Citizens gather at the Civil Rights March on Washington, DC, August 28, 1963.
National Archives, Records of the U.S. Information Agency, Record Group 306 (National Archives Identifier 542044)
The American and Indigenous Studies Program offers a multidisciplinary approach to the study of culture and society in the United States.
Students take courses in a wide range of fields with the aim of learning how to study this complex subject in a sensitive and responsible way. In the introductory courses, students develop the ability to analyze a broad spectrum of materials, including novels, autobiographies, newspapers, photographs, films, songs, and websites. In junior seminars and the Senior Project, students identify and integrate relevant methodologies from at least two disciplines, creating modes of analysis appropriate to their topics. By graduation, students should have developed a base of knowledge about the past and present conditions of the American experience both at home and abroad.
Stone Row on Bard College campus. Photo by Karl Rabe
Bard College Receives $25 Million Endowment Gift from Gochman Family Foundation Supporting Renamed American and Indigenous Studies Program
Bard College is excited to announce a transformational $25 million endowment gift from the Gochman Family Foundation, which will substantially advance its work deepening diversity and equity in American Studies with a Center for Indigenous Studies, faculty appointments and student scholarships, and the appointment of an Indigenous Curatorial Fellow at Center for Curatorial Studies. The College’s American Studies Program will be renamed American and Indigenous Studies to more fully reflect continental history and to place Native American and Indigenous Studies at the heart of curricular innovation and development.
Associate Professor of History and Dean of Graduate Studies Christian Ayne Crouch speaks during a 2018 event dedicating new signage on campus designed to encourage critical reflection on Bard’s history. The installation of these historical markers took place in connection with the course Inclusion at Bard, an Engaged Liberal Arts and Sciences offering.
Bard College Awarded $1.49 Million Grant from Mellon Foundation for American Studies Initiative
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded Bard College a $1.49 million grant for its “Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck” project. Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck proposes a Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS) approach to a revitalized American Studies curriculum and undertakes an expansive understanding of land acknowledgment that goes beyond addressing a single institution’s history in regards to Native peoples.
MARGARET KATHRYN CURTIN San Jose, California American Studies: “‘We had become the VC in our own homeland’: Indigenous Veterans of Vietnam and the 1973 Siege of Wounded Knee” Project Adviser: Wendy Urban-Mead
FRANCES J. LEWIS Cambridge, Massachusetts American Studies: “Encountering Authenticity: A Case Study on the Cooperstown Farmers’ Museum” Project Adviser: Julia Rosenbaum
MAXWELL RILEY TOTH Manchester, Connecticut American Studies and French Studies: “A Dazzling Détente: Exploring the Cultural Facets of the Kennedys’ 1961 Visit to Paris and the Instrumental Role of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy” Project Advisers: Simon Gilhooley and Éric Trudel
IMMANUEL JOSI WILLIAMS Troy, New York American Studies: “A Biomythography of Mommy” Project Adviser: Myra Young Armstead Studio Arts: “She Is Clothed with Strength and Dignity; She Can Laugh at the Days to Come!” Project Adviser: Dave McKenzie
Senior Projects 2021
CLAIRE FITZGIBBON LAMPSON Sebastopol, California American Studies: “Toward a Celebration of Native Resilience: Interrupting National Myth-Making in the American Classroom” Project Adviser: Christian Ayne Crouch
Senior Projects 2020
JONATHAN COLLAZO Clermont, Florida American Studies: “To Be the Sole Performer: A Selective Outline of the Development of the Solo Marimba in the United States” Project Adviser: Myra Young Armstead Percussion Performance (BMus): Haaksma: Skip, Still; Druckman: “Reflections on the Nature of Water”; Mackey: “See Ya Thursday”; Tower: “Clocks” Principal Teachers: So- Percussion: Eric Cha-Beach, Jason Treuting, Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski
NICHOLAS JOSEPH FIORELLINI Merion Station, Pennsylvania American Studies and Literature: “‘A Visit to the Coffee Houses’: How Local News Wrote about the Humoresque Coffeeshop Raids” Project Adviser: Éric Trudel
ALEXIS KIMBERLY MARESCA Fairfield, Connecticut American Studies: “Feta, Blintzes, and Burritos: The Evolution of the Diner and Immigrants’ Role in Defining American Food Culture” Project Adviser: Donna Ford Grover ’80
SCARLETT ANN SINAY Sherman Oaks, California American Studies: “‘No Place’ in CyberSpace” Project Adviser: David Shein
MICAH RAQUEL THEODORE New Orleans, Louisiana American Studies: “Fruit of the Spirit: An Investigation of How French Colonialism Transnationally Created the Creolized Black Dance in New Orleans, Called Secondline, through the Lens of an Original Treme Babydoll” Concentration: Africana Studies Project Adviser: Donna Ford Grover ’80
Senior Projects 2019
BARI BOSSIS Delray Beach, Florida American Studies: “‘The Great Pleasures Don’t Come So Cheap’: Material Objects, Pragmatic Behavior, and Aesthetic Commitments in Willa Cather’s Fiction” Project Adviser: Matthew Mutter
AMY CASSIERE Metairie, Louisiana American Studies: “King Cake: A Look at the Cake That Gave Mardi Gras Its Flavor” Project Adviser: Christian Crouch Oboe Performance (BMus): Beethoven: Romance for Oboe and Piano, Op. 50; Hindemith: Sonata for English Horn and Piano; Dutilleux: Sonata for Oboe and Piano; Damase: Trio for Flute, Oboe, and Piano Principal Teachers: Elaine Douvas, Melissa Hooper, and Alex Knoll
ISABELLA THERESE FEINSTEIN Seattle, Washington American Studies: “Picturing a History” Project Adviser: Myra Young Armstead
JESZACK I. GAMMON Brooklyn, New York American Studies: “Black Oiler,” a narrative of a black male told through music and the lenses of different African diasporic authors Concentration: Africana Studies Project Adviser: Alex Benson
MADISON MICHELLE KAHN Pacific Palisades, California American Studies: “‘The Educated Indian’: Native Perspectives on Knowledge and Resistance in the 19th and 20th Centuries” Project Adviser: Christian Crouch
CARL ROBERT NELSON Newburyport, Massachusetts American Studies: “A Hundred Houses: Pauline Leader and the Spatial Poetics of Disability” Concentration: Experimental Humanities Project Adviser: Alex Benson
Courses and Requirements
Click below for a complete list of currently offered courses.
