timo van Luijk).
Christoph Heemann will also speak to Sarah Hennies’ Composing With Field Recordings class on April 10. Those wishing to attend this artist talk can get in touch with Professor Hennies at [email protected]. This event is free and open to the public. Sponsored by: Music Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Center for Spiritual Life Buddhist Meditation Room Mondays: Guided Meditation 6-6:15 pm: Dharma words 6:15-6:45: Meditation 6:45-7 pm: Walking meditation and chanting Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and popcorn.
Thursdays: Silent Meditation 6-7 pm: Meditation in stillness Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and rice.
Join at any time and stay for any length of time.Sponsored by: Chaplaincy.
For more information, call 845-752-4619, or e-mail [email protected].
Woods Studio The members of the Abigail Lundquist Botstein Nursery School and The Bard Children's Center are proud to present their works of art that include paintings, drawings, sculptures, and 3D art. April 7–11, Woods Studio. A family reception will be held April 10 at 3:30pm. For more information, call 845-758-7444, or e-mail [email protected].
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 M.A. candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Back in the day, art history was taught using mounted photos. These vintage photos of art, architecture and artifacts make great home decor. Proceeds benefit the AHVC program. Come on by!Sponsored by: Art History and Visual Culture Program.
For more information, call 845-758-7158, or e-mail [email protected].
Join us for a film screening of Artifact War and a Q&A with Dr. Amr Al-Azm who is featured in the film. Click here to watch the trailer.
Weis Theater, April 10, 5:30pm
Thursday, April 10, 2025 5:30–8 pm
An intrepid archeology professor and his team of students are the only ones who stand in the way of an ISIS illicit antiquities network. Faced with losing their cultural heritage they become spies, and they go undercover in ISIS territory. They dodge bombs and militia to create a system to monitor theft and destruction of Syrian antiquities. During this process, they discover more than they anticipated, discovering thousands of trafficked items and that the crimes committed are being enabled by terrorists and multinational corporations. The tragedy continues because the sale of illegal goods is uncovered in the most unsuspecting place.Sponsored by: Art History and Visual Culture Program; Center for Human Rights and the Arts; Experimental Humanities Program; Middle Eastern Studies Program.
For more information, call 845-758-7158, or e-mail [email protected].
RKC 200 When Carey Goldberg was growing up during the Cold War, US-Soviet relations loomed as critical for avoiding nuclear Armageddon. So she studied Russian and journalism in high school and college, and finagled a visa as a nanny to get to Moscow and start reporting. For more than six years she covered the former Soviet Union, its collapse and what came after, and was a Pulitzer finalist for group coverage of the 1991 coup. She then came home to work for The New York Times and went on to other jobs in journalism, but her time in Moscow remains her “glory days.” She will share some of her experiences and discuss the importance of Russian language skills for a successful career in international reporting.Sponsored by: Russian and Eurasian Studies.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Faculty Reading: Walk Her Way New York City with Jana Mader
Thursday, April 10, 2025 5:30–6:30 pm
Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Library, First Floor This Thursday, April 10 at 5:30 p.m., join Jana Mader, Director of Academic Programs at the Hannah Arendt Center and Visiting Assistant Professor in Environmental Humanities, for a conversation and reading from her new book, Walk Her Way New York City: A Walking Guide to Women's History (Hardie Grant Books, 2025). This engaging guide, co-authored by Jana Mader and Kaitlyn Allen and illustrated by Aja O'Han, features ten curated walking tours across the boroughs, revealing the remarkable contributions and lives of well-loved and unsung heroines who shaped the city’s story. Light refreshments will be provided as well as a book raffle for participants. This event is co-sponsored by the Office of the Dean of Inclusive Excellence, Stevenson Library, and the Hannah Arendt Center. For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Woods Studio The members of the Abigail Lundquist Botstein Nursery School and The Bard Children's Center are proud to present their works of art that include paintings, drawings, sculptures, and 3D art. April 7–11, Woods Studio. A family reception will be held April 10 at 3:30pm. For more information, call 845-758-7444, or e-mail [email protected].
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 M.A. candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Olin Hall Bard students, faculty, staff, and members of the Hudson Valley community are welcome to attend a free symposium centering on two environmental threats facing the Hudson/ Mahicantuck River. The primary purpose of the symposium is to facilitate public discussion— informed by science, environmental law, and best citizen advocacy practices—about how members of the community can effectively address and work together to curtail these threats. Morning presentations will be followed by an afternoon panel and public discussion.
The Threats:
• High levels of PCB contamination due to General Electric’s dumping of toxic material for 30 years and G.E.’s clean-up of PCBs between 2009 and 2015 that does not meet agreed upon environmental benchmarks. Continuing PCB contamination poses human health risks, causes ongoing extinction and disease to fish and wildlife, and damages river ecosystems, wetlands, and ground water. • “Bomb Trains”—overloaded freight trains carrying Bakken shale oil and unidentified chemicals along the eroding west bank of the river. A derailment would spell catastrophe.
Schedule:
10:00 - 10:10 Introduction to “The Fate of the River” symposium. 10:10 - 10: 35 Introduction and screening of Jon Bowermaster’s film "A Toxic Legacy about General Electric’s Contamination of the Hudson/ Mahicantuck River" 10:40 - 11:00 Jeremy Cherson, Associate Director of Government Affairs, Riverkeeper 11:05 to 11:25 Erin Doran, Faculty in Environmental Law, Bard Center for Environmental Policy, and Senior Staff Attorney, Food & Water Watch 11:35 -11:55 David Carpenter, Director of Institute for Health and the Environment, SUNY. Albany Noon to 1:00 LUNCH BREAK 1:05 - 1:25 Eli Dueker, Associate Professor of Environmental and Urban Studies, and Director of Bard Center for Environmental Sciences and Humanities 1:25 - 1:40 Introduction to and screening of Jon Bowermaster’s film Bomb Trains 1:45 - 2:05 Florence Murray, Partner of Murray & Murray Law Firm, represents stakeholders affected by the toxic aftermath of the 2023 derailment of a Norfolk Southern train in East Palestine, Ohio 2:15 - 2:35 COFFEE BREAK 2:40 - 4:00 Panel and Public Discussion: “Next Steps Toward a Healthier River”
Speakers:
Jon Bowermaster is a writer, filmmaker, and six-time grantee of the National Geographic Expeditions Council.
Jeremy Cherson earned his MS in Environmental Policy at the Bard Center for Environmental Policy and now serves as the Associate Director of Government Affairs working to advance Riverkeeper's priorities in Albany and Washington, DC.
Erin Doran is a Senior Staff Attorney at Food & Water Watch focusing on climate and energy matters. She was previously a Senior Attorney at Riverkeeper, where she advocated for clean water, healthy ecosystems, and resilient climate solutions in the Hudson Valley.
David O. Carpenter is a public health physician and is Director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University at Albany, as well as Professor of Environmental Health Sciences within the School of Public Health at the University at Albany. His research focuses on the environmental causes of human disease, both those directly caused by chemical exposure and those mediated via endocrine disruption.
Eli Dueker is an Associate Professor of Environmental and Urban Studies at Bard College and former executive director of Project Underground, an international environmental and human rights organization.
Florence Murray is a partner at Murray & Murray, Co. L.P.A., where her areas of practice include primarily traumatic brain injuries and wrongful death actions, civil rights violations with severe injuries, and trucking collisions. She is active with the Ohio Association for Justice, National Lawyers Guild, and the Brain Injury Association.
The Fate of the River symposium is the first in a series of public discussions on "Environmental Injustice Across the Americas" that focuses on state-sanctioned pollution, the poisoning of water, destruction of the commons, and the fight for justice. The Fate of the River is co-sponsored by Bard College’s Human Rights Program, Center for Civic Engagement, Center for Environmental Policy, Environmental Studies, and the Office of Sustainability. For more information, call 845-758-6822.
Unpacking the Trump Agenda: A Conversation with Walter Mead
Friday, April 11, 2025 12–1 pm
Olin Humanities, Room 104 The Center for Civic Engagement and the Alexander Hamilton Society at Bard are pleased to invite the Bard community to our upcoming speaker event with Walter Russell Mead for a discussion of the Trump Doctrine, the future of American power, and the unraveling of the liberal international order.
Since January 20, the Trump administration has stunned the world with its flood the zone strategy: upending institutional norms, ruthlessly exercising power at home by cracking down on elite law firms and universities, dismantling federal bureaucracies, moving aggressively to secure the border, and fundamentally altering US foreign policy in multiple pivotal regions around the world. Just last week, this unconventional approach to world politics took another turn as President Trump imposed a dizzying array of new tariffs on the global trade system—a system the United States has built and protected since its inception after the end of World War II.
Walter Russell Mead is the senior scholar, Center for Civic Engagement and Hannah Arendt Center, and the Ravenel B. Curry III Distinguished Fellow in Strategy and Statesmanship at Hudson Institute, the Alexander Hamilton Professor of Strategy and Statecraft with the Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida, and the “Global View” columnist at the Wall Street Journal.
