Bard College Professors Mona Simpson and Adam Shatz Awarded 2024–25 Berlin Prize

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.—Bard College is pleased to announce that Writer in Residence Mona Simpson and Visiting Professor of the Humanities Adam Shatz each have been awarded the 2024–25 Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin, Germany. Chosen by an independent selection committee, the 2024–25 class of Berlin Prize fellows includes 24 US-based scholars, writers, composers, and artists who represent the highest standards of excellence in their fields, from the humanities and social sciences to journalism, public policy, fiction, the visual arts, and music composition. The annually awarded Berlin Prize provides recipients the time and resources to advance important scholarly and artistic projects, free from the constraints of other professional obligations. Fellows work throughout the semester with Berlin peers and institutions in the Academy’s well-established network, forging meaningful connections that lead to lasting transatlantic relationships. During their stays, fellows engage German audiences through lectures, readings, and performances, which form the core of the Academy’s public program.

During the fall 2024 Berlin Prize fellowship, Bard Writer in Residence Mona Simpson will be working on a novel, tentatively titled “The Great Man, So-Called,” a novel centered on two women in the life of the iconic American president Franklin Delano Roosevelt: his wife, Eleanor, from whom he was deeply estranged, and Francis Perkins, his secretary of labor, and the first woman to ever hold that post. The only American president to serve more than two terms, and a man whose disability was carefully kept from the American public, Roosevelt relied on these women as he devoted his energies during his first two terms on lifting the American economy out of a debilitating depression and during his third and fourth to the growing involvement with the war. Simpson became fascinated with these two women while studying letters written by domestic workers (who were not covered by the New Deal’s protections) for her novel My Hollywood, about Los Angeles nannies. Simpson’s most recent novel, Commitment (2023) was chosen as a best book of the year by the New Yorker and the Los Angeles Times.

During the spring 2025 Berlin Prize fellowship, Bard Visiting Professor of the Humanities Adam Shatz will work on his book project “Worlds They Have Not Told You Of: Adventures in Creative Music,” a sweeping chronicle of the post-war Black music avant-garde that combines history, criticism, and biographical portraiture to trace the musical routes of sonic exploration and creative self-determination from bebop to free jazz to the present day. Additionally, Shatz has received two other fellowships in support of his work. He has been awarded a 2023–24 Visiting Fellowship at the American Library of Paris, in Paris, France, for June 2024. He also won a 2024 Visiting Fellowship at the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen, also known as the Institute of Human Sciences, in Vienna, Austria, where he will be in residence from September through October 2024. His latest book, The Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Franz Fanon, was recently included in the New York Times’s The Best Books of the Year (So Far) and reviewed in The New York Review.
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. With the addition of the Montgomery Place and Massena properties, Bard’s campus consists of more than 1,200 parklike 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; advanced degrees through 13 graduate programs; nine early colleges; and numerous dual-degree programs nationally and internationally. Building on its 164-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 arts education. The undergraduate program at the main campus in upstate New York has a reputation for scholarly excellence, a focus on the arts, and civic engagement. Bard 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.

This event was last updated on 06-04-2024

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