Bard News

Reading a novel by a river is a peace Amanie Issa ’18 does not take for granted. After graduating from Al-Quds Bard College, Issa was awarded a scholarship to study international human rights law at the Irish Centre for Human Rights in NUI Galway. After witnessing upheaval and trauma firsthand, her time in Ireland has felt like a reprieve. Now working remotely as a legal consultant focusing on women’s economic and social development for the World Bank, she hopes to stay in Galway to pursue a doctoral degree. Still, even with her newfound sense of comfort, Issa can’t help but keep her fellow Palestinians in mind. “I’ve had that feeling of peace that others are yearning for while their school is demolished or they’re kicked out of their house,” Issa says. “Every person in the world deserves to have that feeling.”

Full Story in the Irish Times

Francine Prose, distinguished writer in residence, writes about her “encounters with the literary strange” for LitHub. Reflecting on her own experiences reading literature that defies expectations, as well as her time teaching Strange Books and the Human Condition at Bard, Prose details the feeling of encountering something truly new on the page, when “regardless of how much else we may have read, we think: This is something new. I didn’t know that a writer could do that.” Citing Bolaño, Erpenbeck, Tutuola, and more, Prose traces those qualities in writing we associate with the original and the strange.

Full Story on LitHub

Faculty members of the Bard College Conservatory of Music and an alumna of the Graduate Vocal Arts Program (VAP) have been nominated for the 2022 GRAMMY Awards. Bard faculty member Gil Shaham has been nominated for a GRAMMY Award for Best Classical Instrumental Solo for his performance in Beethoven & Brahms: Violin Concertos with The Knights. Sō Percussion, a musical group of which Bard Conservatory faculty Eric Cha-Beach and Jason Treuting are members, has received a GRAMMY nod for its performance of composer Caroline Shaw’s Narrow Sea, which has been nominated for Best Contemporary Classical Composition. Dawn Upshaw, star soprano and VAP founding artistic director, also performed in the recording, with pianist Gilbert Kalish. VAP alumna Sophia Burgos MM ’16 was nominated as a principal soloist in the Best Opera Recording category for her performance in Janáček's Cunning Little Vixen with the London Symphony Orchestra,  London Symphony Chorus, and London Symphony Orchestra Discovery Voices. The 64th Annual GRAMMY Awards will air on CBS on January 31, 2022.

At 17, Jonathan Alvarez ’19 went to prison with a 10th-grade education. While incarcerated, he focused on making the most of the 12 years and four months he would serve. "Education became that next thing that was available for me to better myself," he said. He completed his GED and went on to receive a bachelors of arts degree in social studies through the Bard Prison Initiative. Upon his release, he was motivated to give back to his community and help others impacted by the criminal justice system with support to transform their lives.

Alvarez joined My Brother’s Keeper as a mentor, as well as starting You're Not Alone Brotherhood, a safe space and support group for men and boys to share their challenges. In 2020, Alvarez and his lifelong friend John Cabrera cofounded the nonprofit organization 914United, focusing on providing education and mentorship to underserved communities in the Lower Hudson Valley. 914United has grown quickly into a team of 12 and offers seven different programs from civic empowerment to financial literacy.

"He's just very focused and interested in making a difference," Yonkers Superintendent of Schools Dr. Edwin Quezada said. "He is a success story that we need to honor and we need to celebrate."

László Bitó fled Communist rule in Hungary, discovered a treatment for glaucoma in the U.S., then became an author and a voice against authoritarianism in his homeland, writes the New York Times. “He was a man of uncommon courage,” said President Leon Botstein in the Times article. 

Among a group of 300 Hungarian “freedom fighters” who were invited to Bard’s Annandale campus in 1956 for a winter term of language study and orientation to American life, Bitó won a full scholarship to Bard and graduated in 1960. He received a doctorate in cell biology and biophysics at Columbia University, where he eventually became a professor of ocular physiology. Using the substantial wealth he built from his medical research, he gave back generously. Dr. Bitó donated millions to the College and the Bard Conservatory of Music, financing the László Z. Bitó ’60 Conservatory Building, a state-of-the-art teaching and performance facility, and the László Z. Bitó ’60 Practice Rooms, as well as the Bitó auditorium located in the Reem-Kayden Center for Science and Computation on campus.

László Z. Bitó ’60 was 87 years old when he died on November 14 at his home in Budapest. He is survived by his wife Olivia Carino and two sons John and Lawrence from his first wife Perry Mote ’59, whom he met at Bard.

As a teenager, he helped provide safe passage to artists and intellectuals out of Vichy France. He went on to teach literature at Bard College for six decades, writes Alex Vadukul for the New York Times. “Clad in his familiar tweed jacket, he taught French, German and Russian classics and was known for popular courses like 10 Plays That Shook The World. But on Bard’s leafy campus in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., Mr. Rosenberg also represented a remarkable living link to Holocaust history.”

Justus Rosenberg’s remarkable life has been remembered in several publications and news outlets around the world including the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Jerusalem Post, National Public Radio, San Francisco Chronicle, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Deutsche Welle, and Kirkus Reviews among others.

In the Wall Street Journal, Bard economist and leading scholar of Modern Monetary Theory L. Randall Wray comments on how important elements of MMT, including the claim that a government need never default on debt issued in its own currency, are now accepted by much of the economic and financial establishment. “We got five or six trillion dollars of spending and tax cuts without anyone worrying about payfors, so that was a good thing,” says Wray. “In January [2020], MMT was a crazy idea, and then in March, it was, OK, we’re going to adopt MMT.” L. Randall Wray is Professor of Economics and Senior Scholar at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College.

Bard alumnae Christina Bevilacqua ’81 and Janaya Kizzie ’04 are reimagining the library as a space for public good in Providence, RI. Tasked with breathing new life into the Providence Public Library, Bevilacqua, programs and exhibitions director, and Kizzie, events and programs manager, are taking an approach that puts the public first. “We are actively working to dismantle the ‘house on a hill’ conceptions of the library and welcome everybody, not as customers, but as people with real agency and who are at the center of everything we do here,” says Kizzie in an interview with the Providence Journal. As a team, “the pair is disrupting the traditional top-down curatorial process,” writes Patricia Andreu for the Providence Journal, “replacing it with a more democratic model that supports and elevates things already happening in Providence and beyond.” Though of different generations and cultural backgrounds, the two are united in their vision for reinventing the Library as “Providence’s public square.” “I love the sense of public mission,” Bevilacqua says. “There are no boundaries to what the library can be and what it can make available to people in terms of resources and opportunities. There’s nothing else like it.”

Full Story in the Providence Journal

Registration for Spring 2022 OSUN online courses is now open to students from across the network. Students can choose from 45 courses offered by nine member institutions, where they can enroll and receive credit. Areas of study include arts and society, democratic practice, human rights, inequalities, liberal arts and sciences, and sustainability and climate.

Register Now

Bard Executive Vice President and Vice President for Academic Affairs and Director of the Center for Civic Engagement Jonathan Becker and Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Civic Engagement Erin Cannan are coteaching a new course on local politics and civic engagement. As part of the course, Bard students have accepted internship positions in local governments, including the offices of Red Hook Village Mayor Karen Smythe, Red Hook Judge Jonah Triebwasser, and Tivoli Deputy Mayor Emily Major. Students are also working at the City of Hudson mayor’s office, and with State Sen. Michelle Hinchey (D-46). 