Sponsored by the Center for Civic Engagement and the Alexander Hamilton Society at Bard For more information, call 845-758-7378, or e-mail [email protected].
Student Recital: Qijia Liu, violin, with Nomin Samdan, piano
Works by Ysaÿe, Mozart, Bach, and Stravinsky
Friday, April 11, 2025 1 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Join us for a student recital. Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Online Event We're reading The Life of the Mind, Hannah Arendt’s unfinished final work. In it, she focuses on three basic mental activities—thinking, willing, and judging—and their relation to the world of appearances and to the human capacity for moral and political action. The new critical edition makes available in print, for the first time, the text of the typescripts as Arendt left them, complemented by a wealth of previously unpublished material, detailed annotations, and extensive scholarly commentary. We will also be referring to Mary McCarthy's edition for increased accessibility.
Free to HAC members and to Bard students, staff, and faculty! Email [email protected] for the Zoom link.
Find the full Virtural Reading Group schedule: hac.bard.edu/programs/vrg/ Get the new critical edition of The Life of the Mindhere.
Don't worry if you miss a VRG meeting! We post them all on our YouTube channel the week after they're recorded. Or tune in to an edited version of the chapter readings plus bonus episodes on our podcast, Reading Hannah Arendt with Roger Berkowitz.Sponsored by: Hannah Arendt Center.
Moderated by Daniel Brinkerhoff Young, Visiting Assistant Professor in Philosophy at Union College
Friday, April 11, 2025 4–5:30 pm
Union College, Lippmann 100
Please join us for the third session of the Hudson Valley Political Theory Workshop this Friday, April 11. Spring Semester workshops will take place at Union College.
The Hudson Valley Political Theory Workshop is a new collaborative project launched by Bard College and Union College. The workshop aims to bring together political theorists working in or near the Hudson Valley Region in a series of workshops to share their work in progress, create new networks, and open up possibilities for new collaborative research projects that further advance humanities.
We are delighted to welcome Daniel Brinkerhoff Young, Visiting Assistant Professor in Philosophy at Union College.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 M.A. candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Saturday, April 12, 2025 – Sunday, April 13, 2025 12–12 pm
Memorial Hall (Old Gym) Presented by WXBC and Bard Electronic Music, 24 Hour Drone will be a full day (noon April 12 – noon April 13) of continuous musical performances by Bard students, faculty, and community members. More information here.Sponsored by: Music Program.
For more information, call 414-412-0775, or e-mail [email protected].
Required Recital: Riley Lyons, trombone, with Gabriele Zemaityte, piano
Featuring works by Kevin Day, Ferdinand David, and Stjepan Šulek
Saturday, April 12, 2025 1 pm
Olin Hall Join us for a student recital. Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space A showcase featuring compositions by Elena Hause, Lili M. Namazi, Rowan Robinson, Olivia Marhevka, Logan Rishard, Santiago Mieres, Artemy Muhkin, Steve Bonacci, Julian Raheb, Emily Ta, Sam Mutter, Faisal Jones, Drew Frankenberg, and Manar Hashmi. Free and open to the public.
Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube Channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music; Music Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
The Graduate Vocal Arts Program presents: "Music for Today"
Songs of Arnold Schoenberg and Charles Ives
Saturday, April 12, 2025 7:30 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building In honor of two iconic composers on the anniversary of their 150th birthdays, the young artists of the Vocal Arts Program and the Conservatory Piano Fellows present Schoenberg's Das Buch der hängenden Gärten (The Book of the Hanging Gardens) and a collection of songs of Charles Ives. Each composer found a new and highly individual musical language to respond to the rapidly changing world of the early 20th century, still highly relevant for our time.
Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube channel.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music; Bard Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Program; Bard Conservatory Post-Graduate Piano Fellowship.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 M.A. candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Church of St. John the Evangelist, 1114 River Road, Barrytown Join us for services (Holy Communion) at the Episcopal Church of St. John the Evangelist (1114 River Road) in Barrytown. Rides to the church are provided every Sunday throughout the academic year. Please be at the Bard Chapel at 9:45 am to get picked up.
All are welcome!
Christians, non-Christians, spiritual but not religious, agnostics, believers, doubters, seekers, those who have questions about faith and religion, those struggling to understand where God is in our challenging world—anyone wanting to use their faith to change and act in the world! For more information, call 203-858-8800, or e-mail [email protected].
Chapel of the Holy Innocents Catholic Mass will be available at 11:30 in the Holy Innocents Chapel. All are welcome! For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Saturday, April 12, 2025 – Sunday, April 13, 2025 12–12 pm
Memorial Hall (Old Gym) Presented by WXBC and Bard Electronic Music, 24 Hour Drone will be a full day (noon April 12 – noon April 13) of continuous musical performances by Bard students, faculty, and community members. More information here.Sponsored by: Music Program.
For more information, call 414-412-0775, or e-mail [email protected].
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC As the German Romantic movement took hold in the early 19th century, artists of all types began examining the relationship between nature and the human soul. Painter Caspar David Friedrich, widely considered the most important German artist of the era, portrayed nature as a setting for profound spiritual and emotional encounters. His compatriot, the renowned composer Robert Schumann, also took inspiration from the natural world. Upon moving to Düsseldorf, along the Rhine River, he wrote his buoyant Third Symphony, which he titled the Rhenish.
In the popular series Sight & Sound, The Orchestra Now explores the parallels between orchestral music and the visual arts. Each performance includes a Met curator introduction, a discussion with conductor and music historian Leon Botstein accompanied by on-screen exhibition images and live musical excerpts, then a full performance of the works and an audience Q&A.
Third Year Recital: Grace Trenouth, soprano, with Bat-Erdene Batbileg, piano
"Diva Down!": Works by Schubert, Britten, Viardot, Schmidt, Schumann, and Bolcom.
Sunday, April 13, 2025 3 pm
Olin Hall Join us for a student recital. Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Center for Spiritual Life Buddhist Meditation Room Mondays: Guided Meditation 6-6:15 pm: Dharma words 6:15-6:45: Meditation 6:45-7 pm: Walking meditation and chanting Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and popcorn.
Thursdays: Silent Meditation 6-7 pm: Meditation in stillness Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and rice.
Join at any time and stay for any length of time.Sponsored by: Chaplaincy.
For more information, call 845-752-4619, or e-mail [email protected].
Institute of Advanced Theology Spring Lecture Series
Monday, April 14, 2025 12:30–2 pm
Bard Hall A lecture series from Bruce Chilton, Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Philosophy and Religion; Director, Institute of Advanced Theology The Bible does not mean only what Christianity says it means, or only what Judaism says it means, or only what Islam says it means. Biblical meaning also cannot be reduced to the caricatures produced by a small but strident coterie of atheist Fundamentalists in recent years.
The Bible unfolded over the course of a millennium of development. During that process social forces in each phase shaped the texts as they stand today, and in some cases the texts can be seen to push back against their contexts. The formation of the Bible resulted in the evolution of a social message, what the Aramaic, and Hebrew, and Greek languages of composition call a “gospel.” Our series is designed to uncover the grounding principles of this gospel as it unfolded over time and was articulated by the Bible in its own terms, before Judaism, Christianity, and Islam emerged.Sponsored by: Institute of Advanced Theology.
For more information, call 845-758-7667, or e-mail [email protected].
Albee Basement (Chaplaincy Offices) Come by the Chaplaincy office (Albee Basement) to knit or learn how to knit! Crocheters and needleworkers are also invited. Materials including yarn and knitting needles are provided. Everyone is welcome.Sponsored by: Chaplaincy.
For more information, call 203-858-8800, or e-mail [email protected].
An hour-long program of short performances by Bard Conservatory students.
Monday, April 14, 2025 12 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-7196, or e-mail [email protected].
Traduttore, Traditore? Reflections on Translating Dante
by Joe Luzzi (Bard College)
Monday, April 14, 2025 6:30 pm
Olin Humanities, Room 102 The Italians have a saying traduttore, traditore – that is, the “translator" of a book can often be a “traitor” to it if he fails to capture both its letter and its spirit! In this event, Professor Joseph Luzzi will discuss his new translation of Dante’s Vita Nuova (Liveright/Norton, December 2024), which was Dante’s first book and a moving account of his youthful love for his muse, Beatrice, and his discovery of his passion for poetry. Professor Luzzi will show how his understanding of translation as a “way of thinking” also helped him complete his recent Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Biography (Princeton University Press, November 2024). Overall, he will share his experiences in trying to remain faithful to Dante’s original language, while at the same time bringing his own personal understanding and interpretation of the Vita Nuova, an early masterpiece by Italy’s so-called sommo poeta, supreme poet.Sponsored by: Italian Studies.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Bard Electronic Music Program presents: N119 Night
Monday, April 14, 2025 8–10 pm
Blum N119 Bard electronic music students present music, films, experiments, and drafts in an informal setting. This month's musicians include Iris Gross, Felix LeVeque, August Levine, and Ondina McDonald. Open and free to the public. Sponsored by: Music Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
April 15th Application Deadline | Levy Graduate Programs in Economic Theory and Policy
Tuesday, April 15, 2025
The Levy Economics Institute Graduate Programs in Economic Theory and Policy were created to offer students an alternative to mainstream programs in economics and finance. These innovative programs combine a rigorous course of study with the exceptional opportunity to participate in advanced economics research. Our application deadline is April 15th, 2025. Apply Now Sponsored by: Bard Graduate Programs; Levy Economics Institute; Levy Graduate Programs.
