Bard News

Superb singers and a clear production of Ernest Chausson’s seldom-heard Le roi Arthus make for an exciting return to live opera at Bard SummerScape, writes Anthony Tommasini in his Critic's Pick review for the New York Times. “Botstein, leading the American Symphony Orchestra, an impressive cast and the excellent Bard Festival Chorale, made a compelling case for the piece.” Performances continue July 28 at 2 pm, July 30 at 4 pm, and August 1 at 2 pm.

Critic’s Pick Review (New York Times)

Operawire calls Le roi Arthus “revelatory . . . a masterpiece.”

Q & A: Norman Garrett on King Arthur, Chausson, and the 2021–22 Season (Operawire)

Bard economists L. Randall Wray and Stephanie Kelton weigh in on if and how principles of Modern Monetary Theory have been incorporated into the U.S. economy since the start of the pandemic. “The jobs guarantee would make a lot more sense than ramping up jobless benefits and paying airlines $300,000 per job,” or mailing checks to households that didn’t need the money, says Randall Wray, a senior scholar at the Levy Economics Institute in New York and coauthor of the first MMT textbook. “Even if in the beginning you couldn’t put the people to work because of safety concerns, you at least would be targeting the spending” to people who were out of work. L. Randall Wray is professor of economics and a senior scholar at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. Stephanie Kelton is professor of public policy and economics at Stony Brook University and a research associate at the Levy Institute.

Leading oil and gas companies are likely to report bumper second-quarter earnings in the coming days after a historic slump during the worst months of the pandemic. Kathy Hipple, faculty member of the Bard MBA in Sustainability Program, argued it was important to note that these earnings will be announced “against a backdrop of climate disasters around the globe,” from extreme heat in the Pacific Northwest to flooding in Europe and China.

In an interview with the Bulletin’s associate editor, Bard alumna Susan D’Agostino ’91, Bard College President Leon Botstein talks about Russia’s criminalizing of Bard’s decades-long partnership with St. Petersburg University, the need for acts of solidarity among scholars worldwide, and the legacy of Van Cilburn’s 1958 Tchaikovsky Competition win in Moscow at the height of the Cold War.

“Successful goal pursuit has positive downstream consequences for an individual’s self-confidence, health, and well-being, but perhaps self-regulation of daily eating behavior has some of the most obvious and direct impacts on health,” writes Assistant Professor of Psychology Richard Lopez. “Thus, it is important to understand the mechanisms underlying daily eating behavior, with a special focus on regulatory strategies that are associated with healthier eating patterns, which not only provide nutritional benefits but can also reduce the risk of obesity and other health conditions.”

Daaimah Edidi is one of six American playwrights chosen to receive the New York Community Trust’s 2021 Helen Merrill Award. Winners of the annual prize receive a cash award of $25,000. Established by theatrical agent Helen Merrill to help playwrights pursue their talents with less financial pressure, the fund has made 98 awards totaling $2.14 million since 1999.

Hyperallergic profiles indigenous artists collective New Red Order—Adam Khalil '11, Zack Khalil '14, and Jackson Polys—which often uses a combination of satire and cryptic messaging to provide “a fresh lens through which viewers can question and even reframe their conflicted relationships with indigeneity.” Their latest installation, the culmination of a multiyear collaboration between NRO and Artists Space, “provides a thoughtful survey of the group’s history of productive antagonization both within and outside of the art world.” Through August 22 at Artists Space in Manhattan.

For over half a century, Mary Lou Williams tirelessly persisted as a talented Black woman in the male-dominated field of jazz. A piano prodigy from the age of three, her profound intellect and artistry countered any doubt in securing her rightful place in the ranks of Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and others for whom she wrote, arranged, and played. Music director Chris Pattishall leads Genius Mother Mary: A Sonic Retrospective of Mary Lou Williams, an uplifting tribute to the fearless mother of jazz, on July 29 at 6:30 pm in an outdoor concert at Bard’s Montgomery Place Campus.
 

The Hannah Arendt Humanities Network, Central European University (CEU), and the Institute for Human Sciences awarded Helga Nowotny—former president of the European Research Council and professor emerita of science and technology studies, ETH Zurich—the first annual Yehuda Elkana Fellowship. During the award ceremony at CEU in Vienna, Nowotny delivered an insightful keynote lecture that was livestreamed to a global audience, addressing the ambiguities surrounding the rise of artificial intelligence and predictive algorithms. Watch video of the lecture here. The lecture was followed by a four-day workshop on artificial intelligence and the digital humanities that drew on Nowotny’s forthcoming book, In AI We Trust: Power, Illusion, and Control of Predictive Algorithms. The Hannah Arendt Humanities Network is a project of the Open Society University Network and is based at Bard College.
 

“[T]here has been progress for us,” Bard Conservatory Dean Tan Dun tells the New York Times. “I am the first Eastern composer to be the dean of a Western conservatory, at Bard. That’s like a Chinese chef becoming the chef of an Italian restaurant. That’s the future: a different way of approaching color, boundary-less, a unity of the soul.”
 

In ancient Greece, an elite fighting unit, known for its courage and esprit de corps, was composed of male lovers sworn to mutual loyalty. “James Romm brings to the fore a striking aspect of Thebes’ varied history: a group of warriors who originated there and who, over four decades in the fourth century B.C., fought throughout central Greece, helping to defeat formidable foes and solidifying Thebes’ decade-long dominance. Mr. Romm . . . deftly pieces the story together from the limited sources that have come down to us.” James Romm is the James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Classics and director of the Classical Studies Program at Bard.
 