“Jonathan and I realized that there is very little engagement with local government here, when more engagement of local people and Bard means more civic literacy and a better functioning government,” said Cannan in an article appearing in the Red Hook Daily Catch. “Few people have access to youth voices, the perspective of someone who is current on certain trends that older people don’t have. Students are going to move into the world soon, and this experience gets them ahead of the times and properly engaged in politics.”

At Carnegie Hall, President Leon Botstein and Bard graduate students of The Orchestra Now took an always-needed step in uncovering overlooked American classical music, writes Joshua Barone for the New York Times. “[T]he myopic approach of much orchestral programming today—Eurocentric, with living composers rarely given the same pride of place as a Beethoven or Mahler—is nothing new. Then there are artists like Leon Botstein, an indispensable advocate of the unfairly ignored, who brought his ensemble The Orchestra Now to Carnegie Hall on Thursday for an evening of works that, despite covering a range of nearly 150 years, felt as fresh as a batch of premieres.” 

As part of TŌN’s Carnegie Hall concert series, Grammy Award-winning violinist and Bard Conservatory of Music faculty member Gil Shaham joined TŌN for the world premiere of a new concerto written for him by composer Scott Wheeler. Also on the program were Julia Perry’s 1951 Stabat Mater, and George Bristow’s complete Arcadian Symphony (1872), both of which were being performed at Carnegie Hall for the first time.

As we enter the holiday season, many are wondering how best to keep safe while visiting family and friends during the ongoing pandemic. Juliet Morrison ’03, member of the Board of Trustees and assistant professor in the microbiology and plant pathology department at University of California Riverside, spoke with the New York Times about practical masking tips, the efficacy of vaccines, and what the future might hold with respect to COVID prevention and care.

A well-regarded artist unexpectedly finds themselves the center of a new TikTok trend: that’s been Jack Ferver’s reality since summer 2021. In an interview with the New York Times, Ferver spoke with Margaret Fuhrer about their work and the journey from a 2007 Starburst commercial to TikTok fame in 2021. Reviving the “Little Lad” character wasn’t in their plan until a friend encouraged them to embrace the phenomenon: “So I thought, OK, I’ll go to Wigs and Plus and get a wig and do this TikTok and then see how it goes. I certainly didn’t anticipate getting two million followers in a month.” What resulted was not only fun and funny, but affirming for Ferver. The TikTok community write comments on each video to remind each other that Ferver uses they/them pronouns. “I’ve felt very bolstered from what I’ve seen from TikTok in terms of breaking away from categorical thinking — with gender, with everything,” Ferver says. Returning the favor, Ferver decided that Little Lad uses all pronouns as a means by which to make sure that “Little Lad includes everybody, that they invite everyone to play.” Ferver is a faculty member in the undergraduate Theater and Performance Program and the Graduate Vocal Arts Program of the Bard College Conservatory of Music.

The Fisher Center at Bard continues its celebration of the return to live, in-person performance with two popular holiday season classics—Handel’s Messiah and the SITI Company’s A Radio Christmas Carol.

On December 11 at 8 pm and December 12 at 2 pm, Bard’s musical forces combine for a holiday-season classic, Handel’s Messiah. Leon Botstein leads The Orchestra Now, soloists from the Bard Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Program, the Bard Festival Chorale, and the Bard College Chamber Singers in a performance of one of the most popular oratorios of all time. Performances will be held in the Fisher Center’s Sosnoff Theater. Tickets start at $30 for in-person and pay what you wish for virtual livestream.

On December 17 and 18 at 7:30 pm, and December 19 at 2 pm, Fisher Center LAB presents work-in-progress performances of SITI Company’s A Radio Christmas Carol. As part of the company’s 30th anniversary celebrations, SITI Company returns to the Fisher Center to develop a new live, in-person performance based on Orson Welles’ 1939 radio play of A Christmas Carol. Reimagining the intimacy and alchemy of that recording studio, SITI conjures the ghosts of the past, present, and future to speak to our society’s immediate need for gratitude, charity, fairness, justice, and equity. Codirected by Anne Bogart ’74 and Darron West, these special in-progress performances, presented live on stage in the Fisher Center’s Sosnoff Theater, are a preview of the world premiere coming up at the Fisher Center in December 2022. Tickets are $25, with $5 tickets for Bard students made possible by the Passloff Pass.

To purchase or reserve tickets for either event, visit fishercenter.bard.edu, call 845-758-7900 (Mon–Fri, 10 am–5 pm), or email boxoffice@bard.edu.


“SITI Company and I are thrilled to return to Bard to share our encounter with Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol,” says Anne Bogart. “The last time that SITI appeared at the Fisher Center was in 2013—together with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company to perform A Rite, based upon Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. I graduated from Bard College in 1974 and my trajectory was deeply affected by all of my experiences there. Bard instilled in me a sense of adventure and an enduring curiosity.”

SITI Company’s A Radio Christmas Carol features Akiko Aizawa, Will Bond, Gian-Murray Gianino, Leon Inguslrud, Ellen Lauren, Kelly Maurer, Barney O’Hanlon, Stephen Webber with special guests Violeta Picayo and Donnell Smith. Set and costumes are by James Schuette, lights by Brian Scott, and sound by Darron West.

Fisher Center LAB's 2021-2022 season receives funding from members of the Live Arts Bard Creative Council, The Lucille Lortel Foundation, and the Fisher Center's Artistic Innovation Fund, with lead support from Rebecca Gold and S. Asher Gelman through the March Forth Foundation.

Reporting on Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s pledge to ban prostitution, Omar G. Encarnación, professor of political studies, writes on the politics of regulating sex work for Foreign Policy. “The news caught many by surprise,” Encarnación writes. “Spain is one of the world’s most socially progressive societies, and in 2005, it became the first overwhelmingly Catholic nation to legalize same-sex marriage, ahead of Sweden, Britain, and the United States.” Though politically and legally complicated, “Sánchez is looking to his proposed ban—whatever shape it takes—to bolster an already impressive record of improving the lives of women in Spain as he ponders reelection in 2023.”

The Andrew Goodman Foundation details Bard College students’ victorious bid for an on-campus polling site. Andrew Goodman ambassadors at Bard, supported by the Center for Civic Engagement, have fought for years to obtain expanded access to voting at Bard. Their hard work has paid off: the Dutchess County Supreme Court ruled in favor of Bard College’s right to an on-campus polling site, and appeals to the ruling continue to be denied. The last two elections have seen Bard students, faculty, staff, and community members voting in the Campus Center.

Andrew Goodman Ambassador Sarah Seager ’24 says that “allowing voters a safe and accessible space to vote, which is what the Bard campus polling site provides, is expected of all polling sites. As a Bard community we are excited to provide that space for voices to be heard as people practice their civic duty of voting. I, along with the Election@Bard team, am excited to see what the future of Dutchess County looks like when the voices of students are heard.” 

For the December 2021 cover story of Opera News, Jennifer Melick profiles classical singer and curator Julia Bullock VAP ’11 as she returns to live onstage performances after a pandemic year of performing for video. “Bullock has an unusual quality of being a vivid onscreen presence while seeming simultaneously to be someplace very distant that she wants to take us. The velvety warmth of her voice, phrasing that is not overdone, a natural delivery of the words—all translate well to the screen and microphone. But her unwavering focus and active engagement with the listener are what really jump out,” writes Melick. On coming back to the stage, Bullock says, “I’m not challenged by the scope and scale of the performance, but it’s a very different vibe, a space that I need to practice filling out again.”