Courses and Requirements
Moderation Requirements
In addition to the standard Bard Moderation requirements, American and Indigenous Studies students are required to complete the following three courses in order to moderate:
American Studies 101, Introduction to American and Indigenous Studies, or American Studies 102, Introduction to American Culture and Values
At least two other courses focusing on the United States
For Moderation into American and Indigenous Studies, students should submit the two college-wide short Moderation papers (on past and future academic work) as well as a 10-12 page critical essay completed in one of their American and Indigenous Studies courses.
Following Moderation, American and Indigenous Studies students must complete five more courses, as well as their Senior Project, in order to graduate:
At least two more courses, any level, focusing on the United States (in addition to those taken for Moderation)
At least two courses, any level, focusing on non-U.S. cultures and societies
A Junior Seminar focusing on the United States (Junior Seminars are 300-level courses with an emphasis on research methods, culminating in a 20–25 page research paper or equivalently substantial final project. It is expected that one or more of these courses will be taken prior to beginning the Senior Project.) A second junior seminar in a different division is strongly encouraged.
Senior Project (two semesters)
At least two of the students’ U.S.-focused courses must emphasize the period before 1900. In order to ensure a variety of perspectives on students’ work, both the Moderation and Senior Project boards must consist of faculty members drawn from more than one division.
Program Faculty
Program Director: Peter L’Official Phone: 845-758-7556 E-mail: [email protected]
Bard College Receives $25 Million Endowment Gift from Gochman Family Foundation Supporting Renamed American and Indigenous Studies Program
Bard College is excited to announce a transformational $25 million endowment gift from the Gochman Family Foundation, which will substantially advance its work deepening diversity and equity in American Studies with a Center for Indigenous Studies, faculty appointments and student scholarships, and the appointment of an Indigenous Curatorial Fellow at Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS Bard). An additional $25 million matching commitment by Open Society Foundations as part of Bard’s endowment drive will create a $50 million endowment supporting Native American and Indigenous Studies in undergraduate and graduate academics and the arts. The College’s American Studies Program will be renamedAmerican and Indigenous Studies to more fully reflect continental history and to place Native American and Indigenous Studies at the heart of curricular innovation and development.
Bard College Receives $25 Million Endowment Gift from Gochman Family Foundation Supporting Renamed American and Indigenous Studies Program
Match by Open Society Foundations as Part of Bard’s Endowment Drive Will Create $50 Million Endowment Supporting Native American and Indigenous Studies in Undergraduate and Graduate Academics and the Arts
Bard College is excited to announce a transformational endowment gift from the Gochman Family Foundation, which will substantially advance its work deepening diversity and equity in American Studies with a Center for Indigenous Studies, faculty appointments and student scholarships, and the appointment of an Indigenous Curatorial Fellow at Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS Bard). The College’s American Studies Program will be renamed American and Indigenous Studies to more fully reflect continental history and to place Native American and Indigenous Studies at the heart of curricular innovation and development. These initiatives, developed in partnership with Forge Project, will be supported by a $50 million endowment created by this visionary $25 million gift from the Gochman Family Foundation, with an additional $25 million matching commitment from George Soros and the Open Society Foundations as part of Bard College’s endowment drive.
The gift will accelerate Bard’s existing work in Native American and Indigenous Studies and develop broader College-wide programming initiatives in consultation with Forge Project Executive Director Candice Hopkins (Carcross/Tagish First Nation). These initiatives include public programming and exhibitions, visiting scholars, archive and library acquisitions, and publishing.
The endowment will also support efforts to increase enrollment of students from historically-underrepresented populations and geographic regions, such as Native American and Indigenous communities, through dedicated undergraduate and graduate scholarship funds that cover tuition, fees, materials, and cost of living for students, as well as enhancing recruitment and retention support.