On Thursday July 15, 2021, Bard College President Leon Botstein joined with the student-led voting rights initiative Election@Bard and staff and students of the College to file a lawsuit against the Dutchess County Board of Elections for violating the voting rights of students. The lawsuit, filed in the Supreme Court of the State of New York in Dutchess County, follows yearslong efforts by Bard students to establish an on-campus polling location. This comes after the October 2020 court ruling that the campus voting site would be open to all District 5 voters for the last presidential election.

The Bard College community comprises the overwhelming majority of the district’s eligible voting population at nearly 70%. The alternate polling site, St. John’s Episcopal in Barrytown, proposed by Republican Commissioner Eric Haight, is not compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act and Haight refuses to abide by state law mandating an accurate survey of the site. St. John’s is inaccessible by public transportation in clear violation of New York State Election Law, and is situated on an unsafe route that lacks sidewalks and adequate street lighting. The route creates a significant hardship for voters with disabilities and the majority of students who don’t have cars. The lawsuit challenges the ongoing failure of the Dutchess County Board of Elections to comply with the New York Constitution and state laws by discriminating against youth voters and refusing to open a polling location on the Bard College campus where the vast majority of voters in the district live, work and study.

This lawsuit follows an agreement just prior to the 2020 election after Supreme Court Judge Maria Rosa found Haight’s representations on the record for failure to situate an on-campus polling site to be “simply untrue.” Judge Maria Rosa ordered that there be polling sites at both Bard College Bertelsmann Campus Center in addition to St. John the Evangelist. The Campus Center is nearly three times larger than St. Johns, is ADA compliant, and is within walking distance of most voters in the district. This change proved to be a success in the presidential election of 2020. With nearly 85% of Bard students registered to vote, there was a line outside the Campus Center early that Tuesday morning awaiting the opening of the polls. Students and other residents of District 5 were all able to vote in the Campus Center safely and conveniently, all while maintaining the protocols of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since the resounding success of the last Election Day in providing a safe and convenient space for voters and poll workers across political parties, the Town of Red Hook Board reaffirmed its previous, unanimously approved resolutions supporting the Campus Center as the District 5 polling location on February 9, 2021. Nonetheless, the Board of Elections has taken the extraordinary measure to refuse to certify a District 5 polling location for the November 2, 2021 General Election. This current lawsuit is in response to the BOE’s attempt to flagrantly disregard its statutory obligations to designate a polling location by the state deadline, and to erroneously presume that the status quo may apply as a substitute. Conveniently, the BOE has presumed that the status quo mandates that only the Church may serve as the polling location for District 5 voters – even though both the Church and the on-campus location served voters in 2020.

“Bard College is committed to the link between education and democracy,” said Bard College President Leon Botstein. “Our efforts to fight the suppression of youth voters is central to this commitment. We believe that colleges should not simply offer rhetorical support for students, but act in the public interest. That is why I have joined students as a plaintiff in the lawsuit.”

“Voting, and encouraging others to do the same, is arguably the most impactful way people can influence our democratic processes. Government–at all levels–has a fundamental obligation to ensure accessible, safe, and equitable access to the ballot. Historically and presently, federal, state, and local agencies– as well as those who administered them in their official capacities– have leveraged their power to directly suppress and restrict the vote of young people, communities of color, people with disabilities, and other marginalized groups,” said student plaintiff Tomas Forman. “The case here in Dutchess County District 5 is unique, but is also in many ways a reflection of what has, and is, happening elsewhere. This litigation is about more than simply ensuring a polling place on the Bard campus. It's also about sending a clear message, undergirded by the legitimacy of adjudication, that election boards across this country can no longer suppress voting by placing polling places in arbitrary, inaccessible, and frankly unjustifiable locations.”

“I feel that this lawsuit is one of the first steps that must be accomplished in order to combat voter suppression in our district,” said student plaintiff Sarina Culaj. “As a Bard student, I feel the direct impact of youth voter suppression through the actions that Commissioner Haight has taken to block the addition of a polling place on campus. Through the lawsuit, I hope that we can not only create a permanent polling place on the Bard campus, but also show that youth voting can and will be uplifted in our district.”

“Bard has been fighting student voting rights in court for 22 years now,” said student plaintiff Alejandra Rodriguez Ortiz. “That is a long period of time for students to not have voting rights in the 21st century. This lawsuit will hopefully bring voting rights for students and new opportunities for the Dutchess County community.”

“The Board of Elections, particularly Commissioner Haight, is continuing its efforts to suppress the youth vote in this, the 50th anniversary of the 26th amendment which lowered the voting age from 21 to 18,” said Jonathan Becker, Bard’s Executive Vice President and Vice President for Academic Affairs. “The Board has failed to assign a polling site, misled voters in the district, and blatantly ignored rules pertaining to the Americans with Disabilities Act. What is going on in Dutchess County with the suppression of the youth vote is a microcosm of what is taking place across the country with underrepresented communities. It is shameful and it is shameful that political leaders, through their complicity and silence, condone such repressive measures.”

“Fifty years ago, this nation came together across partisan lines to support the expansion of the ballot free of age discrimination through the ratification of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment,” said Yael Bromberg, co-counsel for the Plaintiffs, and legal scholar of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment. “The principles that drove the ratification of that Amendment continue to be true today: young people are critical to the practice of democracy. We must remove obstacles to the ballot—and that includes bringing polling places on campus. The Dutchess County Board of Elections has made its intentions clear: it simply does not want Bard College students to vote—counter to the values of our democracy, which are beyond partisanship.”