More and more, writes Melick, Bullock finds it “very clear the places I want to work, the people with whom I want to work, to ensure that I am entering into a legitimate collaborative relationship.” She also feels the responsibility of making the kind of spaces where unfettered creativity can happen, on more equitable and safer terms, for artists.

Attendees are invited to get hands-on with Richard Tuttle’s personal holdings this spring at the Bard Graduate Center Gallery in New York City. BGC’s exhibit Richard Tuttle: What is the Object? will be “among the first dedicated to the curiosities accumulated by the American post-Minimalist over six decades,” writes Tessa Solomon for ARTnews. An eclectic collection of objects, including “swatches of vintage fabric, ceramic teacups, and sculptural furniture,” will be on display and “available to handle.” The show opens on February 25 and runs through July 10, 2022. The tactile experience will be as important as the visual, Solomon writes, leaving visitors to ask, “What is the object?”

As an artist, Tuttle straddles genre and medium, creating “minimal watercolors, plywood wall sculptures, artist books, and installations, among others, all united by an attention to color, form, and physicality,” Solomon writes. Ultimately his work is united by “the tangible intimacy of each object,” and this exhibition in particular is meant to “to draw connections between the objects, which range from the mundane to the ephemeral and bizarre.”

The intellectual and political disarray on display at the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow was terrifying, writes Walter Russell Mead, James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and the Humanities at Bard, in the Wall Street Journal. “Pandering is much more dangerous to human civilization than methane, strategic incompetence a graver threat than CO2; and dysfunctional establishment groupthink will likely kill more polar bears than all the hydrofluorocarbons in the world.”

 

Associate Professor of Literature Alys Moody and coeditor Stephen J. Ross have been awarded the 2020 Modernist Studies Association Book Prize for an Edition, Anthology, or Essay Collection for their book Global Modernists on Modernism: An Anthology (Bloomsbury).

Awarding the prize, the Modernist Studies Association writes:

Alys Moody and Stephen J. Ross’s Global Modernists on Modernism is a groundbreaking anthology that will have an immeasurable impact. It introduces carefully selected, edited, and annotated texts from a breathtakingly broad range of primary sources that will be integral to future scholarship and teaching. This is an anthology that is aware of how important the anthology has been to modernism, or as they put it, how “this process of assemblage and collection, of triage and sorting, has been central to the history of modernism’s reception.” In this way the volume, both in its editorial choices and its expert critical essays, offers a radical shift away from the discipline’s preoccupation with defining modernism, and instead aims to present an archive from which we might begin to understand the ways in which modernism has been differently understood around the world. As such it also seeks to “go beyond merely gesturing to the existence of modernists around the world, to defend the value of ‘global modernism’ as a critical hermeneutic.” The anthology begins with the brilliant and provocative “Ten Theses on Global Modernism”, providing a thematic “Alternate Table of Contents” with categories ranging from “Political and Social Formations” to “Artistic Movements and Styles” and “Institutions and Social Conditions of the Field.” In addition to drawing on Moody and Ross’s expertise, the volume also features vital and enlightening contributions of invited scholars as section editors and translators. Global Modernists on Modernism is the result of immense scholarship and will prove a model for future editions; for modernist literary studies it will be no less than indispensable, deftly transforming considerations of the literary, historical, and geographical scope of modernism.

“Etel Adnan’s life has been marked by constant movement: across oceans and continents, between languages, both literal and artistic . . . A creative polyglot, she has produced paintings, drawings, tapestries, multiple volumes of poetry and essays, and Sitt Marie-Rose (1977), one of the most important novels about the Lebanese civil war, in a career spanning over six decades. Light’s New Measure borrows its title from a poem in the 2012 collection Sea and Fog, gesturing to the dialogue between Adnan’s artwork and her poetry. Indeed, it would be impossible to think about her art practice as separate from her literary pursuits, especially since a persistent struggle with language(s) frames her experience of both the literary and visual,” writes Assistant Professor of Arabic Dina Ramadan in a review of the artist’s first major New York museum show. Ramadan describes that “Adnan’s paintings feel immediate in their energy, exploding onto the canvas in a single sitting, thick layers of paint applied directly from the tube. Much like her poetry, they are emotive and experiential, studies of the potential of color and its emotional agency, explorations of its ability to move past the limitations of meaning,” The exhibition Light’s New Measure, which spans Adnan’s prolific career, is on view at the Guggenheim Museum from October 8, 2021 through January 10, 2022.

On November 10 at 6pm ET, Bard Globalization and International Affairs Program (BGIA) Director Elmira Bayrasli will speak at the World Affairs Council of New Hampshire. As the rate of technological change quickens, governments around the world need to adapt to new realities and ways of conducting their business. From new ways of communicating to increasing cyber espionage, the challenges and opportunities in the digital age abound. Her talk, “Going Digital: Foreign Policy in the 21st Century,” focuses on the new ways in which the digital revolution will transform the work of diplomacy around the world. 

Bayrasli is the Director of BGIA. She is also the CEO of Foreign Policy Interrupted and the Interruptrr newsletter and the host of Project Syndicate's podcast, Opinion Has It. She is the author of From the Other Side of the World: Extraordinary Entrepreneurs, Unlikely Places, a book that looks at the rise of entrepreneurship globally.

In 2007, JoAnne Akalaitis, then director of Bard’s Theater Program, invited Daniel Fish to direct a work with her Bard students. Fish immediately chose the 1943 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma!. Although he didn’t set out to reinvent the musical, his innovative direction reimagined the play as a deep examination of uniquely American themes. “The idea in this work is that this couple has to come together, and that supersedes justice. Out of that couple is born a state, a country, all arguably on a crime — a murder. That's a pretty American story,” says Fish in the Star Tribune.

Years later, Fish’s intimate student production led to a fully staged production, which premiered at  2015 Bard SummerScape, went Off-Broadway, and eventually became a Broadway musical that won the 2019 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical.

Oklahoma! launches its national tour on November 9 in Minneapolis.

When Al-Quds Bard student Ahmad Hijawi ’23 set out to find a way to tackle the problems of industrial stone waste and discarded tires in his native Palestine, he had no idea he would also wind up creating useful household products and winning national entrepreneurship competitions in the process. Hijawi credits much of his venture’s success to the skills he developed while taking OSUN’s network collaborative course on Social Entrepreneurship in 2020, as well as the valuable peer feedback he received throughout. 

“The class had a great impact on helping me gain leadership and analytical skills, specifically in brainstorming solutions for the problems we wanted to tackle,” says Hijawi, who cofounded CleanPalCo. Hijawi found that the methodical research, experimentation, and consultation with classmates in different countries helped his team find a solution that was both viable and innovative. Ultimately, the course’s collaborative processes contributed to the team realizing they could chop up discarded rubber tires then combine them with polluting stone waste and water to produce useful household products such as bricks, tiles, and rubber flooring. 

“We not only solved a pollution problem but also produced something useful that could serve as safety padding in parks and playgrounds,” he says.