The College will establish a chair for a distinguished/senior scholar of Native American and Indigenous Studies, to be named after a prominent Indigenous woman to recognize the academic contributions of Native women and educators, along with recruitment for additional faculty positions in interdisciplinary fields and Indigenous Studies. Library acquisitions and the development of archives dedicated to Native American and Indigenous history and culture will amplify this work.
Within the American and Indigenous Studies Program, the Center for Indigenous Studies will provide dedicated programming on key topics and methods in Native American and Indigenous studies throughout the Bard network and in public-facing events, including an annual lecture series, arts programming, curricular enrichment programming, and community-focused events.
Forge Project Executive Director Candice Hopkins also joins the CCS Bard faculty as Fellow in Indigenous Art History and Curatorial Studies. Hopkins, who is a class of 2003 CCS Bard alum, will curate a major exhibition in 2023 to inaugurate the gift. The exhibition will center on the development of contemporary Native art through its exhibition histories and via thematic through lines including land, cultural sovereignty and self-determination, culturally-specific institutional critique, and the use and reuse of material and aesthetic practices drawn from the long history of Native cultural production in the United States and Canada. At CCS Bard, Hopkins will also teach one course per year focused on themes related to Native and Indigenous art history and curatorial studies, employing the Forge collection, a contemporary Native art collection, and engaging in conversations with living artists. Hopkins will lead archival acquisitions around Native and Indigenous exhibition histories in order to deepen CCS Bard’s purview in this area, strengthen emphasis on Native and Indigenous curatorial histories and art, and offer greater support to Indigenous students.
“I would like to express my deep gratitude to the Gochman Family Foundation for this generous endowment gift to support Native American and Indigenous studies in undergraduate and graduate academic programs,” said Bard College President Leon Botstein. “This is a fantastic contribution to the study of America, vital to a liberal arts education offering a broader understanding of the country.”
“I’m honored to work with Candice Hopkins and Bard to support Indigenous students’ ability to attend the College, and make possible the broader institutional transformation that will have an impact not just in the immediate term, but for generations of students, faculty, and staff to come,” said Becky Gochman.
“This gift represents institutional change, which has been building at Bard and is core to the vision of Forge Project. These lands are layered with histories that are inextricably bound by the displacement and forced removal of Indigenous peoples, yet also rich with knowledge,” said Forge Project Executive Director Candice Hopkins. “This gift provides the basis for the future building of this knowledge, to shift and expand discourses across fields of study, whether it be in Indigenous and American studies, art history, or curatorial practice. Critically, it also centers the needs of Indigenous students, reducing barriers to higher education, and recognizes that students want to attend programs where they see their interests reflected. Bard is at the forefront of this, and we are honored to be a part of this change.”
“The Gochman Family Foundation’s wonderful generosity allows us to sustain the work being undertaken in the Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck project, a curricular humanities and arts initiative to amplify and expand Native American and Indigenous Studies in partnership with the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians. We are proud to be in dialogue with and guided by the Tribal Nation whose ancestral lands the college is seated on around American and Indigenous Studies programming and to model such collaboration for peer institutions by our example. Importantly, the Gochman Family Foundation’s visionary gift and our collaborative efforts with Forge Project significantly expand crucial areas of curriculum development, research opportunities, and vital public programming,” said Christian Ayne Crouch, Associate Professor of History and American and Indigenous Studies and Dean of Graduate Studies, who steers the interdisciplinary team implementing Rethinking Place. “They have afforded American and Indigenous Studies a transformational opportunity, emphasizing the necessity of entwining Native American and Indigenous perspectives in our shared history, providing robust support for future scholars and leaders among our undergraduates and graduate students, and illuminating new points of connection between the wider, non-academic community and Bard.”
“This act of renaming of the program is no mere gesture but rather an evolution which offers recognition of how much American Studies as a discipline has changed since the inception of the field in the late 1930s,” said Peter L’Official, Associate Professor of Literature and Director of the American and Indigenous Studies Program. “Path-breaking, multidisciplinary American Studies scholarship has already acknowledged how the study of Indigeneity highlights Native studies’ extant intersections with fields like Black studies, Latinx studies, and Asian and Asian American studies. To paraphrase the Creek-Cherokee scholar Craig Womack, ‘tribal literatures and histories are not a branch waiting to be grafted onto the main trunk. Tribal literatures are the tree, the oldest literatures in the Americas, the most American of American literatures.’ This gift will help make more visible and tangible these essential, intertwined, and interdisciplinary histories and literatures to both our students and to the broader communities around—and beyond—Bard.”
“Graduate students have long driven original research and scholarship around Indigenous art and curatorial studies alongside the faculty and staff at CCS Bard. Candice Hopkins’ powerful writing and exhibitions have been essential material in our curriculum, and it is truly thrilling to have her join our faculty and contribute to the future shape of the graduate program, its resources, and program,” said Lauren Cornell, CCS Bard Director of the Graduate Program and Chief Curator.