For more information, call 845-758-7776, or e-mail [email protected].
Red Hook Village CCE is excited to announce an open call for submissions from emerging artists to show their art to the local community. Artists are invited to create art to display in one of four art boxes located in publicly-accessible spaces around the Town and Village of Red Hook. Each unit is permanently mounted on a six-sided wooden pole at eye level to provide an intimate viewing opportunity for the visitor from Spring 2025 to Spring 2026. This year's theme is Flora and Fauna: Celebrating the Hudson Valley.
If you live, work or attend school in or around Red Hook, you are most likely artistically inspired by the natural beauty of the Hudson Valley and its rich biodiversity. This is an opportunity to share your work and inspiration with the community! Official opening is May 10.
Featuring Eri Yamamoto’s Colors of The Night Trio - Concert at 7:30 pm in the Lásló Z. Bitó '60 Performance Space, Lecture at 4pm in Blum N211, the Jazz room
Tuesday, April 15, 2025 4–8:30 pm
László Z. Bitó Conservatory Performance Space This special concert is dedicated to the memory of Richard Gordon, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Bard College and a consummate jazz pianist. His enduring contributions to both academia and the arts will be honored through this musical tribute. The series is generously supported by Bard Jazz Studies, the Bitó Conservatory of Music and private donations in his memory.
Join us for an Artist's talk with Eri Yamamoto at 4pm in Blum N211, then a concert at 7:30 pm in the Lásló Z. Bitó '60 Performance Space.Sponsored by: Music Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Richard Gordon Jazz Series Featuring Eri Yamamoto’s Colors of The Night Trio
Jazz at Bard and the László Z. Bitó Conservatory of Music Present
Tuesday, April 15, 2025 4–9 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Free and open to the public. Artist Talk with Eri Yamamoto: 4:00–5:00 PM, Blum N211 Concert: 7:30 PM, László Z. Bitó Conservatory Performance Space Featuring: Eri Yamamoto, piano; William Parker, bass; Ikuo Takeuchi, drums.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 201-577-1092, or e-mail [email protected].
Campus Center, Weis Cinema Daniel Mendelsohn and Robert Cioffi will read from Mendelsohn's edition of Homer’s Odyssey. Widely known for his essays on classical literature and culture in the New Yorker and many other publications, Mendelsohn gives us a line-for-line rendering of the Odyssey that is both engrossing as poetry and true to its source. Mendelsohn’s expansive six-beat line, far closer to the original than that of other recent translations, allows him to capture each of Homer’s dense verses without sacrificing the amplitude and shadings of the original. A discussion will follow.
Please register for this free event here. Sponsored by: Classical Studies, the Dean of the College, and Oblong Books.
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 M.A. candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Jim Ottaway Jr. Film Center A film about "Combatants for Peace," a joint Palestinian-Israeli organization of former fighters. Sponsored by the Office of the President, the Dean of the College, Sociology, Interdisciplinary Study of Religions, and Jewish Studies programs, and It’s Complicated from the Hannah Arendt Center.Sponsored by: Hannah Arendt Center.
For more information, call 202-320-6545, or e-mail [email protected].
Center for Spiritual Life Buddhist Meditation Room Mondays: Guided Meditation 6-6:15 pm: Dharma words 6:15-6:45: Meditation 6:45-7 pm: Walking meditation and chanting Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and popcorn.
Thursdays: Silent Meditation 6-7 pm: Meditation in stillness Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and rice.
Join at any time and stay for any length of time.Sponsored by: Chaplaincy.
For more information, call 845-752-4619, or e-mail [email protected].
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 M.A. candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Olin Hall Featuring Bat-Erdene Batbileg, piano, and Lap Yin Lee, violin. Join us for a student recital. Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube channel here. Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Led by Carlos Macías Prieto and Luis Chavez-Gonzalez
Thursday, April 17, 2025 1:30–2:30 pm
Olin 101 The Indigenous language of Nahuatl is currently spoken by over one and a half million people. Participants will learn basic greetings and expressions in modern Nahuatl. Presented as a part of Pueblos Originarios/Original Pueblos: Indigenous Perspectives from Turtle Island, Cemanahuac, and Abiayala.Sponsored by: American and Indigenous Studies Program.
For more information, call 860-992-6472, or e-mail [email protected].
Thursday, April 17, 2025 – Friday, April 18, 2025 3–12 pm
Campus Center, Multipurpose Room This two-day class provides a journey through our personal and professional experience within a binary society. We will reflect on how we have challenged pre-established norms to expand our expression in tango and in life.Sponsored by: Center for Civic Engagement; Student Activities.
For more information, call 503-901-0031, or e-mail [email protected].
Open Studios: Works In-Progress by First-Year MA Students in Human Rights & the Arts
Thursday, April 17, 2025 3–6 pm
Massena Campus First-year MA students at the Center for Human Rights and the Arts present works-in-progress developed in class, led by artists Robin Frohardt and Oscar Gardea. These works reflect their exploration of the potential of everyday objects and materials, with emphasis on repurposing discarded items and utilizing unconventional materials.
Material Storytelling, led by Robin Frohardt, delved into the use of discarded materials repurposed through various techniques to create narrative, build scenarios, and characters. Survey on Waste and the Supernatural, led by Oscar Gardea, observed the concept of waste as a strategy to reconfigure erased culture in zones of conflict. The showcased works range from puppetry to masks, object theater, costumes, and interactive installations, as employed to transform seemingly mundane or discarded materials into powerful tools for storytelling.
Parking is available on the Massena campus. The Bard Massena Shuttle offers transportation to Bard students, staff, and faculty between Kline Bus Stop (Southbound) and the Massena Campus Roundabout. Please see the shuttle schedule. For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
A journey to the south with Don Guaman Poma de Ayala
Thursday, April 17, 2025 3:30 pm
Olin 107 An urgent letter was sent in 1613 from Peru to the King of Spain. In this workshop, we will come together to uncover its urgency, painting images of the past that may help us to light our present.Sponsored by: American and Indigenous Studies Program.
For more information, call 860-992-6472, or e-mail [email protected].
A conversation with David Salle and Francine Prose
Thursday, April 17, 2025 5–7 pm
Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Library, First Floor David Salle and Francine Prose will discuss the artwork and writing of Janet Malcolm in conjunction with the exhibition Janet Malcolm: Critical Collage at Stevenson Library. David Salle, the subject of Malcolm’s 1994 New Yorker profile “Forty-One False Starts,” is one of America’s most esteemed painters. He is also the author of How to See: Looking, Talking, and Thinking About Art . Distinguished Writer in Residence at Bard Francine Prose is the author of numerous books of fiction and nonfiction, including Reading Like a Writer and The Lives of the Muses: Nine Women and the Artists They Inspired . She is the former president of the PEN American Center. All are welcome. For more information, call 845-758-6822.
Nahua (Aztec) Writing After the Conquest: Domingo Chimalpahin and the Cemanahuac Archive in Colonial Mexico
Thursday, April 17, 2025 6 pm
Olin 102 Part of Pueblos Originarios/Original Pueblos: Indigenous Perspectives from Turtle Island, Cemanahuac, and Abiayala. A gathering to foster dialogue about Indigeneity throughout the Americas.
This presentation examines the writings of don Domingo de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin (hereafter Chimalpahin), a Nahua tlacuilo (scribe) who produced the largest body of written texts in Nahuatl and Spanish among Nahua (Aztec) writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; it illustrates that Chimalpahin refutes Spanish historiography by revising and extending the narratives of Spanish, castizo, mestizo, and Indigenous authors, all while placing Indigenous history in a global context. By framing Chimalpahin’s work as a forward-looking endeavor, Chimalpahin’s writing encourages us to reconsider Nahua intellectual production at the turn of the seventeenth century and as a starting point from which to imagine alternative futures that support Indigenous struggles for land and self-determination.Sponsored by: American and Indigenous Studies Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Chapel of the Holy Innocents A gathering to celebrate Christ's command to love and God's covenant with Israel with a simple meal.Sponsored by: Chaplaincy.
For more information, call 203-858-8800, or e-mail [email protected].
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 M.A. candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Online Event We're reading The Life of the Mind, Hannah Arendt’s unfinished final work. In it, she focuses on three basic mental activities—thinking, willing, and judging—and their relation to the world of appearances and to the human capacity for moral and political action. The new critical edition makes available in print, for the first time, the text of the typescripts as Arendt left them, complemented by a wealth of previously unpublished material, detailed annotations, and extensive scholarly commentary. We will also be referring to Mary McCarthy's edition for increased accessibility.