Eliza Edge, who received a Bard MBA in Sustainability in 2020 and is one of several Bard College instructors teaching Social Entrepreneurship, agrees that the globally networked structure and the platform supporting the course were invaluable. “Getting comments and feedback from global peers can help others understand models that might already exist in other parts of the world,” she says. “Knowing that we don't want to recreate, say, a food delivery app everywhere in the world, our system allows us to share examples and ideas from our own lives and worldviews that can be very helpful for thinking outside of the box.”

In its second year, the course is connecting over 100 students from countries across the globe, including Bangladesh, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Taiwan, and the US, creating a brain trust of multicultural interactions that is not available in most classrooms.

“Author Lucy Sante is at an interesting point in her life, looking backward and forward simultaneously,” writes Bob Krasner for the Villager. “With the release of her latest book, a collection of essays entitled Maybe the People Would Be the Times, she has gathered together pieces that form a kind of memoir—even in the fiction that weaves in and out of the examinations of music, art, tabloids, photography and her life in the East Village many years ago. Between the creation of this book and its actual publication, Sante has entered a new phase of her life [...] In her mid-60’s, Sante has recently come out as transgender, changed her name and is happily living her life with a new set of pronouns.” Lucy Sante is visiting professor of writing and photography at Bard College. She has been a member of the faculty since 1999.

Many of the metrics we commonly use to understand economic growth and well-being were developed nearly a century ago, and may no longer paint an accurate picture of the economy. The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College last week won a $300,000 federal contract to aid the US Department of Labor in its efforts to broaden how it measures the economic well-being of US households. Levy Institute President Dimitri Papadimitriou talked with Rana Foroohar of the Financial Times about how new metrics, such as measuring women’s unpaid labor, could create more clarity for policymakers.

Justus Rosenberg, Professor Emeritus of Languages & Literature and Visiting Professor of Literature, died at home in Annandale on October 30, 2021, having celebrated his 100th birthday on January 23, 2021.  

Born to a Jewish family in Danzig (Gdańsk), Poland, he was sent to study in France by parents fearful of, as his father remarked, the “evil wind” of Nazism. Once the Nazis occupied Paris, Justus had to leave the Sorbonne, and, set adrift, was forced to fend for himself.  The blond “Aryan-looking” young man, barely twenty years of age, was fluent in German, Yiddish, Polish, Russian and French; his love of languages saved his life, and, later, as a scholar of translation, inspired his vocation. 

Justus made his way to Marseille and the Emergency Rescue Committee, led by American journalist and fervent anti-Nazi Varian Fry. Working as a courier, delivering coded messages and intercepting communications across enemy lines, Justus was soon escorting well-known émigré writers and intellectuals, among them Heinrich Mann Franz Werfel and many others, through the treacherous Pyrenees to safety in Spain.

For his heroic service (which included many near misses and serious wounds) later in the war in aid of the U.S. Army, Justus received a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart, and in 2017, the French ambassador to the United States decorated him as a Commandeur in the Légion d’Honneur, one of France’s highest distinctions. 

After a number of stateless years, Justus emigrated to the United States in 1946. After receiving a Ph.D., Justus arrived at Bard in 1962, where he taught European literature and many languages to generations of Bard students. Professor and distinguished poet Robert Kelly, in his eulogy of Justus, speaks of the “humble heroics of making sure that today’s students do not lose sight of, or lose faith in, the great humanistic structure of European civilization.” We note as well that Justus also taught courses in the literature of India, China and various countries in Africa. 

In January 2020, Justus published The Art of Resistance: My Four Years in the French Underground: A Memoir.  “Justus was one of the last witnesses of the Holocaust,” writes President Leon Botstein in his eulogy of our beloved colleague. “His death, after a long and productive life is a call to honor his long service—his contributions as a teacher and writer—by resolving to remember, more than ever before, the events of history he was part of and the courage and commitments to freedom, tolerance, justice, learning, and respect for all human life he displayed.” 

With the devoted care of his wife, Karin, Justus stayed active until almost the very end—planning courses, excited as always by the prospect of awakening Bard students to the riches of great works by revered authors, and the humane values embedded in major artistic achievement. 

Trim, dapper, an avid (and very competitive!) tennis player, Justus was both worldly and modest.  In his memoir he asks, “So how do we explain the fact that this child of Jewish parents in Danzig survived Hitler and concentration camps, bullet wounds and land-mine blasts, and then found his way from those stateless, uncertain years in war-torn Europe to this long and purposeful life in America?” Luck, he says, most certainly had something to do with it.  Yet, “Time and time again,” he tells us, “there was what I call ‘a confluence of circumstances’ that presented me with a window of opportunity, or a moment to be seized. At each juncture, a combination of factors enabled me to seize that moment or slip through that window.  That’s my best explanation for how I survived.”

That he did so has been an inestimable gift to all of us at Bard. In the spirit of the Jewish tradition in which he was raised, “May his memory be a blessing.”

The Bard College men's basketball team defeated Northern Vermont University–Johnson 78–64 in the championship game of the Northern Vermont Tip-Off Classic on the afternoon of Sunday, November 7. A late 11–5 run, keyed by eight points from junior Elliot Harris, pushed a four-point Bard lead to 10, and the NVU-Johnson Beavers didn't get closer than six the rest of the way. “The team showed a lot of resiliency today,” Bard coach Michael Lenahan said. “Our shots weren't falling in the first half, and our defense kept us in it. We kept fighting and were eventually able to pull away for the win.”

By Sophie Kautenburger ’23

Where can studying ancient languages lead? Great places: just ask three Bard Classics majors who spent the summer of 2021 pursuing their academic passions at Harvard University and the University of Chicago. Senior Em Setzer ’22 completed a paid internship at Harvard University’s Center for Hellenic Studies (CHS), a research facility, library, and cultural center based in Washington, DC that attracts scholars, students, and artists from all over the world. Setzer contributed to The Open Greek and Latin Project, an international collaboration committed to creating a free digital corpus of Greek and Latin texts. Setzer managed a team of about 20 volunteers who edited the data output of digitized Greek texts for two major online platforms: the First Thousand Years of Greek Project and the Perseus Digital Library. Setzer’s work added new material to these open source projects, which significantly contribute to the worldwide accessibility of the study of ancient Greece and Rome.
 
Bard Classics senior Isabella Spagnuolo ’22 won a fully funded internship at the University of Chicago in the Leadership Alliance’s 2021 Summer Research Early Identification Program (SR-EIP). SR-EIP is a highly selective summer research experience designed for undergraduates interested in pursuing a PhD. During the nine-week program, Spagnuolo was mentored by Michèle Lowrie (Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Classics at the University of Chicago); took courses in academic skills and professional development; and developed an independent research project. Spagnuolo used the summer to explore echoes of dance in Horace’s Odes, a collection of Roman poetry composed in the first century BCE. Her work allowed her to combine her expertise in Classics with her own experience as an accomplished dancer; she plans to continue this research in her Senior Project at Bard.
 
Sophomore Jade Dinkins ’24 was awarded a scholarship to study at Harvard Summer School, the oldest academic summer program in the United States. In seven short weeks, she learned ancient Greek from scratch and translated adaptations of works by Euripides, Lysias, Herodotus, and Aristophanes. The experience was grueling but rewarding. “I found all of the pieces which I read to be equally as engaging as they were academically challenging,” Dinkins recounted, “which made it a true treat to translate every single one of them. Both of my professors brought so much enthusiasm to each lesson as well, and that allowed me to wake up every morning feeling eager to learn as much ancient Greek as I possibly could that day. They explained beautifully the language’s major influence on the social, cultural, and intellectual history of the West, offering a well-rounded perspective on the history of the language, which is something that I really appreciate when learning something new.” Dinkins successfully completed her summer scholarship studies in time for the start of Bard’s fall semester, which sees her reading Homer in Bard’s intermediate ancient Greek class. 