Post Date: 09-28-2022
Bard Professor Peter L’Official Wins Rabkin Prize for Visual Art Journalism
Peter L’Official, associate professor of literature and director of the American Studies Program at Bard College, has won a Rabkin Prize of $50,000 for his work in visual art journalism. L’Official is one of eight visual art journalists to receive a Rabkin Prize from the Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation. “I am humbled to be recognized among such a brilliant group of fellow recipients by the Rabkin Foundation. Thank you to the jurors, the anonymous nominators, the Rabkin Trustees, and—most especially—to all the editors and writers and readers who make the work of arts criticism both possible and worthwhile,” said L’Official.
Bard Professor Peter L’Official Wins Rabkin Prize for Visual Art Journalism
Peter L’Official, associate professor of literature and director of the American Studies Program at Bard College, has won a Rabkin Prize of $50,000 for his work in visual art journalism. L’Official is one of eight visual art journalists to receive a Rabkin Prize from the Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation. Jurors for this sixth cycle of awards were: Eric Gibson (Arts in Review editor of the Wall Street Journal), Sasha Anawalt (Professor Emerita of Journalism at USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism), and Paul Schmelzer (Founder of The Ostracon: Dispatches from Beyond Contemporary Art’s Center).
“I am humbled to be recognized among such a brilliant group of fellow recipients by the Rabkin Foundation. Thank you to the jurors, the anonymous nominators, the Rabkin Trustees, and—most especially—to all the editors and writers and readers who make the work of arts criticism both possible and worthwhile,” said L’Official.
Peter L’Official (he/him) is a writer, arts critic, and teacher of literature and American studies from The Bronx, NY. He is an associate professor in literature and director of the American Studies Program at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, where he teaches courses in African American literature and culture, twentieth- and twenty-first century American literature, and on how the visual arts intersect with literature, place, and architecture. He is also the project coordinator for “Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck,” a grant supported by the Mellon Foundation “Humanities for All Times” Initiative.
L'Official is the author of Urban Legends: The South Bronx in Representation and Ruin, published by Harvard University Press in 2020. His writing has appeared in Artforum, The Believer, The Los Angeles Review of Books,The New Yorker, The Paris Review Daily, The Village Voice, and other publications, and he is on the editorial board of The European Review of Books. He has written catalogue essays for exhibitions by artists such as Carl Craig and Becky Suss, and his next book project will explore the intersections of literature, architecture, and Blackness in America. L’Official has a B.A. in English from Williams College, and an M.A. in Journalism from New York University’s Cultural Reporting and Criticism program. He received his Ph.D. in American studies from Harvard University, and was formerly a fellow at the Charles Warren Center for American History at Harvard University in 2014-15.
Now in its sixth cycle, the Rabkin Prize started in 2017. To date, the Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation has given a total of $2,775,000 to individual art writers. The award program is by nomination only. A distinguished group of 16 nominators, working in the visual arts in all parts of the country, provided the list of potential winners. The nominators were asked to identify, “The essential visual art journalist working in your part of the country.” Candidates for the award submitted two recent published articles and a brief curriculum vita. Writers can be re-nominated and are eligible until they win a Rabkin Prize. This is an annual program and a central initiative of the foundation.
This cycle’s other winning journalists include: Shana Nys Dambrot (Los Angeles); Bryn Evans (Decatur, Georgia); Joe Fyfe (New York City); Stacy Pratt (Tulsa); Darryl F. Ratcliff, II (Dallas); Jeanne Claire van Ryzin (Austin); Margo Vansynghel (Seattle).
The Zora Neale Hurston Writing Fellowship at Bard College Welcomes Seven Writers for Its Inaugural Summer Residency Program
The new Zora Neale Hurston Writing Fellowship at Bard College welcomes its inaugural cohort of seven writers, Danielle Elizabeth Chin, Neşe Devenot ’09, Shoshanna Edwards-Alexander, Mona Kareem, Madhu Kaza, Obi Nwizu, and Dianca London Potts, this summer. The Hurston Fellows are in residence for three weeks from June 4 through June 26, 2022. During their residency, fellows reside on Bard’s campus with housing and meals provided. Founded and directed by Visiting Associate Professor of Literature and American Studies Donna Ford Grover, the Hurston Fellowship enables writers from all disciplines who have not had the opportunity to develop their scholarship, and supports writers who are currently employed as adjuncts or visiting professors with terminal degrees and who have not yet published a book-length work.
The Hurston Fellowship recognizes the particular challenges that BIPOC women encounter in the academy. Few BIPOC women are tenured or tenure track and most occupy precarious positions at their academic institutions. It is not the aim of the fellowship to increase the number of BIPOC women to the pool of tenure and tenure-track applicants. The program exists to assist these underrepresented voices into the publication of their works.
“For many adjuncts the path to writing and research is closed. The institutions where they labor do not offer funds or sabbaticals for such work. The Hurston Fellowship is one way to help these women find time for their own work. Zora Neale Hurston was one of the first independent scholars—writing on an array of subjects from anthropology to fiction. Like Hurston, our fellows, without institutional support, must make their own way through the world of publication and research,” says Grover.