Free to HAC members and to Bard students, staff, and faculty! Email [email protected] for the Zoom link.
Find the full Virtural Reading Group schedule: hac.bard.edu/programs/vrg/ Get the new critical edition of The Life of the Mindhere.
Don't worry if you miss a VRG meeting! We post them all on our YouTube channel the week after they're recorded. Or tune in to an edited version of the chapter readings plus bonus episodes on our podcast, Reading Hannah Arendt with Roger Berkowitz.Sponsored by: Hannah Arendt Center.
Thursday, April 17, 2025 – Friday, April 18, 2025 3–12 pm
Campus Center, Multipurpose Room This two-day class provides a journey through our personal and professional experience within a binary society. We will reflect on how we have challenged pre-established norms to expand our expression in tango and in life.Sponsored by: Center for Civic Engagement; Student Activities.
For more information, call 503-901-0031, or e-mail [email protected].
Chapel of the Holy Innocents A Good Friday Service remembering Christ’s crucifixion and the reading of The Passion according to the Gospel of John. All are welcome!Sponsored by: Chaplaincy.
For more information, call 203-858-8800, or e-mail [email protected].
Chapel of the Holy Innocents Student-led service with Gospel Choir, Stations of the Cross, Passion Reading, and Quaker Silence.Sponsored by: Chaplaincy.
For more information, call 203-858-8800, or e-mail [email protected].
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space FeaturingNeilson Chen, piano; Luca Sakon, violin; Lili Simon, violin; Nandor Burai, violin; Sándor Burka, violin; Jessica Ward, viola; Dari Batsaikhan, cello; Yu-Cih Chang, double bass; Ashley Lim, harp; and David Kéringer, conductor. Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Discussion with Comedian, Peace Builder, and Activist Noam Shuster Eliassi
Presented by Beyond the Binary
Friday, April 18, 2025 7 pm
Olin Humanities, Room 102 Join us for an evening of critical conversation and cultural insight with Noam Shuster Eliassi—comedian, activist, and cultural critic. Noam uses comedy to challenge systems of power and open space for dialogue on justice, identity, and coexistence. She grew up in Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, the only intentionally mixed Palestinian-Jewish community in Israel, and performs in Hebrew, Arabic, and English.
Her work spans stages across the globe, including the Palestine Comedy Festival, where she became the first Jewish performer to take the mic. With a background in peacebuilding and a sharp comedic voice, Noam brings together stories, satire, and social critique in a way that’s as entertaining as it is necessary.
This event is hosted by It’s Complicated, a student-led project of the Hannah Arendt Center, creating space for thoughtful learning, cross-perspective dialogue, and critical engagement around Israel/Palestine.Sponsored by: Hannah Arendt Center.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Performances by Riley Lyons, Ameya Natarajan, Christina Ng-Leyba, and Eli Rupper, tenor trombone; Yu-Tien James Chou, bass trombone; and Zander Grier, tuba and bass trombone.
Friday, April 18, 2025 7 pm
Olin Hall Featuring works by Mahler, Pergolesi, Theo Charlier, Ferdinand David, Don Haddad, Stjepan Sulek, Tchaikovsky, and Edward MacDowell.
Free and open to the public. Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
The Bard Theater & Performance Program presents Good Penny by DN Bashir, Assistant Professor of Theater & Performance at Bard College, and directed by Katherine Wilkinson.
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 M.A. candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
The Bard Theater & Performance Program presents Good Penny by DN Bashir, Assistant Professor of Theater & Performance at Bard College, and directed by Katherine Wilkinson.
Studio Art Senior Project Exhibition Opening Reception
Bard Exhibition Center, UBS Exhibition #2
Saturday, April 19, 2025 3–6 pm
Bard Exhibition Center Please join us to celebrate the work of our second group of senior students exhibiting in Red Hook at the Bard Exhibition Center: Tommy Bennett, Veritie Howard, Mya Muchineuta, Autumn Knight, Zoe Mogannam, Mia Natelli, Paulina Jamieson, Sammie Perez, Roma Taitwood, and Calum Tinker. For more information, call 845-758-7674, or e-mail [email protected].
The Bard Baroque Ensemble, under the direction of Renée Anne Louprette, presents its debut performance in the Fisher Center, featuring works by Bach, Handel, and Mozart dedicated to the memory of Frederick Fisher Hammond (1937–2023), Professor Emeritus and the Irma Brandeis Chair of Romance Cultures and Music History.
The program celebrates the restoration of Professor Hammond’s French double-manual and Italian single-manual harpsichords—now a part of Bard College’s collection of early keyboard instruments—featuring them in the Concerto for Two Harpsichords, Strings, and Continuo in C Minor, BWV 1060 by Johann Sebastian Bach, with Sophia Cornicello and Raymond Erickson as harpsichord soloists.
One of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s most popular and enduring works, Symphony No. 40 in G Minor, K. 550, opens the program, interpreted by the Ensemble with a Baroque sensibility. Bard faculty member and distinguished tenor Rufus Müller presents the ravishing opening aria from Handel’s Serse: Ombra mai fu (Never was a shade).
The program concludes with Bach’s Cantata No. 1: Wie schön leuchtet Der Morgenstern (How brightly shines the Morningstar), featuring the Bard Chamber Singers, Preparatory Division Children’s Chorus, and soloists from the Graduate Vocal Arts Program. This luminous chorale-cantata—originally conceived for the Feast of the Annunciation—is presented here in the context of transition from darkness to light, on the date of Holy Saturday within the Christian Church. Valentina Grasso, Assistant Professor of History at Bard, will present a reading from Dante’s Divine Comedy—in lieu of the traditional Lutheran sermon—at the center of Bach’s 1725 masterpiece.
Fisher Center, Sosnoff Theater The Bard Baroque Ensemble, under the direction of Renée Anne Louprette, presents its debut performance in the Fisher Center, featuring works by Bach, Handel, and Mozart dedicated to the memory of Frederick Fisher Hammond (1937–2023), Professor Emeritus and the Irma Brandeis Chair of Romance Cultures and Music History. The program celebrates the restoration of Professor Hammond’s French double-manual and Italian single-manual harpsichords, now a part of Bard College’s collection of early keyboard instruments, featuring them in the Concerto for Two Harpsichords, Strings, and Continuo in C Minor, BWV 1060 by Johann Sebastian Bach, with Sophia Cornicello and Raymond Erickson as harpsichord soloists.
The Bard Theater & Performance Program presents Good Penny by DN Bashir, Assistant Professor of Theater & Performance at Bard College, and directed by Katherine Wilkinson.
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 M.A. candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Church of St. John the Evangelist, 1114 River Road, Barrytown Join us for services (Holy Communion) at the Episcopal Church of St. John the Evangelist (1114 River Road) in Barrytown. Rides to the church are provided every Sunday throughout the academic year. Please be at the Bard Chapel at 9:45 am to get picked up.
All are welcome!
Christians, non-Christians, spiritual but not religious, agnostics, believers, doubters, seekers, those who have questions about faith and religion, those struggling to understand where God is in our challenging world—anyone wanting to use their faith to change and act in the world! For more information, call 203-858-8800, or e-mail [email protected].
Chapel of the Holy Innocents Catholic Mass will be available at 11:30 in the Holy Innocents Chapel. All are welcome! For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
The Bard Theater & Performance Program presents Good Penny by DN Bashir, Assistant Professor of Theater & Performance at Bard College, and directed by Katherine Wilkinson.
Degree Recital: Jalen Mims, clarinet, with Neilson Chen, piano
Works by Othmar Schoeck, Johannes Brahms, and Paquito D’Rivera.
Sunday, April 20, 2025 4 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Join us for a student recital. Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Center for Spiritual Life Buddhist Meditation Room Mondays: Guided Meditation 6-6:15 pm: Dharma words 6:15-6:45: Meditation 6:45-7 pm: Walking meditation and chanting Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and popcorn.
Thursdays: Silent Meditation 6-7 pm: Meditation in stillness Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and rice.
Join at any time and stay for any length of time.Sponsored by: Chaplaincy.
For more information, call 845-752-4619, or e-mail [email protected].
Institute of Advanced Theology Spring Lecture Series
Monday, April 21, 2025 12:30–2 pm
Bard Hall A lecture series from Bruce Chilton, Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Philosophy and Religion; Director, Institute of Advanced Theology The Bible does not mean only what Christianity says it means, or only what Judaism says it means, or only what Islam says it means. Biblical meaning also cannot be reduced to the caricatures produced by a small but strident coterie of atheist Fundamentalists in recent years.