“These fantastic achievements are a testament to our students’ talents and hard work,” said Lauren Curtis, associate professor of Classics and director of the Classical Studies Program. “We are so proud of them! All these different summer projects and internships, from language study to leadership training and research, show how many exciting opportunities the study of the Ancient Greek and Roman worlds can open up.”

Globally renowned violinist and Bard Conservatory of Music faculty member Gil Shaham joins The Orchestra Now for the world premiere of Birds of America, a new piece written for him by award-winning composer Scott Wheeler. Also on the program are Julia Perry’s dramatic Stabat Mater and George Bristow’s rarely-heard Arcadian Symphony. David Noel Edwards writes for the Berkshire Edge that Birds of America is remarkably accessible: “Unlike the work of some of his peers in musical academia, Wheeler's music may challenge you, but you don't have to be a college professor to understand it.”

Professor Roger Berkowitz moderates a discussion with Speer Goes to Hollywood filmmakers Vanessa Lapa and Tomer Eliav at the Film Forum in New York City. The film explores the postwar life of Albert Speer, the highest ranking Nazi to be spared the death penalty at Nuremburg, who was widely known as Hitler’s architect. After emerging from 20 years at Spandau prison with a best-selling memoir, rebranded as a “good Nazi,” Speer tried—and got shockingly close—to attaining legitimate movie stardom. The film is based on hours of audio recordings between Speer and screenwriter Andrew Birkin, who was hired by Paramount to script the film version of Speer’s life story. Roger Berkowitz is the academic director of the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities and professor of politics, philosophy, and human rights at Bard College.

Professor Emeritus of Languages and Literature and Visiting Professor of Literature Justus Rosenberg passed away, surrounded by family, on Saturday, October 30, 2021 at the age of 100. 

In a letter to the Bard community, President Leon Botstein memorialized Rosenberg’s life: 

Justus was one of the last witnesses of the Holocaust. As a member of the French Resistance he was also a hero in the fight against fascism. His death, after a long and productive life is a call to honor his long service—his contributions as a teacher and writer—by resolving to remember, more than ever before, the events of history he was part of and the courage and commitments to freedom, tolerance, justice, learning, and respect for all human life he displayed. All of us at Bard owe him a debt of gratitude for his many years of teaching, his friendship, and the eloquent writings he penned.

Justus Rosenberg was born to a Jewish family in Danzig (present-day Gdańsk, Poland) in 1921. He was a legendary teacher who started teaching at Bard in 1962. Although he retired formally in 1992, he accepted a post-retirement appointment to rejoin the faculty offered to him by Stuart Levine, who was then Dean of the College. In 2020, he published The Art of Resistance: My Four Years in the French Underground: A Memoir. This book recounts his service to the French Resistance during World War II. Justus not only survived the war, unlike many in his family, but by joining the fight against Nazis he was doubly at risk as a Jew and as a member of the Resistance. For his wartime service, Justus received a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart and in 2017 the French ambassador to the United States personally made Rosenberg a Commandeur in the Légion d’Honneur, among France’s highest decorations, for his heroism during World War II.

Justus emigrated to the United States. After finishing his PhD, he chose a career in undergraduate teaching, first at Swarthmore, and then at Bard. He taught literature and many languages, notably French, German, Russian, Yiddish, and, from time to time, even Polish. He was a loyal friend to Peter Sourian, and until not too long ago, an avid player of tennis, particularly with the late Jean French, Professor of Art History. In recent decades, Justus was very active promoting causes dedicated to tolerance and the fight against prejudice and hate.

Students who were fortunate enough to take his classes had the rare opportunity to study with a scholar who was also a witness to history. The Nazi genocide of European Jewry has receded from memory and become a more distant object of history. Bard students, however, had the opportunity to be in the presence of an individual who could testify to what happened.The denial of the truth of the persecution and annihilation of European Jewry has, astonishingly, persisted. Justus Rosenberg survived and witnessed the unimaginable. Yet he tirelessly and eloquently demonstrated reasons for hope. Despite suffering and loss, Justus sustained an unrelenting commitment to literature, the arts, philosophy, the traditions of science, and the making of art; for him they revealed the possibilities of human renewal shared by all and transcended the differences among us. For Justus, learning and study were instruments of redemption, remembrance, and reconciliation. He possessed a magnetic capacity to inspire the love of learning.

It was a miracle that Justus fulfilled the well-known birthday greeting of the nation of his birth that calls for "100 years" of life. Justus reached that milestone, against all odds. In Poland, the country of his birth, just under 3 million Jews, nearly 90 percent of all Polish Jews, were murdered between 1939 and 1945.

A graveside funeral was held on Sunday, October 31 at the Bard College Cemetery with a reception at the President's House following the ceremony. A Shiva is taking place during the week. In lieu of flowers, the family has asked that contributions be made to the Justus Rosenberg Memorial Fund at Bard College, whose objective is to create an endowed chair in comparative literature in his name at the College.

Samuel Mutter ’25 was so inspired by reading Vladimir Bukovsky's book To Build a Castle: My Life as a Dissenter as a Bard first-year that he composed “Incarceration,” an original piece of music that premiered at the Atlantic Music Festival over the summer. Mutter read Bukovsky's Soviet prison dissident memoir last year in Alternate Worlds: Utopia and Dystopia in Modern Russia, a common course taught by Sean McMeekin, Francis Flournoy Professor of European History and Culture. In an interview with Soviet History Lessons, a historical archive chronicling the human rights movement in the USSR, Mutter comments on the book and Bukovsky's life as an activist: “What could be a more important battle than a battle for life, for liberty, for basic human rights and freedoms?” He goes on to describe the inspiring experience he had last semester teaching piano lessons to young people in a local juvenile detention center through the Bard student–led Musical Mentorship Initiative. Mutter is a double-degree student in the Conservatory majoring in music composition and global and international studies with a concentration in historical studies.

The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College has been awarded a $300,000 federal contract to aid the US Department of Labor in its efforts to broaden how it measures the economic well-being of US households. 

"We are pleased for this recognition of the Levy Institute's development of various measures of economic well-being and to be entrusted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics at the US Department of Labor to play a significant role in the development of a new and broader measure of household consumption," said Levy Institute President Dimitri Papadimitriou.

Building on the Levy Institute’s research creating innovative measures of well-being (the Levy Institute Measure of Economic Well-Being) and deprivation (the Levy Institute Measure of Time and Income Poverty), the project will be directed by the head of the Institute’s Distribution of Income and Wealth program, Ajit Zacharias. Zacharias, along with Institute scholars Nancy Folbre, Thomas Masterson, and Fernando Rios-Avila, will be working with the Bureau of Labor Statistics to create an alternative measure of household consumption that incorporates the value of unpaid production in the home and informal transfers between households. This project adds to the work ongoing within the Bureau of Labor Statistics to generate a more complete picture of how households use the resources available to them to meet their needs, with the ultimate goal of publishing this more comprehensive measure of well-being alongside its current statistics.