“My colleagues at Stris & Maher and I are honored to represent Bard, its faculty, staff, students, families, and neighbors and humbled by their longstanding dedication to making the Bertelsmann Center available as a safe, convenient polling location for the voters of Red Hook’s District 5,” said Michael Donofrio, co-counsel for the Plaintiffs. “We look forward to vindicating their rights in the course of this litigation.”

This is the fifth instance since 2000 where Bard students have resorted to litigation or the threat thereof over schemes aimed at limiting their voting rights. The courts ruled in favor of the students in all preceding legal actions. The current lawsuit follows years of advocacy by Bard College students, including Andrew Goodman Student Ambassadors and their peers, for an on-campus polling site.

The lawsuit is brought on behalf of Bard students Sarina Culaj, Tomas Forman, and Alejendra Rodriguez Ortiz; Bard College President Leon Botstein; Bard College Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Civic Engagement Erin Cannan; Bard College Assistant Director of Student Activities Cynthia Cunningham; and Election@Bard.

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

The full lawsuit can be read here: https://tools.bard.edu/wwwmedia/files/8850342/87/Bard-CourtDocs.pdf

For further information on the fight for a polling site at Bard, go here: https://cce.bard.edu/community/election/voting-rights/

About Bard College
Founded in 1860, Bard College is a four-year residential college of the liberal arts and sciences located 90 miles north of New York City. Bard’s campus consists of nearly 1000 park-like acres in the Hudson River Valley. It offers bachelor of arts, bachelor of science, and bachelor of music degrees, with majors in nearly 40 academic programs; graduate degrees in 11 programs; nine early colleges; and numerous dual-degree programs nationally and internationally. Building on its 161-year history as a competitive and innovative undergraduate institution, Bard College has expanded its mission as a private institution acting in the public interest across the country and around the world to meet broader student needs and increase access to liberal education. Bard is known for its academic excellence and emphasis on the arts and civic engagement, and is committed to enriching culture, public life, and democratic discourse by training tomorrow’s thought leaders. For more information about Bard College, visit bard.edu.7/19/21

Alex Kitnick reviews The Avant-Garde Museum, a recent anthology–cum–exhibition catalogue edited by Agnieszka Pindera and Jarosław Suchan and published by the Muzeum Sztuki in Lodz, Poland. “[T]he avant-garde museum as a type has never been cogently theorized,” he writes. “This volume is a perfect place to start.” Alex Kitnick is assistant professor of art history and visual culture at Bard College, and a faculty member at Bard’s Center for Curatorial Studies.
 

The COV-AID Student Engagement Awards—established by the Open Society University Network (OSUN) in partnership with the Talloires Network of Engaged Universities—has funded 16 student-led projects created to help communities during the COVID-19 pandemic. Projects supported solar lighting in Kenya, safe drinking water in Chile, digital marketing for local companies in South Africa, and police training in New Jersey, among others, and would have been endangered during the pandemic without the grant awards.

Bard students Gwen Stearns ’21 and Pascal O'Neill ’23 represented the Bard Debate Union in the 2021 World Universities Debating Championship (July 6–13), an annual event that draws nearly 400 students from over 50 countries. While generally hosted in person (the Bard Debate Union has attended this event in Greece, Mexico, South Africa, and Thailand), this year’s tournament was held online, hosted by Debate Korea (South Korea). 

Gwen and Pascal debated teams from across the globe, including winning rounds against Harvard, Yale, Cambridge, the London School of Economics, and University of Toronto. After nine grueling preliminary rounds, they made Bard history by becoming the first Bard team to advance to elimination rounds at the world championship. Some of the motions they debated included: “This house opposes the academization of social justice movements,” “This house prefers environmental movements heavily prioritizing a local agenda over a global one (e.g., focusing on local pollution rather than climate change),” and “This house, as South Korea, would aim to significantly increase its cross-border economic cooperation with North Korea.” Ultimately, Gwen and Pascal ended the tournament in 13th place.

For more information about the Bard Debate Union, visit debate.bard.edu.

Madeline Firkser’s advice for activists and young job seekers is the same: Participate. Firkser spoke with the Wall Street Journal about how she pivoted after realizing her first job wasn’t a good fit. Firkser is the special projects associate at JustLeadershipUSA, a New York City–based criminal justice reform organization.

Julia B. Rosenbaum, associate professor of art history, explores Frederic Church’s Olana for the journal Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide. In the late 1860s, following his success as a landscape painter, Church turned to architectural and interior design. He constructed a house at the center of Olana, his 250-acre property in New York’s Hudson Valley, that manipulated space and daylight as artistic materials. With house building, Church moved into an immersive, three-dimensional format, producing some of his most experimental work. Rosenbaum’s study treats his first-floor interiors as a deliberate composition, of a piece with his two-dimensional oeuvre, and specifically argues for Church’s design as an aesthetic culmination of his longstanding interest—across media—in issues of perception and proprioception. Julia B. Rosenbaum is a professor of art history and visual culture and chair of the Art History and Visual Culture Program at Bard College.
 

Closer to Life roughly follows the fascinating history of the life of Marieluise Hessel, whose 1992 bequest founded the Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS), the first graduate school for curators in North America. One room of the exhibition focuses on Mexican art, one on German work, and one on New York artists. One gallery is based on the display of drawings in Hessel’s study. The exhibition marks the 30th anniversary of CCS.