The Bible unfolded over the course of a millennium of development. During that process social forces in each phase shaped the texts as they stand today, and in some cases the texts can be seen to push back against their contexts. The formation of the Bible resulted in the evolution of a social message, what the Aramaic, and Hebrew, and Greek languages of composition call a “gospel.” Our series is designed to uncover the grounding principles of this gospel as it unfolded over time and was articulated by the Bible in its own terms, before Judaism, Christianity, and Islam emerged.Sponsored by: Institute of Advanced Theology.
For more information, call 845-758-7667, or e-mail [email protected].
Albee Basement (Chaplaincy Offices) Come by the Chaplaincy office (Albee Basement) to knit or learn how to knit! Crocheters and needleworkers are also invited. Materials including yarn and knitting needles are provided. Everyone is welcome.Sponsored by: Chaplaincy.
For more information, call 203-858-8800, or e-mail [email protected].
Music Research Strategies' (Marshall Trammell) Grammar of Motives
Sawkill Watershed score visualization based on found data
Monday, April 21, 2025 1:30–3 pm
Sawkill Creek -- meet at the mushroom farm Music Research Strategies' (Marshall Trammell) Grammar of Motives is a hands-on, student-made, tactical media-making Insurgent Learning Workshop to create a graphic score music composition and conduction system for a faculty performance based on highlighting popular education and conservation inititiaves from the Bard Community Science Lab and the Saw Kill Watershed Community.
RSVP here. For more information, call 845-758-6822.
First-Year Seminar • Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition
And the Artwork that Inspired it
Monday, April 21, 2025 5:15–6:45 pm
Fisher Center, Sosnoff Theater
This performance, featuring the Bard Conservatory Orchestra, is presented as part of the second-semester program for the First-Year Seminar.
This semester, the course invites students to engage with the complexities of democratic life—its challenges, responsibilities, and possibilities. Through foundational texts in literature, philosophy, history, and political theory, students explore enduring questions of citizenship, belonging, and the meaning of community.
Culture—including music—plays a vital role in shaping how we imagine and inhabit our shared world. This performance expands on that conversation, offering a powerful artistic lens through which to reflect on the human dimensions of civic life.
This performance, featuring the Bard Conservatory Orchestra, is presented as part of the second-semester program for the First-Year Seminar.
This semester, the course invites students to engage with the complexities of democratic life— its challenges, responsibilities, and possibilities. Through foundational texts in literature, philosophy, history, and political theory, students explore enduring questions of citizenship, belonging, and the meaning of community. Culture (including music) plays a vital role in shaping how we imagine and inhabit our shared world. This performance expands on that conversation, offering a powerful artistic lens through which to reflect on the human dimensions of civic life.
Attendance is mandatory for First-Year Seminar students.Sponsored by: First-Year Seminar.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Campus Center, Weis Cinema Screening of an Oscar-winning film about the destruction of the West Bank community of Masafer Yatta. Followed by a discussion with Sam Stein, a Palestinian Solidarity Activist working in Masafer Yatta.Sponsored by: Hannah Arendt Center.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Monday, 21 April, 5:30PM. Stevenson Library A Conversation between editor Bradford Morrow and critic Christian Lorentzen on the importance of literary journals for contemporary writers.
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Tuesday, 22 April, 5:00PM. Bito Conservatory Auditorium A Reading with special guests, including Forrest Gander, Shane McCrae, and Francine Prose.
Since 1981, Conjunctions, founded and edited by Bradford Morrow, has been the preeminent home for writers who challenge convention with works that are formally innovative and culturally transformative.
Bard has been publishing Conjunctions since 1990, beginning with issue #15 and running through to forthcoming issue #84 We Love All We Voices.
Conjunctions was Initially conceived as a festschrift for New Directions’ founder, James Laughlin. The inaugural issue included Tennessee Williams, John Hawkes, Denise Levertov, Kenneth Rexroth, and Paul Bowles. Since the journal has come to Bard, it has featured work by, among many others: Forrest Gander, Mary Caponegro, Joyce Carol Oats, Robert Creeley, Lydia Davis, Ben Okri, Jayne Anne Phillips, Ann Lauterbach, David Foster Wallace, Rick Moody, Peter Gizzi, Karen Russell, Nathanael Mackey and Shane McCrae. Sponsored by: Office of the President, Office of the Dean of the College, and Written Arts Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
The Graduate Vocal Arts Program Presents: First-Year Vocal Ensembles Concert
Tuesday, April 22, 2025 12 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space The first year students of the Graduate Vocal Arts program present a short lunchtime concert of 16th and 17th century unaccompanied madrigals and airs by composers including John Dowland and Henry Purcell.
Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music; Bard Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Jazz Room Music Research Strategies' (Marshall Trammell) Grammar of Motives is a hands-on, student-made, tactical media-making Insurgent Learning Workshop to create a graphic score music composition and conduction system for a faculty performance based on highlighting popular education and conservation inititiaves from the Bard Community Science Lab and the Saw Kill Watershed Community. Join us for drafting and rehearsal.
RSVP here. For more information, call 845-758-6822.
Richard Ellmann, James Joyce, and Literary Biography: A talk by Zachary Leader
Tuesday, April 22, 2025 5:30–7 pm
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium Richard Ellmann’s James Joyce has been called “the greatest literary biography of the twentieth century.” This talk, by the critic and biographer Zachary Leader, tells the story of the book and its maker, in the process arguing for the artistic claims not only of Ellmann himself, a remarkable man, but of literary biography in general.
Zachary Leader (born 1946) is an Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Roehampton. He was an undergraduate at Northwestern University, and did graduate work at Trinity College, Cambridge and Harvard University, where he was awarded a PhD in English in 1977. Although born and raised in the U.S. he has lived for over forty years in the U.K., and has dual British and American citizenship. His best-known works are The Letters of Kingsley Amis (2001), The Life of Kingsley Amis (2007), a finalist for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Biography, and The Life of Saul Bellow: To Fame and Fortune, 1915-1964 (2015), which was shortlisted for the Wingate Prize in the U.K. The Life of Saul Bellow: Love and Strife 1965 to 2005 was published in 2018. He has written and edited a dozen books, including both volumes of the Saul Bellow biography, and is General Editor of The Oxford History of Life-Writing, a seven-volume series published by OUP. A recipient of Guggenheim, Whiting, Huntington, Leverhulme and British Academy Fellowships, he is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Introduction: Gregory Moynahan, Associate Professor of History, Bard College Q&A Moderator: Elizabeth Frank, Joseph E. Harry Professor of Modern Languages and Literature, Bard CollegeSponsored by: Division of Languages and Literature; Division of Social Studies; German Studies Program; Hannah Arendt Center; Historical Studies Program; Human Rights Project; Irish and Celtic Studies (ICS) Program; Written Arts Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Online Event This month's special guest James Romm, in conversation about his forthcoming book, Plato and the Tyrant, with host Roger Berkowitz, Founder and Academic Director of the Hannah Arendt Center.
Plato and the Tyrant (Norton, May 2025) is a hard look at Plato's political misadventure in the Greek city of Syracuse, where Plato collaborated with a despotic regime in hopes of moderating its absolutism, and at the ways his Republic is connected, in disquieting ways, to that Syracusan episode.
James Romm is the James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Classics at Bard College and author of numerous books on topics from Greek history and culture. His essays and reviews appear regularly in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books.
For Love of the World, every fourth Tuesday from 6-6:30 pm on Radio Kingston is your portal to the bold ideas and respectful, deep conversations about contemporary issues that we’re having regularly at the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College. Join host Roger Berkowitz each month as we delve into the work of one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century, Hannah Arendt, with renowned scholars and public intellectuals, and exemplify what it means to have a conversation of patient humility, in the Arendtian tradition.
1490 AM | 107.9 FM | or stream online and anytime at radiokingston.orgSponsored by: Hannah Arendt Center.
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 M.A. candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Music Research Strategies: Performance of Selected Scores
Wednesday, April 23, 2025 4–5:30 pm
Olin Auditorium Music Research Strategies' (Marshall Trammell) Grammar of Motives is a hands-on, student-made, tactical media-making Insurgent Learning Workshop to create a graphic score music composition and conduction system for a faculty performance based on highlighting popular education and conservation inititiaves from the Bard Community Science Lab and the Saw Kill Watershed Community. Join us for a performance of the developed scores.
RSVP here.Sponsored by: American and Indigenous Studies Program; Center for Indigenous Studies.
The Preacher's Flow: Inspired Eloquence as the central skill of Mahāyāna Buddhist Preachers
A talk by Dr. Ralph Craig, Assistant Professor of Religion, Whitman College
Wednesday, April 23, 2025 5–6:30 pm
Olin Humanities, Room 102 This talk first discusses the South Asian Buddhist notion of pratibhāna-pratisaṃvid, or “skillful knowledge of inspired eloquence.” Then it turns to a discussion of how the concept of “inspired eloquence” informs and provides context for Turner’s sermonic stylings on her last recorded albums. It will conclude by considering what the notion of inspired eloquence offers to our understanding of the history of both South Asian Mahāyāna Buddhism and American Buddhism.