"We are gratified by the confidence the federal government has placed in the scholarship that the College has nurtured at the Levy Institute,” said Senior Scholar Ajit Zacharias. “We hope that recognition of unpaid household work in government economic statistics will also raise awareness of the inequities in the distribution of such work and elevate its societal importance."

“When animals are misguided by evolved behavioural cues to preferentially make mistakes, they are caught in an evolutionary trap,” write Associate Professor of Biology Bruce Robertson, Devin C. Fraleigh ’18, and Jackson Barratt Heitmann ’18 in a newly published scientific paper. “Aquatic insects rely heavily on polarized light cues to locate bodies of water necessary for oviposition and mating. However, where artificial objects (e.g. asphalt, buildings) are at least as effective at polarizing light as natural water bodies, aquatic insects may instead prefer to oviposit on those surfaces where their eggs fail to hatch.”

Published in Animal Behavior, their paper “Ultraviolet polarized light pollution and evolutionary traps for aquatic insects” surveyed the natural and artificial environment to understand the properties of objects that can polarize natural and artificial sources of UV light. They conducted a field experiment to test the importance of UV polarized light in guiding habitat selection behaviour in six families of aquatic insects. The results highlight a quantitatively new type of ecological light pollution capable of creating evolutionary traps for polarotactic insects at night, or even during the day. 

The Global Search for Education interviews Kira Shiner, a 2021 recipient of a Graduate Certificate in Advanced Performance Studies (APS) from the Bard College Conservatory of Music, about her experience in pulling together an online musical performance during the pandemic. “I think music performance is on the brink of a big transition to something new. This pandemic has made every ensemble rethink how they interact with an audience,” says Shiner. Audiences can watch “Gypsy Song,” from Carmen, a lively performance from five Bard Conservatory and APS recipients on the Planet Classroom Network YouTube Channel. The five musicians in the woodwind quintet, APS recipients Collin Lewis, Kira Shiner, and Timothy Woerner; Conservatory alumna Jillian Reed ’21; and Eleni Georgiadis spread throughout the county, flawlessly mesh together their individual parts to create a perfect arrangement of the classic song from the Bizet opera.

Today, the New York Appellate Division unanimously affirmed the decision of Dutchess County Supreme Court Judge Maria Rosa to situate a polling place on the Bard College campus for District 5 voters.

The unanimous four-Judge Appellate Division panel agreed with Judge Rosa and the Petitioners Bard College, faculty, and students on all counts. The appeals court found that, following Bard’s prior 2020 litigation victory which resulted in polling location on campus, Commissioner Haight’s continued efforts in 2021 to prevent on-campus voting were “arbitrary and capricious.” 

“This is an important victory, both locally and nationally, in the fight against voter disenfranchisement, in this case discrimination against youth and those protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act,” said Bard’s Executive Vice President Jonathan Becker. “It is unfortunate that the county leadership has condoned, actively or through their silence, Commissioner Haight’s efforts to undermine democracy, even as he has now wasted well over $100,000 of taxpayer money over the past decade in failed attempts at voter suppression that have been repeatedly rejected by the courts.” 

“A common-sense solution to provide accessible and safe voting should not be this hard,” said Erin Cannan, Vice President for Civic Engagement. “We are thrilled to have arrived once again at a solution that works for all of our voters in District 5.”

Counsel on the lawsuit are Michael Donofrio, Esq. of Stris & Maher LLP, Doug Mishkin, Esq., and Yael Bromberg, Esq. of Bromberg Law LLC.

“When Congress and the states ratified the 26th Amendment fifty years ago, they specifically contemplated the special burdens young people face in accessing the ballot, including the lack of on-campus polling locations,” said Yael Bromberg, Esq. of Bromberg Law LLC and Twenty-Sixth Amendment legal scholar. “In Dutchess County, a single county commissioner was so intent on suppressing the youth vote, that he was willing to compromise the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), several provisions of NY Election Law, and basic COVID protocols. Today’s win means that the student, ADA-friendly, and COVID-conscious on-campus polling location can once again provide a safe and accessible option for all Dutchess County voters.” 

“We appreciate the quick and decisive action by the New York courts in rejecting Commissioner Haight’s anti-voter litigation strategy and ensuring that all voters in the district will have access to a safe, convenient, secure polling location on November 2,” said Mike Donofrio, Stris & Maher’s Pro Bono Practice Leader.

“On one level, this case was about ensuring the existence of a polling place on the Bard campus, holding the Board of Elections accountable for its arbitrary and capricious decisions, and protecting the voting rights of students, BIPOC, and people with disabilities,” said Bard senior Tomas Forman, a plaintiff in the lawsuit. “On another level, the case was about using the power of courts to send the message that discriminatory decisions on the part of administrative agencies that are nonsensical and simply rely on the status quo will no longer be tolerated. We as plaintiffs hope that this case can serve as a model for other institutions and groups fighting for like causes. Following Judge Rosa's determination, the Bard College community, constituting nearly 70% of registered voters in our district, will have a safe, accessible, welcoming, and convenient place to exercise their rights under the 26th Amendment.”

“Ensuring a polling site on campus is not only a huge victory for voting rights of students, but also disabled voters,” said Bard sophomore Sarah Seager, a leader of organizational plaintiff Election@Bard. “Allowing voters a safe and accessible space to vote, which is what the Bard campus polling site provides, is expected of all polling sites. As a Bard community we are excited to provide that space for voices to be heard as people practice their civic duty of voting. I, along with the Election@Bard team, am excited to see what the future of Dutchess county looks like when the voices of students are heard.”

Voters in District 5 will be able to vote at the Bard College polling site in the Bertelsmann Campus Center, and at the Church of St. John’s on River Road.

This ruling is the latest chapter of a decades-long fight, including legal challenges, for student voting rights by Bard College students, including Andrew Goodman Foundation Student Ambassadors. Additional information on the fight for a polling site at Bard can be read here. News about previous rulings can be read here, here, and here.

The Bard College Conservatory of Music and Graduate Vocal Arts Program present Songs From The Real World: The French Cabaret, a benefit for the Bard Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Scholarship Fund. The concert features renowned mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe (artistic director), pianist Kayo Iwama (associate director), as well as members of the Graduate Vocal Arts Program and Conservatory Collaborative Piano Fellowship exploring the beginnings of the world of French cabaret, a musical movement that was born to explore an exotic and bohemian ideal, expressing social and political satire through song. The performance will be held on Saturday, November 6 at 8 pm in the Fisher Center’s Sosnoff Theater. Tickets start at $25, with $5 tickets for Bard students made possible by the Passloff Pass. Virtual livestream tickets are pay what you wish. All ticket sales benefit the Bard Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Scholarship Fund. To purchase or reserve tickets visit fishercenter.bard.edu, call 845-758-7900 (Mon-Fri 10am-5pm), or email boxoffice@bard.edu.

“One of the most important missions of the Bard Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Program is to teach the art of communication and collaboration. So it makes perfect sense that on the heels of a worldwide pandemic that took us all out of the public world and cast us into very private and often solitary settings, that we would emerge through the world of French chanson,” writes Artistic Director Stephanie Blythe. “These extraordinarily popular songs began in the 1880’s with the appearance of the chanson realiste—unapologetically truthful statements about life on the streets of Paris and all the elements that defined those lives—working class poverty, debauchery, sex, crime, and much of it seen through the lens of romantic, smoky cafés and rain soaked, cobblestone streets. Here was found a healthy dose of nostalgia, peppered with wit and charm, as well as a deep sadness and longing, and not a little accordion. These songs are a perfect way to initiate an intimate dialogue with an audience—one that we have been developing even more keenly after such a long, forced separation from all of you. Through the art of the chanson, we see what it means to be fully human, something we have all been taking a hard look at over the last year and a half.”