Bard students Gwen Stearns ’21 and Pascal O'Neill ’23 represented the Bard Debate Union in the 2021 World Universities Debating Championship (July 6–13), an annual event that draws nearly 400 students from over 50 countries. While generally hosted in person (the Bard Debate Union has attended this event in Greece, Mexico, South Africa, and Thailand), this year’s tournament was held online, hosted by Debate Korea (South Korea). 

Gwen and Pascal debated teams from across the globe, including winning rounds against Harvard, Yale, Cambridge, the London School of Economics, and University of Toronto. After nine grueling preliminary rounds, they made Bard history by becoming the first Bard team to advance to elimination rounds at the world championship. Some of the motions they debated included: “This house opposes the academization of social justice movements,” “This house prefers environmental movements heavily prioritizing a local agenda over a global one (e.g., focusing on local pollution rather than climate change),” and “This house, as South Korea, would aim to significantly increase its cross-border economic cooperation with North Korea.” Ultimately, Gwen and Pascal ended the tournament in 13th place.

For more information about the Bard Debate Union, visit debate.bard.edu.

This year, Bard SummerScape presents Chausson’s only opera, Le roi Arthus, with a cast of rising stars and veterans. American baritone Norman Garrett will take on the title role, making his role debut as the iconic King Arthur and performing what he revealed in an interview with OperaWire to be his “new favorite role.” 

Summer is in full swing, but many families find themselves still managing COVID risks as the delta variant rises and children under 12 remain ineligible for vaccines. Bard College alumnus and science journalist Nsikan Akpan ’06 and WNYC host Michael Hill walk through the best practices for COVID parenting during this summer of delta. Nsikan Akpan is the WNYC health editor and 2021 winner of the John Dewey Award for Distinguished Public Service from Bard College.

The writer Francine Prose teaches literature at Bard College, and one of her classes is about totalitarianism. In her latest novel, The Vixen, she explores the moral ambiguity of 1950s America, the height of McCarthyism. Her book is loosely based on Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, the suspected spies for Russia who were executed in 1953. Turns out, Francine Prose has a real-life family connection to the Rosenbergs. Prose speaks with Sacha Pfeiffer on NPR.
 

Before the coronavirus pandemic began, performance artist NIC Kay was bouncing around the country, producing work in cities such as Chicago, New York City, and Portland, Oregon. But when the virus arrived and most of the arts world moved online, Kay didn’t follow. It was unexpected for someone who’s explored Black and queer internet communities through movement, music, and documentation with the hashtag #blackpeopledancingontheinternet.

Michelle Murray, associate professor of political studies and director of global initiatives at Bard, comments on the new Comac C919 airplanes from China Eastern Airlines. Aiming to reduce China’s dependency on foreign technology, the People’s Republic has unveiled the new jets with plans to operate about 1,000 of them by the end of the year. But can the Comac C919 compete with the likes of Boeing and Airbus?
 

Cryptocurrency’s libertarian vision of operating outside the mainstream is giving way to the need to comply with regulators, writes Bard alumnus Adam Samson ’09, the markets news editor at the Financial Times. “One of the main draws for hardcore advocates of digital assets is that many theoretically sit outside the reach of government and monetary authorities that oversee activities in conventional markets,” Samson writes. “While the dream of a decentralised financial system is still alive and well in the crypto community, what has actually developed is an industry full of very large financial companies.”

The Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College (Bard MFA) presents close alternative, the class of 2022 thesis presentation, which brings together works by MFA candidates in the disciplines film/video, music/sound, painting, photography, sculpture, and writing. The exhibition will be on view from July 17 through July 25, 2021 at the Bard College Exhibition Center/UBS Gallery, 29 O’Callaghan Lane, Red Hook, New York. An opening day takes place on Saturday, July 17, from 12 to 6 p.m. with timed entry for visitors by appointment using this link. Evening presentations of time-based works, including performances, readings, and screenings, will be held at several locations on the Bard College campus during the week of July 19. For more information about the exhibition, please visit bard.edu/mfa/thesis.

The Bard MFA thesis presentations feature works by Lorenzo Bueno, Edythe Woolley, Ben Bennett, William Bradley, Andrew Lee, Rahul Nair, Geneva Skeen, Wibke Tiarks, Harry Davies, Corbin Furguson, Samuel Hindolo, Beaux Mendes, Christopher Baliwas, Sophie Byerley, Dani Lessnau, John Pike, Andrea Sisson, Cecilia Bjartmar Hylta, MJ Daines, Claudette Gacuti, Mindy Solis, Katz Tepper, Riel Bellow, Samuel Breslin, Valerie Hsiung, Aristilde Kirby, Sarah Passino, and Shaheen Qureshi.

The title of this year’s thesis exhibition was conceived from the graduating class’s shared hopes, desires, vulnerabilities, and anxieties. The hope to share space with one another again; the desire to prioritize accessibility, vulnerability, and compromise; and the eagerness to unlearn and redefine what (un)productivity for an artist can mean, look, or sound like. In a way, this loose thread also points to the various adaptive shifts artists must often (un)make in their practice. The exhibition is coordinated by Shehab Awad MA’17, a graduate of the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College (CCS Bard). Shehab Awad is a writer and curator from Cairo living in New York City. He/she operates as Executive Care*, an all-encompassing self-as-agency at the service of artists.