During their residency, Hurston Fellows may participate in a daily program of workshops and meetings, offered in collaboration with the Bard College Institute of Writing and Thinking. However, fellows may also choose to spend their time working, writing, and researching independently. The residency includes visits by literary agents and editors, as well as readings and lectures by established writers and scholars. This summer, the two guest lecturers include Carolyn Ferrell, author of Miss Metropolitan, which was recently shortlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, and literary agent Charlotte Sheedy of Sheedy Lit in conversation with her client Jive Poetic about the agent-author relationship and how an idea becomes a book. Fellows will also be invited back to Bard College in October of the fellowship year for a weekend-long meeting and workshop.
Danielle Elizabeth Chin graduated Magna Cum Laude from Marymount Manhattan College in May 2013 with a Bachelor of the Arts degree in English and World Literatures and a minor in Creative Writing before receiving her Master of Fine Arts degree from The New School in Creative Writing with a concentration in creative nonfiction. She has been an Adjunct Professor in Creative Writing at Marymount Manhattan College since 2015, where she has taught Introduction to Creative Writing I, Introduction to Creative Writing II, Intermediate Creative Writing, an Independent Study in Nonfiction, and a Special Topics course. She has also served as a Writing Assistant at the Borough of Manhattan Community College and for the CUNY EDGE program. Her other professional experiences include working as a research assistant for poet David Lehman, a teaching assistant for novelist Sigrid Nunez, and an assistant at a literary agency. Her work has appeared in The Inquisitive Eater, The Best American Poetry Blog, and Side B Magazine.
Neşe Devenot ’09 received her PhD in 2015 from the Program in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory at the University of Pennsylvania, where she studied psychedelic philosophy, the literary history of chemical self-experimentation (“trip reports”), and radical poetics. She received her bachelor’s degree from Bard College in philosophy and literature. Devenot is a Postdoctoral Associate at Institute for Research in Sensing (IRiS), University of Cincinnati, and is a Lecturer and Medical Humanities Program Assistant at Pennsylvania State University. She has held positions as a Postdoctoral Scholar in Medicine, Society, and Culture, in the Bioethics Department at the School of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University (2018-20) and an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Digital Humanities in the Humanities Program and English Department at University of Puget Sound (2015-18). Her research explores the function of metaphor and other literary devices in verbal accounts of psychedelic experiences. She was awarded “Best Humanities Publication in Psychedelic Studies” from Breaking Convention in 2016 and received the Article Prize for best publication in Romanticism Studies from European Romantic Review in 2020. She was a 2015-16 Research Fellow at the New York Public Library’s Timothy Leary Papers and a Research Fellow with the New York University Psilocybin Cancer Anxiety Study, where she participated in the first qualitative study of patient experiences. She was a founding member of the MAPS Graduate Student Association, which she moderated during 2011-13, and has presented on psychedelics at conferences in the United States, Mexico, Canada, England, France, the Netherlands, and Australia.
Shoshanna Edwards-Alexander received her Ed.D. in Educational Leadership from Saint Joseph’s University in 2005, M.S.W. from University of Pennsylvania, School of Social Work in 1995, and B.A. in sociology and history/gender studies from Saint Lawrence University in 1993. Before teaching, she worked as a social worker and counselor. She is a Visiting and Senior Adjunct Professor at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, where she teaches in the Haub School of Business, School of Health and Education, and College of Arts and Sciences. She also serves as a diversity consultant at Saint Joseph’s University. Her research interests include anti-racist and social justice pedagogies, womanist and feminist epistemologies, teacher preparation educational programs, and intersectionality within leadership development. She presents on topics including leadership and student advocacy; mentoring and feminist perspectives; global engagement, training, and development; and social work and mental health. She has won several awards and special recognitions including the Certificate of Recognition for Excellence in Teaching for the Gender Studies Program Department at Saint Joseph’s University (2014).
Mona Kareem holds a PhD and MA in Comparative Literature from the State University of New York at Binghamton and a BA in English and Comparative Literature from the American University of Kuwait. She is a research fellow at Center for Humanities at Tufts University (2021-2022) and a recipient of a 2021 National Endowment for the Arts literary grant. She has taught at Princeton, University of Maryland College Park, SUNY Binghamton, Rutgers, and Bronx Community College. She was an affiliated research fellow at the Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies at the Freie Universität of Berlin. Kareem is the author of three poetry collections. Her most recent publication Femme Ghosts is a trilingual chapbook published by Publication Studio in Fall 2019. Her work has been translated into nine languages, and appeared in Brooklyn Rail, Michigan Quarterly, Fence, Ambit, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Asymptote, Words Without Borders, Poetry International, PEN English, Modern Poetry in Translation, Two Lines, and Specimen. She has won several awards and honors including a nomination for the Best Translated Book Award in 2016 for her English translation of Ashraf Fayadh’s Instructions Within, which was reprinted by English PEN in 2017.
Madhu H. Kaza received her MFA in fiction, M.Phil and MA in Comparative Literature from New York University, and a BA in English from the University of Michigan. She serves as Associate Director of Microcollege Program and Faculty Development at the Bard Prison Initiative and teaches in the MFA program at Columbia University. Born in Andhra Pradesh, India, Kaza is a writer, translator, artist and educator based in New York City. She is a translator of the feminist Telugu writers Volga and Vimala. She is the editor of Kitchen Table Translation and her own writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Paris Review, Guernica, The Yale Review, Two Lines, Gulf Coast, The Margins, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of grants and awards including a non-fiction fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts and a Yaddo residency. She was the founding director of the Bard Microcollege at Brooklyn Public Library and has taught at New York University, The New School, and at Bard College Institute for Writing and Thinking, among other institutions.