The evening’s program includes a repertoire of French cabaret songs spanning 1866 through 1968, and includes “Les temps des cerises” (1866) by Jean-Baptiste Clément (1836-1903), “La Vie en rose” (1945) by Louiguy (1916-91), “Le serpents qui danse” (1957) by Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), and “Les moulins de mon coeur” (1968) by Michel Legrand (1932-2019) among many others.

“Geoffrey Wheatcroft, a British commentator and author with a reputation as an admirably pugnacious contrarian, recalls seeing Churchill in the House of Commons as a schoolboy in 1963,” writes Aldous, Eugene Meyer Professor of British History and Literature, in the Wall Street Journal. “‘For all that he was aged and infirm,’ [Wheatcroft] writes, ‘I was glad to have seen him for myself, and to have seen him where I did.’ In Churchill’s Shadow, Mr. Wheatcroft attempts ‘to make a reckoning’ with the man he saw on that day—not just with his life and legacy but also with ‘the long shadow he still casts.’”

“In the rift between secularism and churchgoing, Jonathan Franzen has set his sixth and latest novel, Crossroads, the first in what promises to be three linked novels under the broad banner A Key to All Mythologies (the title alludes to Middlemarch and an uncompleted work of Christian philosophy by that book’s insufferable Rev. Casaubon),” writes Writer in Residence Wyatt Mason in the Wall Street Journal. “Like all Mr. Franzen’s novels, Crossroads burrows into the walls behind which a group of people endure the particularly excruciating form of self-flagellation we call family life. The Probsts, the Hollands, the Lamberts, the Berglunds, the Tylers: Mr. Franzen’s fictional families from his earlier novels are now joined by the Hildebrandts, very unhappy in their own way, and very conflicted in their relationships with Mainline Protestant ideas of ‘goodness.’”

In an essay for The Hudson Review, Hirsch explores how the vexed representation of Jews in the modern canon influenced the life and work of Anthony Hecht, who graduated from Bard in 1944 and taught at the College from 1952–55 and 1962–66. Hirsch illuminates that while Hecht was deeply influenced as a poet by Shakespeare, among other English masters, he never forgot his first experience of reading The Merchant of Venice in grade school. “It was mortifying, and in complicated ways. I was being asked to admire the work of the greatest master of the English language, and one universally revered, who was slandering all those of my race and religion. I was not even allowed to do this in private, but under the scrutiny and supervision of public instruction. And it took many class periods to get through the whole text. I can also remember the unseemly pleasure of my teacher in relishing all the slanders against the Jews in general and Shylock in particular. It was a wounding experience and the beginning of a kind of education for which I received no grades. And it has continued for the rest of my life,” wrote Hecht.

The French newspaper Le Monde reviews S. William Senfeld Artist in Residence Kelly Reichardt’s film First Cow as a “chef-d’œuvre” or “masterpiece” and calls her one of the greatest filmmakers in the history of American cinema. In French.

“After almost two years of Covid-induced absence from Paris and Berlin, I returned to the old world to make a surprising discovery: Europe no longer understands the United States,” writes Walter Russell Mead, James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and the Humanities. “Between Washington’s shift to the Indo-Pacific, the lingering effects of the Trump presidency (along with fears of a return in 2024), and confusing signals emanating from the Biden administration, neither the Germans nor French know what to expect anymore.”

Author Lindsey Drager has received the Bard Fiction Prize for her novel, The Archive of Alternate Endings (Dzanc Books 2019). Drager’s residency at Bard College is for the fall 2022 semester, during which time she will continue her writing and meet informally with students. Drager will give a public reading at Bard during her residency.

“Lindsey Drager’s wonderfully innovative novel, The Archive of Alternate Endings, takes its readers on an elliptical, speculative, philosophically intrepid journey that tracks the evolution of the old folktale, Hansel and Gretel, between 1378 and 2365, even as it redefines and revises our sense of what narrative itself can achieve,” writes the Bard Fiction Prize committee. “As Halley’s Comet revisits the Earth every seventy-five years, like some cosmic metronome, we encounter the siblings Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Johannes Gutenberg and his sister, and twin space probes searching the galaxy for a sister planet to our own. As we do, we witness the many ways in which Hansel and Gretel themselves are transformed along with the human experience their tale portrays. Intimate in its understanding of the multiplicities of love, here is an elegantly succinct work of art that is flat-out epic in scope. And while one may look to Borges, Calvino, Winterson, even the Terrence Malik of Tree of Life for comparison, Drager’s vision is breathtakingly original and The Archive of Alternate Endings displays the confident technique and wild inventiveness of an already accomplished literary artist emerging into virtuosity.”

“I am so very, very grateful for the opportunity to spend a semester engaging with the literary community at Bard. It is a privilege to be listed among the extraordinary novelists and short story writers honored with this prize in the past,” said Drager. “For me, much of writing is about ongoing, long-term self-doubt, so support and recognition like this is simply invaluable. Thank you, thank you, thank you to the Bard Fiction Prize committee for seeing something in this strange book.”

Lindsey Drager is the author of three novels: The Sorrow Proper (Dzanc 2015), The Lost Daughter Collective (Dzanc 2017), and The Archive of Alternate Endings (Dzanc 2019). Her books have won a John Gardner Fiction Award and a Shirley Jackson Award; been listed as a “Best Book of the Year” in The Guardian and NPR; and twice been named a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. A Spanish language edition of her second book was published this year in Spain, and an Italian edition of The Archive of Alternate Endings is forthcoming. A 2020 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship recipient in Prose, she is currently the associate fiction editor of the literary journal West Branch and an assistant professor in the creative writing program at the University of Utah.

The creation of the Bard Fiction Prize, presented each October since 2001, continues Bard’s long-standing position as a center for creative, groundbreaking literary work by both faculty and students. From Saul Bellow, William Gaddis, Mary McCarthy, and Ralph Ellison to John Ashbery, Philip Roth, William Weaver, and Chinua Achebe, Bard’s literature faculty, past and present, represents some of the most important writers of our time. The prize is intended to encourage and support young writers of fiction, and provide them with an opportunity to work in a fertile intellectual environment. Last year’s Bard Fiction Prize was awarded to Akil Kumarasamy for her debut story collection, Half Gods (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2018).

On October 21, Associate Dean of Civic Engagement Brian Mateo spoke at the Council on Foreign Relations for their higher education webinar series on how higher education administrators can encourage student civic engagement and participation in global issues. Mateo posits that we want students to gain a great deal more than academic knowledge from their college or university experience. “I strongly believe that we want them to be critical thinkers,” he states. “We want them to understand and practice equity, be strategic problem solvers, understand the power of reflection and active listening, [be] community builders, practice empathy, be lifelong learners, and also ultimately be engaged individuals.” Brian Mateo is the associate dean of civic engagement at Bard College, the director of strategic partnerships in Bard College’s Globalization and International Affairs Program, program director for civic engagement at the Study of the U.S. Institutes for Scholars, and a security fellow at the Truman National Security Project.