The Bard College Exhibition Center will be open Monday through Friday, 11 a.m.–5 p.m., and Saturday/Sunday, 1–5 p.m. For the opening reception, a return shuttle service will be offered from Rhinecliff Amtrak station. Schedules and more information are available here. Parking is available in the Saint Christopher’s Church lot at 7411 South Broadway or on Garden Road. Accessibility: Bard College Exhibition Center/UBS Gallery is located by an unpaved gravel road, and the building is accessible by a 19-foot-wide roll gate entrance positioned at the west side of the building. There are three accessible parking spots adjacent to the entrance. We encourage guests who do not require accessible parking to park at the Saint Christopher’s Church lot, located at 7411 South Broadway, or on Garden Road. Please note that the shuttle return service from Rhinecliff station is not wheelchair accessible. The building has a wheelchair-accessible, all-gender restroom. We provide scent-free soaps and encourage guests to consider attending our events scent-free. Please contact the MFA Administrative Office at T 845-758-7481 or mfa@bard.edu for any questions or requests regarding accessibility, including audio or film descriptions.

Founded in 1981, Bard MFA is a nontraditional school for visual, written, and time-based arts. At Bard, the community itself is the primary resource for the student—serving as audience, teacher, and peer group in an ongoing dialogue. In interdisciplinary group critiques, seminars, school presentations, as well as discipline caucuses and one-on-one conferences, the artist students engage with accomplished faculty members, while developing their individual studio practices. The program probes a diversity of approaches and fosters imaginative responses and insights to aesthetic concerns across the disciplines of film/video, writing, painting, sculpture, photography, and music/sound. Bard MFA is a low-residency program that takes place over two years and two months, with students on campus during three consecutive eight-week summer sessions and two independent study sessions off campus completed during the intervening winters. For more information please contact Lawre Stone, associate director, Bard MFA, at stone@bard.edu or 845-758-7481, or visit bard.edu/mfa.

 (7/13/21)

“Programs that marry education access and engagement with issues of social justice explicitly for the benefit of those who have been impacted by incarceration are few and far between, but that mission is at the heart of a new tuition-free program hosted by the Bard Prison Initiative (BPI),” writes Tamar Sarai Davis of the new Microcollege in Harlem.
 

Bard alum Hazel Gurland-Pooler’s film Storming Caesar’s Palace will receive a grant award of between $10,000 and $25,000 from Firelight Media’s Impact Campaign Fund. The Fund supports the creation of audience engagement and impact campaigns for nonfiction film projects by and for communities of color in the United States. Storming Caesar’s Palace is the untold story of Black women who took on presidents, the mob, and everyday Americans, challenging the pernicious myth of the “welfare queen.”

Journalist and Bard alumnus Ronan Farrow ’04 penned a New Yorker exposé nearly four years ago that revealed film producer Harvey Weinstein’s decades of abusive, predatory behavior and helped catalyze the #MeToo movement. Now, after writing his best-selling book Catch and Kill and creating the eponymous podcast series, Farrow has produced a miniseries comprising the intimate, revealing interviews with whistleblowers, journalists, private investigators, and other sources for his reporting.

Driven by a desire to “do everything differently,” in 2017 Associate Professor of Photography Tim Davis dropped his ongoing projects and spent two years traveling to Los Angeles, resulting in I’m Looking Through You, an expansive monograph published by Aperture.

The OSUN Center for Human Rights and the Arts at Bard College (CHRA) announced today that Nadine Fattaleh and Oscar Humberto Pedraza Vargas have been selected as the first recipients of the Center’s fellowship in human rights and the arts. 

The goal of the fellowship program is to support outstanding engagement in human rights and the arts by scholars, artists, and activists. Fellows are appointed for a one-year period to pursue their own research projects while contributing to the curriculum of the new MA program in Human Rights and the Arts. Both Fattaleh and Pedraza Vargas will be in residence at Bard during the 2021-22 academic year. In addition to teaching, they will offer lectures and organize workshops at Bard’s Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, campus as part of the Open Society University Network (OSUN). Their presence at Bard and within OSUN will further CHRA’s mission of supporting multidisciplinary and collaborative knowledge production on the intersection of human rights and the arts.

“The fellowship program allows our MA Program to complement the course offerings of our permanent faculty,” said Ziad M. Abu-Rish, the program’s director. “Nadine and Oscar are talented young researchers with daring intellectual, political, and aesthetic practices. They will explore with our students a range of investigative and documentary strategies, theoretical frameworks, and case-studies that will bring the front-lines of the struggle for rights into our classrooms.”

Nadine Fattaleh is a writer and researcher from Amman, Jordan. Her work focuses on spatial practices through cartography and film. She received a BA in Middle East, South Asian and African Studies from Columbia University, and a MS in Critical, Curatorial and Conceptual Practices in Architecture at Columbia GSAPP. She previously worked on projects at Columbia’s Center for Spatial Research and Studio-X Amman, as well as the MMAG Foundation, Amman. Fattaleh describes her practice as “using the map to render visible structures of oppression in flagrant contradiction with human rights,” while also “remaining attentive to the realities of everyday life and the need to listen to the voices of activists and advocates that are inevitably silenced by the abstractions of data and visual representation.” Her research at Bard will concern issues of food sovereignty and agrarian rights in the Arab World.

Oscar Humberto Pedraza Vargas is a historian and anthropologist with a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from CUNY Graduate Center and a BA in Anthropology and an MA in Social Anthropology from Universidad de Los Andes. He has worked extensively with grassroots movements associated with indigenous, farmer, labor, and victim communities in Colombia and Latin America. Pedraza Vargas specializes in the analysis of transnational human rights institutions, discourses, and practices that define the value of life and death in cases of coal-related violence in Colombia, Germany, and the United Kingdom. He has also served as a main researcher for a collaboration between Forensic Architecture and the Colombian Truth Commission. During his fellowship at Bard, Pedraza Vargas will produce work for a book and an exhibition on the Truth Commission, and write on what he describes as “the subjects of earthly memory and the methodologies to address black boxes as evidentiary possibilities.” His courses will be informed by his experience mediating between a justice institution and an academic/artistic research group.