This talk is made possible through the generous support of the Warren Mills Hutcheson Endowed Fund in Religion. For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Five Disruptive Principles in the Liberal Arts Series: Agency and Responsibility
Wednesday, April 23, 2025 5–6:30 pm
Online Event 5 PM New York l 10 PM Vienna
AltLiberalArts' “Five Disruptive Principles in the Liberal Arts” series explores the core values that define an exceptional liberal arts education. The first event will explore "Agency/Responsibility" with moderator Susan Burns and panelists Sophia Brown and Dan Chambliss. Don’t miss this exciting opportunity to engage with innovative thought leaders as they share their vision of how these principles empower students and educators alike.
Susan Burns spent 34 years as a writer and editor for SagaCity Media (formerly Gulfshore Media) in Sarasota, where she was founding editor of a regional business magazine and editor-in-chief of Sarasota Magazine before retiring in 2022. A New College alum, she sat on the New College Foundation board from 2020 to 2024 and served as chair of the governance committee.
Sophia Brown is the Program Coordinator of PEN America Florida. She graduated from New College in 2023, where she studied English with a slash in Rhetoric in Writing and served as the Editor in Chief of the student-run newspaper, the Catalyst, from Fall 2021 to Spring 2023.
Daniel F. Chambliss (B.A. New College, 1975; PhD Yale University, 1982) is the Eugene M. Tobin Distinguished Professor of Sociology Emeritus at Hamilton College, and co-author, with his former student Chris Takacs, of How College Works. He is also co-author, with Russell Schutt, of Making Sense of the Social World, a research methods text currently in its fifth edition.
Join us for a talk by Director of Bard Globalization and the International Affairs Program Elmira Bayrasli.Sponsored by: Center for Civic Engagement; Hannah Arendt Center.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Recital and Masterclass: West Point Brass Quintet featuring Master Sergeant Yalin Chi
Wednesday, April 23, 2025 7 pm
Olin Hall
The West Point Brass Quintet is the primary chamber ensemble of the Army’s oldest musical organization, the West Point Band. Stationed at the United States Military Academy at West Point, the Quintet provides support for West Point ceremonies as well as other outreach events throughout the Northeast.
Master Sergeant Yalin Chi joined the West Point Band in 2007. She has appeared as a piano soloist with the Green Bay Orchestra, Hudson Valley Philharmonic, and the Juilliard Pre-College Orchestra, among others; and has performed at Alice Tully Hall, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, Gardner Museum, and Kumho Art Hall in Seoul, South Korea.
Free and open to the public.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Center for Spiritual Life Buddhist Meditation Room Mondays: Guided Meditation 6-6:15 pm: Dharma words 6:15-6:45: Meditation 6:45-7 pm: Walking meditation and chanting Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and popcorn.
Thursdays: Silent Meditation 6-7 pm: Meditation in stillness Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and rice.
Join at any time and stay for any length of time.Sponsored by: Chaplaincy.
For more information, call 845-752-4619, or e-mail [email protected].
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 M.A. candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Reem-Kayden Center Room 102 Please consider taking part in our group's final project for PSY 201. There are 2 time slots available: 10 am or 11 am. The experiment will take about 25 minutes. Anyone is eligible and everyone who takes part will automatically be entered into a raffle for a chance to win one of three gift cards! For more information, call 314-347-2286, or e-mail [email protected].
CfIS Alumni/ae Speaker Series with Candice Hopkins (Carcross/Tagish First Nation), Bard CCS ’03
Thursday, April 24, 2025 3:30 pm
Weis Cinema Candice Hopkins (she/her) serves as Forge Project's executive director and chief curator, working with contemporary Indigenous artists to shape one of the preeminent collections of Native art in the country. Candice is a citizen of the Carcross/Tagish First Nation, spent many years in New Mexico, Canada, and Europe before moving to the unceded lands of the Muh-he-con-ne-ok in upstate New York to help build Forge into what it is today.
“Forge has a unique vision and is unlike any other organization in the country," says Candice. "We are a small and dedicated team that is together looking to reshape dialogues on Indigenous culture. The absence of Indigenous voices from national conversations on history, politics, and culture broadly should not be tolerable. One question we ask ourselves at Forge is how we can create platforms for Indigenous leaders now and for those who will lead us in the future.”
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Disability as a Social Identity Protects Against Ableism
A talk by Dr. Kathleen Bogart, Oregon State University
Thursday, April 24, 2025 4 pm
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium The largest minority group in the United States, disability, is often overlooked in prejudice research. As with other socially constructed minorities, it is valuable to examine disability through a social identity lens. Recent research shows that experiencing ableism may prompt development of disability pride, which in turn protects self-esteem. Thus, we might resist ableism by fostering disability pride and increasing representation of the social model of disability.
This lecture is made possible through the generous support of the Andrew J. Bernstein Foundation. It is free and open to the public. Sponsored by: The Andrew J. Bernstein Foundation and Psychology Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Socialist F(r)action of Oil: Petropoetics of Early Soviet Culture
Lecture by preeminent Russian literary critic and scholar in exile Ilya Kalinin (Humboldt University and Bard College Berlin)
Thursday, April 24, 2025 5:30 pm
Olin Humanities, Room 205 In his lecture, Ilya Kalinin will explore the impact of the Bolshevik petroleum project - the extraction and use of oil - on the culture and ideology of the early Soviet state. Soviet society communicated with oil in the language of socialist transformation. But the sovietization of oil was broader than its technological and sociopolitical processing. For oil to flow from the wells and fill the arteries of the socialist economy, it had to permeate the discursive fabric of Soviet media and cultural production. Dr. Kalinin will discuss this complex relationship through an analysis of literary works, film, and visual art from the 1920s and beyond.Sponsored by: The Russian and Eurasian Studies program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Olin Humanities, Room 102 Join us for a talk by Senior Fellow at Bard Center for Civic Engagement Frederic C. Hof. For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 M.A. candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Online Event We're reading The Life of the Mind, Hannah Arendt’s unfinished final work. In it, she focuses on three basic mental activities—thinking, willing, and judging—and their relation to the world of appearances and to the human capacity for moral and political action. The new critical edition makes available in print, for the first time, the text of the typescripts as Arendt left them, complemented by a wealth of previously unpublished material, detailed annotations, and extensive scholarly commentary. We will also be referring to Mary McCarthy's edition for increased accessibility.
Free to HAC members and to Bard students, staff, and faculty! Email [email protected] for the Zoom link.
Find the full Virtural Reading Group schedule: hac.bard.edu/programs/vrg/ Get the new critical edition of The Life of the Mindhere.
Don't worry if you miss a VRG meeting! We post them all on our YouTube channel the week after they're recorded. Or tune in to an edited version of the chapter readings plus bonus episodes on our podcast, Reading Hannah Arendt with Roger Berkowitz.Sponsored by: Hannah Arendt Center.
Sidelines Redrawn: Re-examining the Role of Marginality in Ancient Greek Literature
*Note location change
Friday, April 25, 2025 9 am – 5 pm
Olin Humanities, Room 102 In our contemporary era, marginality typically refers to people that lie on the fringes or margins of society with regard to some socio-economic or socio-political characteristic. In the context of the ancient Greek world, it is fairly easy to assign groups to this marginal category. However, ancient literature tends to complicate this modern notion of marginality, and characters that would normally be considered marginal from a historical standpoint are often put in positions that allow them to influence others and act beyond the limitations of their societal station. This talk will discuss the disconnect between literature and historical reality when it comes to marginal characters and their potential for agency and efficacy. Reexamining ancient Greek literature with this in mind will provide another avenue of interpretation that will contribute to our understanding of these works.Sponsored by: Classical Studies and the Dean's Office.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Hybrid Event The 2025 April Conference is a full day workshop in small, interactive groups. It is a hybrid event, and participants can join us in person at Bard College or online. Participants read and write together in their workshop groups, drawing on a rich anthology of texts, and gather for a mid-morning plenary session that helps to anchor and inspire the day’s work. For more information, call 845-752-4516, e-mail [email protected], or visit https://iwt.bard.edu/april/.
State of Fracture: Thesis Exhibition of the MA in Human Rights & the Arts 2025
Runs through Sunday, May 4, 2025 3–7:30 pm
Massena Campus The MA Program at the Center for Human Rights & the Arts is pleased to announce the thesis exhibition of the MA in Human Rights & the Arts, Class of 2025.
The exhibition is taking place April 25 through May 4, 3–7:30 pm, across the Massena Campus at Bard College. The exhibition features installations, films, and written works by the graduating cohort. The artistic, academic, and hybrid theses are all based on original research by students. They make interventions at both the analytic and methodological levels of analysis.
Below is the program for the thesis exhibition, including a list of events and showcased works :
Opening Reception Friday, 25 April 2025 4pm–7pm Exhibition opening and food-for-purchase provided by Samosa Shack.
