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 Presents Returning Home: A Contemporary Native Photography Exhibition, on View April 6–12 at Montgomery Place Mansion
Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck and Montgomery Place Mansion at Bard College proudly host Returning Home, an exhibition curated by Rethinking Place Post-Baccalaureate Fellow Olivia Tencer ’22 and Rethinking Place Administrative Coordinator Melina Roise ’21, open from April 6 to 12, 2024. This groundbreaking exhibition features works by four contemporary Indigenous photographers, Kali Spitzer (Kaska Dena/Jewish), Dana Claxton (Wood Mountain Lakota First Nations), Cara Romero (Chemehuevi Indian Tribe), and Wendy Red Star (Apsáalooke (Crow)), along with a written commission by Bonney Hartley (Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican) and archival records of local land transfers and the United States’ Indian boarding school history. The exhibition, centered around narratives of Indigenous families, particularly women and children, will delve into the experiences of Native peoples facing settler colonialism, focusing specifically on Indigenous child removal practices and policies.
Bard College Presents Returning Home: A Contemporary Native Photography Exhibition, on View April 6–12 at Montgomery Place Mansion
Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck and Montgomery Place Mansion at Bard College proudly hosts Returning Home, an exhibition curated by Rethinking Place Post-Baccalaureate Fellow Olivia Tencer ’22 and Rethinking Place Administrative Coordinator Melina Roise ’21, open from April 6 to 12, 2024. This groundbreaking exhibition features works by four contemporary Indigenous photographers, Kali Spitzer (Kaska Dena/Jewish), Dana Claxton (Wood Mountain Lakota First Nations), Cara Romero (Chemehuevi Indian Tribe), and Wendy Red Star (Apsáalooke (Crow)), along with a written commission by Bonney Hartley (Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican) and archival records of local land transfers and the United States’ Indian boarding school history. The exhibition, centered around narratives of Indigenous families, particularly women and children, will delve into the experiences of Native peoples facing settler colonialism, focusing specifically on Indigenous child removal practices and policies.
Returning Home aims to highlight Indigenous representation, narrative, survivance, futurism, and resilience through contemporary Native art. The show will include pieces from the Forge Project’s collection, as well as a written commission from Bonney Hartley, who is an MFA candidate at Institute of American Indian Arts. An accompanying publication will provide in-depth contextualization of land dispossession in the United States, forced removal of Native peoples in New York State, and the impact of Indian boarding schools.
The exhibition will fill various rooms within the historic Montgomery Place mansion, situated on Bard College’s 380-acre estate. While the estate is renowned for its ties to the Livingston family, Montgomery Place is committed to exploring marginalized histories, including the forced removal of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community and the estate’s use of enslaved African American labor.
On the exhibition, Tencer writes: “This will be the first exhibition in the mansion, and the first exhibition on campus that will discuss the forced removal of the Stockbridge-Munsee peoples on current Bard lands or the Livingston’s history as one intertwined with the land dispossession of Native people in the Hudson Valley and other land bases in the East Coast. Positioned as an intervention, Returning Home disrupts preconceived notions of Native people, specifically Native women, and makes visible purposefully erased historical narratives of land and wealth accumulation in New York State.”
“I am grateful for all the support my artwork and cultural work has received. I am indebted to the sun and my sundance teachings – mni ki wakan – water is sacred,” says artist Dana Claxton.
The exhibition is free and open to the public.
On behalf of the curators and Rethinking Place team, we would like to extend gratitude to The Mellon Foundation, Hudson Valley Greenway, Forge Project, and Montgomery Place Historic Estate for making this exhibition possible.
Exhibition Viewing Hours: April 6 and 7, 1:00pm–5:00pm (timed entry every half hour - register here) April 10 to 12, 1:30pm–4:00pm (timed entry every half hour - register here)
Schedule of Events: April 6, 1:30pm: Opening Remarks & Activation, poetry reading by Bonney Hartley. Doors open at 1:00pm. Registration required. Register here. April 6, 4:00pm: Cara Romero in conversation with Suzanne Kite. Registration required. Register here. April 7, 3:00pm: Dana Claxton Artist Talk, on zoom, seating available at MP visitor’s center. Register for the zoom talk here. April 10, 6:30pm:Cara Romero: Following the Light, Preston Cinema, Bard College. A short documentary on the work & practice of Cara Romero. No registration required.
Post Date: 03-20-2024
Bard College Hosts Zambian Writer and Harvard Professor Namwali Serpell as Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck Quinney-Morrison Lecturer on April 11
Zambian writer and Professor of English at Harvard Namwali Serpell will deliver the Quinney-Morrison Lecture at Bard College. Sponsored by Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck, a Mellon Foundation Humanities for All Times project, the Quinney-Morrison Lecture Series celebrates the work of trailblazing teacher and Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican citizen Electa “Wuhwehweeheemeew” Quinney and the American novelist, essayist, and editor Toni Morrison. Serpell will present the lecture “Unnoticed and as Beautiful: The Native American Figure in Toni Morrison’s Literature” on Thursday, April 11 at 3:00 pm ET in Olin Auditorium at Bard College.