“Nadine and Oscar embody the scholar-activist-artist nexus. Their research and praxis on spatial justice, truth and reconciliation, and food justice are of particular relevance to CHRA’s programming. We are pleased to support their research while they inspire our students, faculty, and the public,” said Tania El Khoury, Director of the OSUN Center for Human Rights and The Arts at Bard College.

Details on the MA Program in Human Rights and the Arts and other CHRA activities can be found at chra.bard.edu.

About the OSUN Center for Human Rights and the Arts at Bard College
The OSUN Center for Human Rights and the Arts (CHRA) researches, inspires, and extends the intersection of art and human rights. Through robust public programming, an arts biennial, publications, and a series of digital commissions, CHRA brings critical attention to innovative forms of art and activism that investigate human rights violations and develop creative tools of resistance. Designed by Bard’s Human Rights Program, the Fisher Center at Bard, and the Central European University, and launched through the Open Society University Network (OSUN), its interdisciplinary MA Program in Human Rights and the Arts brings together an international cadre of scholars, artists, and activists to explore the highly charged relation between artistic practices and struggles for truth and justice. CHRA also collaborates with partners across the OSUN network and provides fellowship and grant opportunities for students, scholars, artists, and activists at Bard College and around the world.

About the Open Society University Network
The Open Society University Network (OSUN) is a new global network of educational institutions that integrates learning in the social sciences, humanities, sciences, and arts. Advancing a new model of global higher education, it promotes the advancement of knowledge on undergraduate and graduate levels and across both geographic and demographic boundaries. It is dedicated to promoting civic engagement on behalf of open societies, and works to expand access to higher education for underserved communities. opensocietyuniversitynetwork.org

Diana McCready ’23 has been named to Gucci’s 2021 Class of Changemakers North America Scholars. The initiative, announced in 2019, is one in a three-pronged program committed to fostering diversity and inclusion within the company and beyond. McCready will receive an academic scholarship for up to $20,000, as well as mentorship and virtual internship opportunities through Gucci America. Of the 450 students who applied for the scholarship funding, only 22 were selected.
 

Pam Tanowitz’s I was waiting for the echo of a better day premiered at Bard SummerScape last weekend, performed on the Montgomery Place grounds. “I can think of few dance experiences as thrilling as this one since the pandemic began,” writes Brian Seibert in his review for the New York Times. “Unlike many performances forced outdoors by coronavirus protocols, this one truly took advantage of its setting. This wasn’t a dance that would have been better in a theater. It couldn’t have existed in one.”
 

Lebanon is experiencing what the World Bank has described as one of the worst economic depressions in modern history, and a massive political crisis following the deadly explosion at the Port of Beirut last August. Ziad Abu-Rish talks about the lack of accountability for the political class in Lebanon, and its culpability for the Beirut port explosion and the country’s economic collapse. Ziad Abu-Rish is visiting associate professor of human rights and director of the new MA Program in Human Rights and the Arts at Bard. 

The Women’s Basketball Coaches Association released its Top 25 Team Honor Rolls on Tuesday, and for the third time in four years, Bard College has been recognized. The Top 25 recognizes college women’s basketball teams across the nation that carry the highest combined GPAs. Bard received a Special Mention this year with a 3.668 team GPA.

This year’s Bard Music Festival highlights the life and times of Nadia Boulanger (1887–1979), composer, conductor, highly influential teacher, and the first woman to be chosen as the festival's focus. After a hiatus last year due to the pandemic, SummerScape 2021 returns with concerts, films, lectures, dance, theater, and cabaret performances occurring not only in the Fisher Center, but also online via UPSTREAMING, the center’s virtual stage, and outdoors on the Montgomery Place campus.

“Bard has prepared me [for college] by showing me how to write longer and capture an audience with my writing,” graduate Darren Wright told The Informer. “Bard showed me how to think more and not just broadly [but] specifically about what I want to say [when] analyzing different things.” DC Public Schools Chancellor Dr. Lewis Ferebee and Bard President Leon Botstein conferred high school diplomas and associate degrees to graduates at the June 24 commencement ceremony. DC Mayor Muriel Bowser served as commencement speaker.

Filmmaker and S. William Senfeld Artist in Residence Kelly Reichardt talks about adapting Jonathan Raymond’s novel The Half-Life into her critically acclaimed film First Cow. At Bard, where she teaches every fall, she showed her students the same films that went into her own research for First Cow; this includes Satyajit Ray’s Apu trilogy.

Rising junior Sonita Alizada’s music and global activism to end child marriage has inspired her friends on campus. Some have joined Sonita’s organization, Arezo, which raises money to support impoverished children in Herat, Afghanistan, Sonita’s hometown.

Michael Sadowski’s memoir, Men I’ve Never Been, recounts his shunning of his queer identity and sexuality as a boy in order to become the man society wants him to be—“bringing to light the kinds of lies we tell ourselves about our identities, and the price of maintaining them.” Sadowski is interim dean of graduate studies, director of inclusive pedagogy and curriculum, and associate professor in the Bard MAT Program. James Romm “has written a tale of the greatest military corps during the last decades of ancient Greek freedom—The Sacred Band, a unit 300 strong composed of 150 pairs of male lovers.” Romm is James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Classics and director of the Classical Studies Program. 