Lecture Performance Conducting Empire by Elinor Arden Friday 25 April, Sunday 27 April, Saturday 3 May 6:30 pm–7pm
Panel Presentation Featuring Miguel Angel Castañeda Barahona, Pyae Phyo Aung, and Arina Pshenichnaya Saturday, May 3 4 pm–5 pm
Written Theses Excerpts of these works are on display in the exhibition
“The Human Right to What?” Hunger, Food, and People: A Journey to the South Miguel Angel Castañeda Barahona
Sacred War as the Russian National Idea Arina Pshenichnaya
“Late pyar lone lar?” In Search of A Clear Conscience in Myanmar’s Spring Revolution Pyae Phyo Aung
A Baghdad Sin: Peregrinations in A Ruptured Geography Nabil Salih
Installations Open daily, 3–7:30 pm
FordDat Sariyah Abuzant
Livestreamed Genocide: TikTok LIVE in Gaza Sarah Al-Yahya
Calls from an Unseen Chorus Amr Amer
Conducting Empire Elinor Arden
The Land, Not a Film By Youssef Chahine Leil Zahra Mortada
Prison Rule 113.11 and Fugitive Tools Mauro Tosarelli
Thesis Project Abstracts
FordDat Sariyah Abuzant This installation features a docufiction video and explores the role of an unofficial taxi vehicle vital to mobility in occupied Palestine, using the cases of Abu Dis and Al-Eizariya, two towns located in Area C of the West Bank. Manufactured by Ford Motor Company, this US vehicle has unintentionally functioned as the connective tissue of a fragmented landscape, navigating an apartheid system reinforced by the Oslo Accords. Operating illegally for over thirty years, the Ford Transit has not only sustained movement but also emerged as a tool of cultural sovereignty, community-structured infrastructure, and self-governance. A time capsule of Oslo’s failures, this vehicle offers a lens into the lived realities of Palestinian daily resistance and the unyielding struggle for the right to move.
Livestreamed Genocide: TikTok LIVE in Gaza Sarah Al-Yahya This hybrid project, comprised of an interactive, web-based installation and research article, examines how “history’s first livestreamed genocide” in Gaza has been presented on TikTok LIVE. The work explores these streams, characterized by their low viewership as well as scattered and disorienting nature, arguing that they reshape our understanding of “livestreamed genocide” as a historical media paradigm. The installation foregrounds the tensions between a gamified platform and the realities of war on the Gaza Strip. In doing so, it examines the uneasy rise of TikTok’s algorithmically-driven platform as a space where social media visibility and atrocity merge, clash, and are reshaped by the logic of public engagement.
Calls from an Unseen Chorus Amr Amer Calls from an Unseen Chorus is a sound installation that resists the passive consumption of Palestine as an image of suffering, instead demanding engagement through the act of listening. Centering the auditory as a site of resistance, the work immerses audiences in the sonic realities of occupation and defiance—from the oppressive stasis of colonial checkpoints to the collective force of protest chants, resistance music, and the recorded wills of martyrs. These layered soundscapes challenge static representations of Palestinian struggle, asserting a mobilized, dissenting presence and an unceasing fight for liberation. By stripping away the visual, Calls from an Unseen Chorus transforms listening into an entry point for solidarity, where sound becomes both testimony and a call to resistance.
Conducting Empire Elinor Arden Conducting Empire is a research article and an installation-performance investigating the material history of the undersea cable network: the physical ‘backbone’ of the internet. The project explores what lies beneath Google’s marketing strategies for their new transatlantic cables, tracing the genealogy of this infrastructure to 19th-century Britain and the era of so-called abolition. A live activation of a sound sculpture exposes the metallic substance of the cable network and its transmission of historical records into the present. By linking claims of technological progress to imperial control, the work reframes the utopian ideal of global connectivity with evidence found in the British National Archives, from the Birmingham copper industry to a mass of colonial correspondences. Conducting Empire removes the network’s insulation to uncover how telecommunications were produced through a violent historical circuit.
“Late pyar lone lar?” In Search of A Clear Conscience in Myanmar’s Spring Revolution Pyae Phyo Aung This written thesis explores the question of morality and conscience in the anti-authoritarian revolution that took shape in response to the 2021 military coup in Myanmar. The term late pyar lone chin refers to the pride of performing a just action or the shame and guilt of not doing so, and the question, late pyar lone lar?, means roughly “do you have a clear conscience?” It is now widely used to testify to (or question) one’s stance and involvement in the revolution. Examining the digital artifacts and lived experiences of protestors, resistance fighters, and activist fundraisers, the thesis studies the role of calls to conscience in political mobilization and investigates how affect and morality have been activated through aesthetic means to shape the trajectory of the Spring Revolution in Myanmar.
“The Human Right to What?” Hunger, Food, and People: A Journey to the South. Miguel Angel Castañeda Barahona The public policy known as Areas of Protection for Food Production was launched in July of 2024 in the south of La Guajira, Colombia. It aims to focus land use on agricultural production and prohibit any type of mining exploitation. This transition is based on concepts such as the human right to food and food security. This written thesis explores the origins of these concepts, their scope, and their limitations. This is particularly relevant at a time when the La Guajira Corporation is about to grant approval to the mining company Best Coal Company to exploit millions of tons of coal in the Cañaverales Community. This thesis responds to the crisis and the difficulties of the energy transition from an epistemological point of view, through an analysis of archives and geopoetics.
The Land, Not a Film By Youssef Chahine Leil Zahra Mortada This hybrid project interrogates the role of Arab cultural production—particularly Egyptian songs and films about the Aswan High Dam—in shaping public history and contributing to Nubian dispossession. Building on an ongoing collaboration with Nubian activists, one component of this project is a research article that critiques nationalism and encourages a reflection on the power of cultural memory to perpetuate erasure or resist it. The second component of this project is an interactive installation titled The Land, Not a Film By Youssef Chahine, which examines state propaganda and confronts the failures of Arab liberation movements, while centering a Nubian narrative and presents a speculative grassroots response.
Sacred War as the Russian National Idea Arina Pshenichnaya Despite the secular image often associated with modern nationalism, the Russian state’s sacralization of war reveals the enduring power of religious symbols, rituals, and narratives in shaping national identity. This written thesis examines how the concept of sacred war has become central to the Russian national idea through a fusion of Orthodox theology, state power, and militarized aesthetics. It focuses on two key phenomena: the Main Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces, which presents war as a timeless and divine foundation of Russian identity; and front-line baptismal rituals, which transform soldiers into metaphysical agents of a civilizational mission. I analyze these practices through the writings of Aleksandr Dugin, whose metaphysical theory of civilizational conflict (noomachy) frames war not as a geopolitical act but as an ontological necessity. Dugin’s thought provides the ideological architecture through which Russia is positioned as a sacred civilization resisting Western nihilism, where war is not simply justified, but ritually and cosmologically required. In doing so, the study challenges secular readings of nationalism and highlights how authoritarian regimes can mobilize religious metaphysics to render war not only legitimate, but liturgically necessary.
A Baghdad Sin: Peregrinations in a Ruptured Geography Nabil Salih Aftermaths are deceptive. They obscure and conceal. This text, weaved along a photographic inquiry, troubles the notion of quietude. Together, they try to point to what lurks and haunts in the crevices of a wounded urbanscape. Twenty-one years after the invasion and occupation of Iraq, what litter and refuse remain in Baghdad today? In a time of rapid urban reconfiguration, what do the residual wartime rubble and the paraphernalia of security regimes tell us of the present, its politics, and relationship to the past? Put differently, what forces and apparatuses obstruct an Iraqi’s walk? Standing by the ruins is an old tradition dating to pre-Islamic poetry and the laments of ancient Mesopotamia. This essay follows suit but goes beyond. Its fragments narrate my auto-ethnographic and ethnographic walks and rides in Baghdad, where I investigate the constellations of rubble, the affects they discharge, and the memories they awaken in a given locale. Much ink and blood were spilled on the streets of Baghdad and world newspapers; this endeavor asks what Iraqis are left with today. The photographs aspire to a private archive for public loss, each being an obstinate interlocutor tested for what eludes vision and what is thought to be seen.
Prison Rule 113.11 and Fugitive Tools Mauro Tosarelli Prisons are not just spaces of deprivation and submission but environments where survival gives rise to new forms of expression and interaction. Despite spatial, social, and political constraints, prisoners cultivate communication networks through sound, imagery, and handmade tools. This installation reframes prison life by focusing on acquired culture and produced knowledge rather than narratives of marginalization. Prison Rule 113.11 highlights both clandestine tools of disobedience—tattoo guns, fishing lines, and makeshift speakers—and the coercion tools manufactured through prison labor. These objects are not merely functional but symbolic of defiance and connection. By amplifying sound rather than retreating into silence, prisoners reclaim their lives and assert their resistance to isolation. Positioning these tools as ‘fugitive objects’, this work reveals how incarcerated individuals are not merely passive subjects but a challenge to the very structures designed to contain them.Sponsored by: Center for Human Rights and the Arts.