Obi Nwizu received her MA in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University in the United Kingdom and her BA in Print Journalism from Georgia State University. Born in Anambra State, Nigeria, raised in Atlanta, Georgia, but currently calling Harlem home, Nwizu is a lover of month-long international vacations, vegan food, afrobeat, and rom-coms. When not writing, she teaches creative writing for the City University of New York and composition writing for the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Selected publications include “Gathered Pieces of the Sun” in The Almbec, “Grapeseed Fields” in Torch Literary Arts, and “Lust Painted Walls” in Imagine Curve.
Dianca London Potts earned her MFA in fiction from The New School, MA in English and MA in Humanities from Arcadia University, and BA in English from Temple University. She is Visiting Assistant Professor in the Writing Department at Pratt Institute and teaches writing courses at Eugene Lang Liberal Arts College at The New School and John Jay College of Criminal Justice. She is a Kimbilio Fiction Fellow, a VONA Voices alumna, and the former online editor of Well-Read Black Girl. Her words have been featured in Lenny Letter, The Village Voice, Vice, Shondaland, and elsewhere. Her memoir, Planning for the Apocalypse, is forthcoming from 37 Ink / Simon and Schuster.
About theZora Neale Hurston Writing Fellowship at Bard College The Zora Neale Hurston Writing Fellowship at Bard College is a 3-week residential program designed to enable writers from all disciplines who have not had the opportunity to develop their scholarship, specifically, those who are without access to sabbaticals or their institution’s research funding. We seek fellows who are currently employed as adjuncts or visiting professors with terminal degrees and who have not yet published a book length work. Prospective Fellows should submit a vita, a letter of recommendation by someone familiar with their work, and an abstract of the project they wish to work on during the three-week residency. The abstract should not exceed 2000 words. Applicants need a college or university affiliation and should have a minimum of five years of teaching as an adjunct, lecturer or visiting professor. The application deadline is April 15, 2023. All applicants will be notified of the admission Committee’s decision by May 15, 2023. To submit materials or for questions please email [email protected].
Bard College Awarded $1.49 Million Grant from Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s Humanities for All Times Initiative
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded Bard College a $1.49 million grant for its “Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck” project. Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck proposes a Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS) approach to a revitalized American Studies curriculum and undertakes an expansive understanding of land acknowledgment that goes beyond addressing a single institution’s history in regards to Native peoples. Through annual conferences, reading groups, workshops, and in fostering collaboration between faculty and students within Bard and across regional peer liberal arts colleges and engaging with the Stockbridge Munsee Band of Mohican Indians whose homelands these schools are in, Rethinking Place emphasizes community-based knowledge, collaboration, and collectives of inquiry.
“The project team and I are deeply grateful to the Mellon Foundation for this opportunity and for consistently supporting innovation in the arts and humanities, especially at this crucial juncture. Liberal arts colleges by their nature are small, inter-knit communities and this makes them ideal sites to both explore challenging questions and test out long-lasting curricular development in the service of equity,” says Associate Professor of History and Dean of Graduate Studies Christian Ayne Crouch. “Bard College is fortunate to count Vine Deloria Sr. (Yankton Dakota/Standing Rock Sioux) among our distinguished alumni. Being able to honor the interdisciplinary intellectual legacy of Deloria Sr. and his family makes this grant especially meaningful. The Mellon Foundation’s support for developing partnerships in this grant with individuals both inside and outside of higher education enhances an already-exciting opportunity.”
Bard College’s grant is part of the Mellon Foundation’s Humanities for All Times Initiative created to support newly developed curricula that both instruct students in methods of humanities practice and demonstrate those methods’ relevance to broader social justice pursuits. Of the 50 liberal arts colleges invited to submit proposals, 12 institutions were selected to receive a grant of up to $1.5 million to be used over a three-year period to support the envisioned curricular projects and help students to see and experience the applicability of humanities in their real-world social justice objectives.
Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck asks: What would it look like to truly acknowledge the land beneath us, its history, and to collaborate with its continuing stewards? It affirms Bard’s tangible commitments to the principles and ideals of the College’s 2020 land acknowledgment by recognizing the need to address historical erasure and make space for marginalized epistemologies. Rethinking Place’s proposed curriculum and programming takes the acknowledgment of the land—and the brutal history which has unfolded on it—and offers a new way to approach this work that emphasizes inclusivity in order to build a future that is fundamentally distinct from this past.
Each year, Rethinking Place will feature articulated NAIS themes and frames in which faculty, students, and staff can begin thinking in interdisciplinary terms and will engage the following five components: curriculum development, annual conferences, conference workshops, collaborative signage and mapping projects, and post-doctoral program-building. In order to hold Native concerns at the forefront of this work, the project team is in conversation with the Cultural Affairs Office of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community and will also be in dialogue around Native arts with the Native-led Forge Project based in Taghkanic, New York.