Bard College alumni/ae Brian Ackley and Lisa Farjam traded city life in Brooklyn for more privacy in Tivoli and opened a local ice cream shop. Now, Food & Wine declares Fortunes Ice Cream the best in New York State.

The Asian Cultural Council (ACC) has announced Judy Kim as its new executive director. Kim brings to ACC over 25 years of dedication to arts and cultural institutions and a first-hand knowledge of the profound impact of cultural exchange. Kim earned her master’s degree at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College.

International artists who wish to work in the United States can do so by applying for the O-1 visa, a category for nonimmigrant, temporary “aliens with extraordinary abilities” who operate in fields such as art, athletics, or education. The visa application, which demands documents, testimonials, and cash, “is an ultimate form of gatekeeping that determines whether one is considered an artist at all,” writes Song, a graduate of the Center for Curatorial Studies and researcher at the OSUN Center for Human Rights and the Arts at Bard College. “The O-1 visa is one instance of a more privileged temporary-worker category that facilitates US extraction of global talents. Yet, like most other visa applications, it is as mind-numbing as it is nerve racking, particularly for artists who are less recognized in the English-speaking art world.”

Since its founding, the New York–based arts nonprofit—established in 1985 by abstract artist Lee Krasner, the widow of Jackson Pollock—has awarded nearly 5,000 grants, totaling $82 million, to artists and nonprofit organizations around the world. McBride is one of six recipients of the foundation’s 2020–21 Lee Krasner Award, given to artists in recognition of their lifetime achievement.

Best known as one-third of Palberta—the anarchic pop-rock group formed with fellow Bardians Ani Ivry-Block ’15 and Nina Ryser ’15—the 26-year-old songwriter steps out on her own with The Best of Lily Konigsberg Right Now, a solo compilation that brings together three of Konigsberg’s pop-leaning solo EPs and a handful of previously unreleased songs. “On first listen, the collection stands up as a debut album in its own right, showcasing Konigsberg’s breadth as a pop songwriter, from the rich a cappella harmonies of ‘Rock and Sin’ to the bubblegum throb of ‘It’s Just Like All the Clouds’ to the pretty, carefree-sounding folk of ‘Roses,’” writes Alex Robert Ross in Fader. “But the story of Konigsberg’s growth as a songwriter and a person is buried beneath the tracklist.”

“The latest from the aptly named Francine Prose is The Vixen, a surprisingly funny tale involving Ethel Rosenberg and the C.I.A.,” writes Elizabeth A. Harris for the New York Times. “[Prose] teaches literature at Bard College, offering classes like Ecstasy, Obsession, and Oblivion and Totalitarianism in Literature, and at the Eastern Correctional Facility through the Bard Prison Initiative.” The Vixen is out today from Harper.

“The most intriguing artistic dialogue taking place this summer occurs at the Baltimore Museum of Art, where contemporary painter Tschabalala Self engages with Henri Matisse,” writes Chadd Scott in Forbes. “The exhibition (through September 19) presents 13 paintings by Self, completed from 2016 to the present, alongside two related sculptures, highlighting the artist’s ongoing consideration of the iconographic significance of the Black female form in contemporary culture.” Among the featured works is a new suite of three paintings of a female couple created in response to Matisse’s sculpture Two Women (1907–8) in the BMA’s collection. “Whenever you’re doing an institutional show it presents a unique opportunity, and the potential challenge, of contending with the history of the institution—the art within the institution’s collection,” says Self. “Now you’re involved in this larger conversation about art history.”

The Open Society University Network (OSUN) Civic Engagement program is pleased to welcome a new cohort of Global Engagement Fellows for the 2021–22 academic year.

Global Engagement Fellows are undergraduate students from across the network who are selected for their interest in and commitment to civic engagement. Fellows promote and coordinate civic engagement projects with other students on their campus, lead workshops in project management and development, and help to coordinate the annual Get Engaged: Student Action and Youth Leadership Conference.

This talented and ambitious set of fellows was chosen based upon their leadership skills and the development of their own community-based projects. 

Welcome to the new Global Fellows:
Ahmed Omar Abdi (Dadaab Refugee Camp, Kenya)
Amina Ahmed (American University of Central Asia ’23)
Sundus Al Fararja (Al Quds Bard College ’23) 
Abdul Walid Azizi (American University of Central Asia ’22)
Nelo Dlamini (Central European University ’25)
Mohamed Omar Farah (Dadaab Refugee Camp, Kenya)
Wisdom Tochi Kalu (Ashesi University ’22)
Lorraine Makuyana (Ashesi University ’22)

Several of the outgoing Global Engagement Fellows shared words of wisdom for the incoming class. Most discussed how the program helped them to elicit and nurture the skills needed to transform their aspirations into actions benefiting their communities. Their guidance centered on meeting inevitable challenges by remaining flexible and drawing on the support of their fellow travelers.   

Viktar Filipenka (European Humanities University ’21):
“I'll quote Samuel Beckett: ‘Try Again. Fail Again. Fail Better.’ Communicate and cooperate; that's the way.” 

Oceanne Fry (Bard College Berlin ’21): 
“Take your time planning, budgeting, and scheduling before diving in. At the same time, once your project or event gets going, don't be afraid of last minute changes and necessary adaptations to unexpected factors.”

Adeeb Hadi (Bard College Berlin ’21): 
“My advice is to remember that the limit of creativity is the sky and the road is long. Do not expect your path to be easy, but your persistence will lift you up.”

Wisdom Tochi Kalu (Ashesi University ’22): 
“The journey of civic engagement will not be smooth and there will be times when you'll doubt everything. Don't be scared when those days come because resilience, like an anchor, will hold you firm.”