State of Fracture: Thesis Exhibition of the MA in Human Rights and the Arts, 2025
Runs through Sunday, May 4, 2025 3–7:30 pm
Massena Campus The MA Program at the Center for Human Rights and the Arts is pleased to announce its Class of 2025 MA thesis exhibition.
The exhibition is taking place April 25 through May 4, 3 – 7:30 pm, across the Massena Campus at Bard. The exhibition features installations, films, and written works by the graduating cohort. The artistic, academic, and hybrid theses are all based on original research by students.Sponsored by: Center for Human Rights and the Arts.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Works by Hansen, Blume, Piazzolla, Dvořák, Wolf, Beach, Poulenc, Debussy, Franck, and more!
Friday, April 25, 2025 4–9 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space
This concert is a part of the Conservatory’s Chamber Music Program, which all instrumental and studio faculty support through their generous coaching and mentorship. Please note that there will be a break in the program from approximately 5:30 PM - 7:00 PM.
Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube Channel here.
Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 M.A. candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Bring your broken but beloved items for free fixings by volunteer coaches.
Saturday, April 26, 2025 10 am – 1 pm
Red Hook Community Center, 59 Fisk St, Red Hook A Repair Café is a free meeting place where people come together to repair "broken but beloved" things. We love keeping fixable things out of the landfill! We will have volunteers with repair skills ("Repair Coaches") in all kinds of fields ready to fix. Sometimes they can just provide advice, and sometimes more parts are needed than they have, but they have a good time trying!Sponsored by: Bard Office of Sustainability.
Works by Bourgeois, Beethoven, Debussy, Bizet, Prokofiev, and Brahms.
Saturday, April 26, 2025 3–5 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space
This concert is a part of the Conservatory’s Chamber Music Program, which all instrumental and studio faculty support through their generous coaching and mentorship.
Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube Channel here.
Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Saturday, April 26, 2025 – Sunday, April 27, 2025 7:30–8:30 pm
Fisher Center, Sosnoff Theater A play performed, directed, and designed by students of the Musical Theater Performance Workshop. Runtime is approximately 105 minutes with no intermission.
This show contains material that might be triggering for some audience members. For more information, please contact [email protected].Sponsored by: Music Program.
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 M.A. candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Church of St. John the Evangelist, 1114 River Road, Barrytown Join us for services (Holy Communion) at the Episcopal Church of St. John the Evangelist (1114 River Road) in Barrytown. Rides to the church are provided every Sunday throughout the academic year. Please be at the Bard Chapel at 9:45 am to get picked up.
All are welcome!
Christians, non-Christians, spiritual but not religious, agnostics, believers, doubters, seekers, those who have questions about faith and religion, those struggling to understand where God is in our challenging world—anyone wanting to use their faith to change and act in the world! For more information, call 203-858-8800, or e-mail [email protected].
Chapel of the Holy Innocents Catholic Mass will be available at 11:30 in the Holy Innocents Chapel. All are welcome! For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Saturday, April 26, 2025 – Sunday, April 27, 2025 7:30–8:30 pm
Fisher Center, Sosnoff Theater A play performed, directed, and designed by students of the Musical Theater Performance Workshop. Runtime is approximately 105 minutes with no intermission.
This show contains material that might be triggering for some audience members. For more information, please contact [email protected].Sponsored by: Music Program.
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Works by Logan Settle Rishard, Manar Hashmi, Jenni Brandon, William Hurlstone, and Charles Koechlin. Featuring Katriel Kirk, bassoon; Chloe Brill, bassoon; Adelaide Braunhill, bassoon; and Kyeongji Koh, piano.
Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Heaven in a Wild Flower: The Earthly and the Divine
A Graduate Conducting Degree Recital with The Orchestra Now
Sunday, April 27, 2025 2–3 pm
Fisher Center, Sosnoff Theater
The Degree Recital is the culminating project of the Graduate Conducting Program. Given during the second year of study, students have the opportunity to conduct the repertoire of their choice in this concert.
Join The Orchestra Now and the Graduate Conducting Program’s class of 2025 on a journey through the spiritual and the mundane, and their essential roles in the human experience. Featuring works from Mozart to Ginastera, this program explores the joy of life, the solemnity of death, and the hope for renewal.
Works by Gliére, Strauss, Mozart, Chopin, and Hindemith.
Sunday, April 27, 2025 4 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Featuring Gabriele Zemaityte, Alberto Arias-Flores, Felix Johnson, Robert Santini, and Sabrina Schettler.
Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube channel here.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Olin Hall A composer showcase free and open to the public. Livestreaming here on the Conservatory YouTube Channel.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Center for Spiritual Life Buddhist Meditation Room Mondays: Guided Meditation 6-6:15 pm: Dharma words 6:15-6:45: Meditation 6:45-7 pm: Walking meditation and chanting Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and popcorn.
Thursdays: Silent Meditation 6-7 pm: Meditation in stillness Followed by a Sangha get-together with herbal tea and rice.
Join at any time and stay for any length of time.Sponsored by: Chaplaincy.
For more information, call 845-752-4619, or e-mail [email protected].
Albee Basement (Chaplaincy Offices) Come by the Chaplaincy office (Albee Basement) to knit or learn how to knit! Crocheters and needleworkers are also invited. Materials including yarn and knitting needles are provided. Everyone is welcome.Sponsored by: Chaplaincy.
For more information, call 203-858-8800, or e-mail [email protected].
An hour-long program of short performances by Bard Conservatory students.
Monday, April 28, 2025 12 pm
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space Free and open to the public. Livestreaming on the Conservatory YouTube channel.Sponsored by: Bard College Conservatory of Music.
For more information, call 845-758-7196, or e-mail [email protected].
Montgomery Place Estate Join William Mennerick ’24 for a guided bird and nature walk on the beautiful Montgomery Place grounds! We’ll meet at 12:30 pm at the Visitor Center. Binoculars are encouraged but not required. Come connect with nature and discover the wildlife around Bard. For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Five Disruptive Principles in the Liberal Arts Series: Engagement
Tuesday, April 29, 2025 4–5:30 pm
Online Event 4 PM New York l 10 PM Vienna
AltLiberalArts' “Five Disruptive Principles in the Liberal Arts” series explores the core values that define an exceptional liberal arts education. The second event in the series will explore "Engagement." Carol Flint will moderate and Maureen T. Cannon and Maria Vesperi are panelists.
In student-driven learning environments, students aren’t treated as consumers of education, nor as vessels to be filled with information. Instead, they are expected to be active participants in their own academic journeys.
Carol Flint and Emmy Award winner who has written and produced over 400 hours of episodic prime time television, including the shows LA Law, ER, and the West Wing.
Maureen T. Cannon has practiced at both the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia and the Washington, D.C. law firm of Williams and Connolly. In her own law practice, she has represented leading executives in the fields of higher education and professional sports.
Maria Vesperi is an anthropologist and a professor at the University of South Florida and then a journalist for the Tampa Bay Times. She then joined the New College of Florida Anthropology department and helped students establish The Catalyst, a student-led newspaper.
CCS Bard, Classroom 102 As part of a series co-presented by Forge Project and CCS Bard, artist Marilou Schultz will speak about her work on April 29 at 5 pm.
Forge Project Talks are part of a set of broader initiatives at Bard College that seek to place Native American and Indigenous Studies at the heart of curricular innovation, which includes programming organized by the Center for Indigenous Studies and the Rethinking Place initiative. These programs are made possible by the Forge Endowed Fund for Indigenous Studies at Bard College, generously supported by the Gochman Family Foundation along with George Soros and the Open Society Foundations.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
Hessel Museum of Art The exhibitions on display, curated by 15 M.A. candidates at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, are the culmination of two years of research, writing, and conversation. The projects span from painting to video to site-specific commissions; from exhibitions that grapple with contemporary conditions to those that mine the past; from explorations of digital dystopias to those of underrepresented archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.
April 15th Application Deadline | Levy Graduate Programs in Economic Theory and Policy
Tuesday, April 15, 2025
The Levy Economics Institute Graduate Programs in Economic Theory and Policy were created to offer students an alternative to mainstream programs in economics and finance. These innovative programs combine a rigorous course of study with the exceptional opportunity to participate in advanced economics research. Our application deadline is April 15th, 2025. Apply Now Sponsored by: Bard Graduate Programs; Levy Economics Institute; Levy Graduate Programs.
For more information, call 845-758-7776, or e-mail [email protected].
CCE is excited to announce an open call for submissions from emerging artists to show their art to the local community. Artists are invited to create art to display in one of four art boxes located in publicly-accessible spaces around the Town and Village of Red Hook. Each unit is permanently mounted on a six-sided wooden pole at eye level to provide an intimate viewing opportunity for the visitor from Spring 2025 to Spring 2026. This year's theme is Flora and Fauna: Celebrating the Hudson Valley.
If you live, work or attend school in or around Red Hook, you are most likely artistically inspired by the natural beauty of the Hudson Valley and its rich biodiversity. This is an opportunity to share your work and inspiration with the community! Official opening is May 10.
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