Led by a diverse, interdisciplinary project team of Black, Latinx, and transgender faculty, as well as Native partners, Rethinking Place is being developed through Bard’s American Studies Program. Core members of Bard’s project team include: Associate Professor of History and Dean of Graduate Studies Christian Ayne Crouch (Principal Investigator), Associate Professor of Literature and Director of American Studies Peter L’Official (Project Coordinator), Associate Professor and Director of Environmental and Urban Studies Elias Dueker, Artist in Residence and Codirector of the Center for Experimental Humanities Krista Caballero, and Visiting Assistant Professor of American Studies and master barber Joshua Livingston. Grant projects will also take place in collaboration with Bard’s Center for Experimental Humanities, Center for Human Rights and the Arts, and the Center for Environmental Sciences and Humanities and with faculty partners at Vassar College and Williams College.
This generous Mellon grant offers Bard the opportunity to contribute in innovative ways to the field of American Studies and in humanities fields more generally, and therefore increase broad and diverse enrollment in the humanities—particularly among members of communities marginalized by certain disciplines—and to restore humanities as a central component to the future of higher education and social justice.
“The Humanities for All Times initiative underscores that it’s not only critical to show students that the humanities improve the quality of their everyday lives, but also that they are a crucial tool in efforts to bring about meaningful progressive change in the world,” said Phillip Brian Harper, Mellon Foundation Higher Learning Program Director. “We are thrilled to support this work at liberal arts colleges across the country - given their unequivocal commitment to humanities-based knowledge, and their close ties to the local communities in which such knowledge can be put to immediate productive use, we know that these schools are perfectly positioned to take on this important work.”
More information about the Mellon Foundation’s Humanities for All Times Initiative can be found here.
“It’s never, never too late.” Joshua P.H. Livingston Profiled by Bloom Season on His Career Path, Commitment to Community, and Pandemic Pivot
What lies at the intersection of pedagogy and barbering? For Joshua P.H. Livingston, visiting assistant professor of American studies, the answer is Friend of a Barber: a combination barbershop and studio space where social discourse comes with the cut. Speaking with Bloom Season, Livingston spoke about his professional growth during the pandemic, advocating for a reassessment of one’s values and purpose when considering a shift in career. “What’s interesting is that I picked up a side hustle and then kept up with the first hustle,” Livingston says. “I ended up teaching full-time and going to barber school. I learned that there are interesting ways of being able to find synergies between two things that you care about.” For those considering a change, Livingston has pragmatic advice about finances, but the most important thing, he says, is to not be afraid. “It’s never, never too late,” he says.
Bard Students Assist Local Government Leaders on Key Projects for a New Course, All Politics Is Local, Taught by Jonathan Becker and Erin Cannan
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.”
Joshua P.H. Livingston Joins Faculty of Bard College American Studies Program in Fall 2021
Bard College is pleased to announce that Joshua P.H. Livingston will join the faculty of the American Studies Program, effective fall 2021. Livingston received his PhD in social welfare from the City of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center and holds an MSW and a certificate in human services management from Boston University. Using his current work and experiences as a Licensed Master Barber and the Black American barbershop as an exemplar, Livingston’s work focuses on how social innovation, social enterprise, and “placemaking” can be utilized by young people of color to challenge institutional environments through the use of community forms that hold cultural significance. He is the co-owner of Friend of a Barber in New York City’s East Village and brings nearly twenty years of practice experience in youth-based program development, management, and evaluation to his work. At Bard, Livingston will serve as visiting professor of American Studies focusing on placemaking. He will be teaching a course titled Beyond Black Capitalism in the fall.
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 estate, Bard’s campus consists of nearly 1,000 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; graduate degrees in 11 programs; eight 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 arts education. The undergraduate program at our 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.
A Collection of Resources from Bard College Faculty and Staff
Following President Botstein's message declaring Friday, June 18, 2021 an official campus holiday at Bard College, here are further resources for those who wish to read, listen, reflect, and learn more about the historical and cultural significance of Juneteenth as a day of celebration and commemoration (to begin, see “So You Want to Learn About Juneteenth?” from the New York Times).
Please join us in thanking our contributing colleagues for their expertise and generous suggestions. Annette Gordon-Reed, On Juneteenth David Blight, A Slave No More For children/younger readers: Patricia C. McKissack and Frederick McKissack, Jr., Days of Jubilee —Myra Young Armstead, Lyford Paterson Edwards and Helen Gray Edwards Professor of Historical Studies and Vice President for Academic Inclusive Excellence
Ralph Ellison’s posthumously published novel titled Juneteenth —Tabetha Ewing, Associate Professor of History
Clint Smith's just-released book of essays, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America does a wonderful job of addressing both the historically specific, and the broader context of how slavery is and has been understood (and, more often than not, how it has been rather intentionally misunderstood). Here's a quick Twitter thread of the author recounting the places in which the book's essays are rooted, one of then being Galveston, Texas. —Pete L'Official, Assistant Professor of Literature
A resource I have pulled from often is a place called Learning for Justice, in the past you may have heard of it under their old name Teaching Tolerance. This article, “We Are Our Ancestors’ Wildest Dreams” by Monita K. Bell is one I've found particularly memorable.