Shadin Nassar (Al Quds Bard College ’21): 
“In a world where the issues are clear but the solutions are not, my advice to this diverse group of leaders is to see challenges as opportunities. Strive to establish an environment of continuous improvement by putting new ideas into action and working together to empower others so they can cultivate civic engagement projects that are crucial for societal development.”

Our thanks and congratulations go out to all of the 2020–21 Global Engagement Fellows, who exhibited unwavering determination and commitment to civic engagement during a very challenging year. Not only did their efforts produce real community impact, but they set the bar high and inspired a new group of Fellows who will build their own impressive collaborations.

If passed, a Senate resolution introduced in mid-June would apologize to LGBTQ federal workers for historical acts of discrimination. Real reparations demand far more.

“Based on the experience of nations like Spain, Britain, and Germany, gay reparations are best understood as policies intended to make amends for a history of systemic anti-gay discrimination,” writes Professor of Political Studies Omar G. Encarnación in the Nation. “But the movement is not one-size-fits-all; nor is it driven by gay people demanding financial compensation simply for claiming an LGBTQ identity, as some foes of the gay community have contended. Instead, the gay reparations movement encompasses a small but eclectic constellation of approaches to repairing the damage done by state-sponsored anti-gay discrimination and violence, with each approach entailing its own policies and philosophical emphases for how to repair that damage.”

On July 7, novelist and Bard College literature professor Bradford Morrow, founding editor of Conjunctions, will host an online evening of readings to celebrate the publication of the fortieth anniversary issue of Conjunctions, the celebrated literary journal published by Bard College. Morrow will be joined by Conjunctions:76, Fortieth Anniversary Issue contributors Fred D’Aguiar, Samuel R. Delany, Ann Lauterbach, and Sofia Samatar. The livestreamed event, presented by Conjunctions and Elliott Bay Book Company, takes place Wednesday, July 7, at 8 p.m. For reservations, please click here.

ABOUT THE ISSUE

Published by Bard College in spring 2021, Conjunctions:76, Fortieth Anniversary Issue celebrates forty years in print, with new and previously unpublished work by Ben Okri, Karen Russell, Peter Cole, Ann Lauterbach, Lydia Davis, Samuel R. Delany, Akil Kumarasamy, John Ashbery, Joyce Carol Oates, Sofia Samatar, Richard Powers, Shane McCrae, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, William H. Gass, Can Xue, Jessica Campbell, Fred D’Aguiar, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Carole Maso, Julia Alvarez, Genya Turovskaya, Mark Irwin, Jayne Anne Phillips, Sanjena Sathian, Peter Orner, Rosmarie Waldrop, Colin Channer, Isabella Hammad, Lance Olsen, Diane Williams, Laird Hunt, Laynie Browne, Wendy Xu, JoAnna Novak, Megan Kakimoto, Quincy Troupe, Tomaž Šalamun, Julia Elliott, and Robert Coover, with a foreword by Rick Moody.


ABOUT THE PARTICIPANTS

Fred D’Aguiar’s books include the novel Children of Paradise, the poetry collection Letters to America, and the forthcoming memoir, Year of Plagues.

In 2016, Samuel R. Delany was inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame. His books include the Return to Neveryon series; an autobiography, The Motion of Light in Water; and the paired essays Times Square Red, Times Square Blue.

Ann Lauterbach’s tenth poetry collection, Spell, was published by Penguin. She is David and Ruth Schwab Professor of Languages and Literature at Bard College, and has been a contributing editor to Conjunctions since 1984.

Sofia Samatar is the author of four books, most recently Monster Portraits. Her fiction has received several honors, including the World Fantasy Award. Her memoir, The White Mosque, is forthcoming from Catapult Books.

Bradford Morrow is the author of ten books of fiction and the founding editor of Conjunctions. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in fiction, an Academy Award in literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the PEN/Nora Magid Award for excellence in editing a literary journal.

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The Washington Post says, “Conjunctions offers a showplace for some of the most exciting and demanding writers now at work.”

Edited by Bradford Morrow and published twice yearly by Bard College, Conjunctions showcases innovative fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction by emerging voices and contemporary masters. For nearly four decades, Conjunctions has challenged accepted forms and styles, with equal emphasis on groundbreaking experimentation and rigorous execution. In 2020, Conjunctions received the prestigious Whiting Literary Magazine Prize. The judges noted, “Every issue of Conjunctions is a feat of curatorial invention, continuing the Modernist project of dense, economical writing, formal innovation, and an openness to history and the world.” Named a “Top Literary Magazine 2019” by Reedsy, the journal was a finalist for the 2018, 2019, and 2021 ASME Award for Fiction and the 2018 CLMP Firecracker Award for General Excellence. In addition, contributions to recent issues have been selected for The Best American Short Stories 2021, The Best American Essays (2018, 2019), The Pushcart Prize XLIV: Best of the Small Presses, Best American Experimental Writing 2020, Best Small Fictions 2019, and The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2019.

For more information on the latest issue, please visit http://www.conjunctions.com/print/archive/conjunctions76. To order a copy, go to annandaleonline.org/conjunctions, call the Conjunctions office at 845-758-7054, e-mail conjunctions@bard.edu, or write to Conjunctions, Bard College, PO Box 5000, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504-5000. Visit the Conjunctions website at conjunctions.com.

[Note to editors: To obtain review copies, please call Mark Primoff at 845-758-7412 or e-mail primoff@bard.edu](6.22.21)