The Violin Channel’s VC Live is streaming “Asian American Voices: American Stories & Music,” an online concert featuring a selection of important live symphonic works recorded at this year’s China Now Music Festival presented by the US-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory of Music. Tune in at 7 PM (ET) on Tuesday, October 19 for this special event.

“Asian American artists are taking a greater role in the music world of the 21st Century,” said China Now Music Festival Artistic Director Jindong Cai, who recently sat down with The Violin Channel in an interview. “You can witness this in any symphony orchestra, opera house, or conservatory and the creation of the US-China Music Institute is a reflection of this trend. I hope I can use my experience to create a strong platform to enable a greater appreciation of the music from China and to provide new opportunities for artists to perform Chinese music.”

“The US-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory of Music is proving a leading force in introducing music from contemporary China to the United States, and in promoting musical exchanges between the countries,” writes The Violin Channel. 

“Asian American Voices: American Stories & Music”
Presented by US-China Music Institute of the Bard College Conservatory of Music 
Tuesday, October 19 at 7 PM (ET)

Del Sol Quartet & China Now Festival Chorus
Huang Ruo | Angel Island: Oratorio for voices and String Quartet

Conductor Jingdong Cai & The Orchestra Now | Li Yi (tenor) | Nina Yoshida Nelsen (mezzo-soprano) | Helen Zhibing Huang (soprano) | David Henry Hwang (librettist, live narration)
Huang Ruo | Selections from An American Soldier

Conductor Jingdong Cai & The Orchestra Now | Yixin Wang (guzheng)
Xinyan Li | Awakening Light

Conductor Jingdong Cai & The Orchestra Now
Peng-Peng Gong | A Chinese in New York (2019)

Associate Professor of Economics Pavlina Tcherneva interviews French economist Thomas Piketty as part of the first-ever Global Forum on Democratizing Work, a project of the Open Society University Network’s Economic Democracy Initiative. Piketty’s groundbreaking book Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013), showed through data collected on 200 years of tax records from the United States and Europe, a “central contradiction of capitalism”—that the return on capital exceeds the rate of economic growth. Thus, without government intervention, the wealthy continue to grow wealthier leading to unsustainable and undemocratic levels of economic inequality.

In their conversation, Tcherneva and Piketty discuss the #democratizingwork movement, how it resonates with Piketty’s work on wealth inequality and the future of capitalism, and how collective, multifaceted, and organized actions and efforts can address economic inequality. “Human beings are not simple resources and human wellbeing cannot be governed by market forces alone,” says Tcherneva.

Thomas Piketty is Professor of Economics at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (École des hautes études en sciences sociales: EHESS), Associate Chair at the Paris School of Economics, and Centennial Professor of Economics in the International Inequalities Institute at the London School of Economics.

One of the crowning glories of the 2021 Bard SummerScape season, the festival’s lauded production of Ernest Chausson’s only opera, King Arthur (“Le roi Arthus”), will be available for on-demand viewing from October 25 to November 1 on the Fisher Center’s streaming service, UPSTREAMING. Coinciding with World Opera Day (Oct 25), this release will be accompanied by a recorded talk with conductor and Bard SummerScape founder and co-artistic director Leon Botstein, an interview with celebrated mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, who sang Guinevère, and other bonus material. Viewers can pay what they wish and registration is required. This summer’s production – the first fully staged American treatment of the opera – featured Cooke and charismatic baritone Norman Garrett along with tenor Matthew White in an original staging by Princess Grace Award-winner Louisa Proske. In addition to viewing King Arthur, UPSTREAMING audiences will be able to access all Bard’s archived opera productions free of charge and on demand here. 

Bard SummerScape’s signature dedication to resurrecting operatic rarities and giving them their rightful due has earned the festival and its founder singular praise; OperaWire noted in its review of King Arthur, “Leon Botstein is what a lot of artists should aspire to. A man with a vision who stays true to it.” (A video of Botstein and mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe discussing their love of rarely performed operas can be found here.) King Arthur continued Bard’s long history of successful opera presentations, garnering glowing reviews: “This show came across as high theater and absolute music,” declared the Boston Musical Intelligencer, and the New York Times proclaimed, “Superb singers and a clear production make a strong case for Ernest Chausson’s seldom heard ‘Le Roi Arthus.’” Indeed, “Bard’s latest rediscovery was an essential, exhilarating experience” (Parterre). The encore streaming event from October 25 to November 1 will allow the work to reach a richly-deserved wider audience.
 
While SummerScape and the Bard Music Festival are among the most visible events produced by the Fisher Center on Bard’s bucolic campus, the center is a year-round venue producing and presenting a wide variety of concerts and events. Upcoming live-streamed events available via UPSTREAMING include: Mahler’s magisterial Symphony No. 2, “Resurrection (Oct. 23-24), performed by the Bard Conservatory Orchestra with members of The Orchestra Now (TON), soloists from the Bard Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Program, Bard College Chamber Singers, and the Bard Festival Chorale, with choral director James Bagwell. On November 23 and 24, The Orchestra Now, conducted by Leon Botstein, will be joined by violinist Gil Shaham and mezzo-soprano Briana Hunter in a program featuring a world premiere by Scott Wheeler, Julia Perry’s Stabat Mater, and George Frederick Bristow’s rarely performed Symphony No.4, Arcadian. On December 11 and 12, TON will be joined by soloists from Bard’s Graduate Vocal Arts Program, the Bard Festival Chorale and Bard College Chamber Singers for performances of Handel’s Messiah. On November 6, the Bard Conservatory Vocal Arts Program will present Songs from the Real World: The French Cabaret, with versatile, internationally heralded mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe and members of Bard’s Vocal Arts Program. The program will explore the beginnings of the French cabaret scene, in a benefit for the Bard Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Scholarship Fund. More information about the Fisher Center’s Fall Season can be found here.

Kate Belin BA ’04, MAT ’05, who teaches at Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School in the Bronx, is one of two winners of the 2021 Math for America (MƒA) Muller Award for Professional Influence in Education. This honor is given to two New York City public school teachers who, during their tenure as MƒA Master Teachers, have influenced the teaching profession in exceptional ways.

“Belin brings a creative approach to pedagogy and has dramatically improved math education at their school and beyond. She is being recognized for bringing her deep understanding of mathematics to all students and taking a leadership role to improve education and educational equity everywhere and for everyone,” writes MƒA. 
 
“I am beyond grateful to MƒA for this recognition and for providing a space for teachers to come together as learners and leaders. This award also recognizes the work of the entire Fannie Lou community which has always understood that teaching is political,” said Belin. “We aren’t simply teaching subjects. We are teaching to fight injustices. Our job is to be activists and organizers in collaboration with our students—to mobilize youth for any issues that exist in their community, country, or world, and work together to make it better.”
 
Belin was recognized for her impact on the teaching profession and awarded $20,000 during a virtual MƒA award ceremony on Monday, October 18. In addition, $5,000 was awarded to the school or organization of their nominator. Belin was nominated by representatives from the Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School.

Kate Belin has taught mathematics at Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School for the past 17 years, transforming the mathematics curriculum of the school and mentoring student teachers. She was a recipient of the 2011 Sloan Award for Excellence in Teaching Science in Mathematics and was a Fulbright Distinguished Awards Teaching Fellow to Botswana in 2016. Belin earned their B.A. in Mathematics and M.A.T. at Bard College and has been an adjunct professor at City College of New York, Bard College, and the Bard Prison Initiative.