For students younger than Kindergarten age, I often read this book in class and had a discussion about it: Juneteenth for Mazie, by Floyd Cooper. —Sam Prince ’14, Regional Admissions Counselor, Pacific Northwest
Bard History Professor Jeannette Estruth Awarded J. Franklin Jameson Fellowship by the American Historical Association and John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress
The American Historical Association and John W. Kluge Center at the Library Of Congress has awarded Bard College History professor Jeannette Estruth the J. Franklin Jameson Fellowship in American History. The annual award is offered annually to support significant scholarly research in the collections of the Library of Congress by scholars at an early stage in their careers in history. The fellowship is named in honor of J. Franklin Jameson, a founder of the American Historical Association, longtime managing editor of the American Historical Review, formerly chief of the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, and the first incumbent of the library’s chair of American history.
Jeannette Alden Estruth is an assistant professor of American History at Bard College, and a faculty associate at the Harvard University Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. She received her doctorate in history, with honors, from New York University in 2018. In 2019, Estruth’s book project was a finalist for the Herman E. Krooss Prize for Best Dissertation in Business History. Her research has been supported by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Huntington Library, the University of Virginia Miller Center, and the Berkshire Conference. Estruth’s writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Business Insider, Public Seminar, and Enterprise and Society, among others. Prior to her doctoral work, she worked at Harvard University Press and the Radical History Review. She is currently working on a book manuscript, The New Utopia: A Political History of the Silicon Valley, which explores the history of social movements, the technology industry, and economic culture in the United States.
The DRE: Disturbance, Re-Animation, and Emergent Archives
Friday, October 21, 2022 – Saturday, October 22, 2022 | |
A Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck Conference
Please join us for the inaugural fall conference of Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck, a Mellon Foundation Humanities for All Times project. This conference considers the topic of archives from a range of humanistic perspectives, with keynotes showcasing methods in Native American and Indigenous Studies and African and African American Studies, as well as offering the viewpoints of contemporary artists on these topics. Multimedia Northern Cheyenne artist Bently Spang will be opening the conference with a screening and talk on Thursday evening in Weis Cinema, followed by an opening reception at the Center for Experimental Humanities (New Annandale House). Keynotes by award-winning scholars Dr. Marisa J. Fuentes, presidential term chair in African American history, Rutgers University, and Dr. Elizabeth Ellis, assistant professor of history, Princeton University, and citizen, Peoria Tribe of Oklahoma, bracket a day of smaller sessions exploring and modeling ethical practices in the archive, open to students, faculty, and staff on Friday. Recipients of Rethinking Place student research funding will present on their work on Saturday morning, and the conference concludes with a talk open to the public by Oglala Lakota scholar and multimedia artist Kite (MFA ’15) at LUMA Theater at 2 pm on Saturday. The DRE is the first of three annual conferences supported by Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck.
Schedule Thursday, October 20, 2022 (Weis Cinema) Screening and presentation with Bently Spang
Friday, October 21, 2022 (RKC) 8:30 am: Coffee 9:00 am: Welcome and introductions 9:30 am: Opening keynote with Dr. Marisa J. Fuentes 10:30 am: Break 11:00 am: Concurrent workshops / screenings / presentations 12:45 pm: Lunch 2:00–3:45 pm: Concurrent workshops / screenings / presentations 3:45 pm: Break 4:00–5:00 pm: Closing keynote with Dr. Elizabeth Ellis
Saturday, October 22, 2022 (LUMA Theatre) Closing performance and reception with Suzanne Kite MFA ’15 (Registration info coming soon)
Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Library4:00 pm – 6:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 Please join us for a reception to celebrate journalist Alvin Patrick's exhibit of selected first editions and rare books from his private collection. This exhibit, Faces of the Struggle: Frontispiece Portraits in African American Literature (1834 to 1949), features the portraits of some of the greatest civil rights activists of the 19th and 20th centuries including, Solomon Northup, Frederick Douglass, Phillis Wheatley, and Gwendolyn Brooks.
Reception and dancing follows the lecture Olin, Room 1027:00 pm – 8:30 pm EST/GMT-5 This lecture highlights the representation of tango in global film, television, and nonfiction narratives. While the dance is accorded a superficial treatment in mass media (i.e., tango=sex), the essence of tango is rooted in a deeply human and universal longing for community and connection. The transcendent meaning at the core of tango’s origins remains more relevant than ever within our global pandemic present.
Wednesday, February 23, 2022
Online Event10:30 am – 11:30 am EST/GMT-5 Antonio Orejudo is considered one of the most brilliant contemporary authors from Spain. His narrative is raw and playful with unexpected twists and dark cynical humor for the purpose of entertaining the reader’s interest. Orejudo will discuss with us what it means to be an author today, and he will focus on his Advantages of Travelling by Train, which has also been adapted into a film. There is no greater influence in Orejudo’s Advantages of Travelling by Train than Cervantes’ Don Quixote and his Exemplary Novels.
This event will be in Spanish. Co-sponsored by LAIS and the Spanish program. Open to the wide Bard Spanish-speaking community. To RSVP and receive Zoom details, please contact Prof. López-Gay at [email protected].