Bard College Hosts Zambian Writer and Harvard Professor Namwali Serpell as Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck Quinney-Morrison Lecturer on April 11
This April, Zambian writer and Professor of English at Harvard Namwali Serpell will deliver the Quinney-Morrison Lecture at Bard College. Sponsored by Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck, a Mellon Foundation Humanities for All Times project, the Quinney-Morrison Lecture Series celebrates the work of both Electa “Wuhwehweeheemeew” Quinney, a citizen of the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican nation and the first woman to teach in a public school in the territory which would become Wisconsin; and the American novelist, essayist, and editor, Toni Morrison, who was a Distinguished Visiting Lecturer at Bard College from 1979-1981. Serpell will present the lecture “Unnoticed and as Beautiful: The Native American Figure in Toni Morrison’s Literature” on Thursday, April 11 at 3:00 pm ET in Olin Auditorium at Bard College. The lecture will be followed by a reception catered by Samosa Shack Kingston beginning at 4:30 pm ET. A recording of the lecture will be available upon request.
On the lecture, Serpell writes: “Scholars have been concerned either to criticize or to praise Morrison’s sparing inclusion of Native Americans in her novels. Are they beneath her notice? Or have they gone unnoticed by us? Following Morrison’s own methods in arguing that the ‘real or fabricated’ ‘Africanist presence’ in white American literature is crucial to writers’ ‘sense of Americanness,’ we might pursue how the ‘Native American presence’ works in her literature not only in historical and political terms, but also in aesthetic and cultural terms. This talk considers how, across her oeuvre and career, the Native American figure—meaning literary character; racial type; literary trope; and silhouette or profile—shapes her ‘sense of blackness.’” Serpell is the author of Seven Modes of Uncertainty (Harvard, 2014), The Old Drift: A Novel (Hogarth, 2019), Stranger Faces (Transit, 2020), and The Furrows: An Elegy (Hogarth, 2022).
The Quinney-Morrison Lecture Series invites luminaries from the fields of Native American and Indigenous Studies, American Studies, and Black Studies to give one lecture each fall and spring semester, hosted by Bard within the American and Indigenous Studies Program, as part of Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck’s public programming initiatives. The goal of the Quinney-Morrison Lecture Series is to provide opportunities for academics and other regional partners to learn what work needs to be done in the creation of land acknowledgement projects. They also create space for reflection in individuals’ relationships with spaces, lands, and borders to dissuade action without reflection. In 2023, Professor Glenda Carpio presented “Migrant Aesthetics”as the inaugural Morrison lecture for Rethinking Place. Learn more here.
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About Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck Bard’s “Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck” project affirms Bard’s tangible commitments to the principles and ideals of the College’s 2020 land acknowledgment and is supported by the Mellon Foundation’s 2022 Humanities for All Times. The Mellon grant offers three years of support for developing a land acknowledgment–based curriculum, public-facing Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS) programming, and efforts to support the work of emerging NAIS scholars and tribally enrolled artists at Bard. Rethinking Place emphasizes broad community-based knowledge, collaboration, and collectives of inquiry and also attends to the importance of considering the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians, upon whose homelands Bard sits. For more information, please visit rethinkingplace.bard.edu.
In the spirit of truth and equity, it is with gratitude and humility that we acknowledge that we are gathered on the sacred homelands of the Munsee and Muhheaconneok people, who are the original stewards of the land. Today, due to forced removal, the community resides in Northeast Wisconsin and is known as the Stockbridge-Munsee Community. We honor and pay respect to their ancestors past and present, as well as to future generations, and we recognize their continuing presence in their homelands. We understand that our acknowledgement requires those of us who are settlers to recognize our own place in and responsibilities toward addressing inequity, and that this ongoing and challenging work requires that we commit to real engagement with the Munsee and Mohican communities to build an inclusive and equitable space for all.
To learn more about the Stockbridge-Munsee Community, please visit www.mohican.com.
Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck encourages all members of the Bard community and visitors to Bard’s Campus to please consider financially supporting the ongoing and essential work of the Mohican Cultural Affairs Department. Donations may be made here.
About Bard College Founded in 1860, Bard Collegeis 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 more than 40 academic programs; graduate degrees in 13 programs; eight early colleges; and numerous dual-degree programs nationally and internationally. Building on its 163-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.
Whitney Biennial 2024 to Feature Bard College Faculty and Alums
Bard College faculty members and alums will be among the 71 artists and collectives selected to participate in this year’s Whitney Biennial, the 81st installment of the landmark exhibition series. Whitney Biennial 2024: Even Better Than the Real Thing opens on March 20. Works by Visiting Assistant Professor of MusicSarah Hennies; Assistant Professor of American and Indigenous Studies, Distinguished Artist in Residence in Studio Arts, and Bard MFA Faculty in Music/Sound KiteMFA ’18;andBard MFA Faculty in Sculpture Lotus Laurie Kang MFA ’15 will be featured alongside those by alums Diane Severin Nguyen MFA ’20, Carolyn Lazard ’10, and Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio ’12. The Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College graduate Min Sun Jeon CCS ’22 helped to organize the exhibition.
The 2024 Whitney Biennial is organized by Chrissie Iles (Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Curator) and Meg Onli (Curator at Large), with Min Sun Jeon CCS ’22 and Beatriz Cifuentes. The performance program is organized by Iles and Onli, with guest curator Taja Cheek. The film program is organized by Iles and Onli, with guest curators Korakrit Arunanondchai, asinnajaq, Greg de Cuir Jr, and Zackary Drucker.
“After finalizing the list of artists last summer, we have built a thematic Biennial that focuses on the ideas of ‘the real,’” write the curators. “Society is at an inflection point around this notion, in part brought on by artificial intelligence challenging what we consider to be real, as well as critical discussions about identity. Many of the artists presenting works—including via robust performance and film programs—explore the fluidity of identity and form, historical and current land stewardship, and concepts of embodiment, among other urgent throughlines, and we are inspired by the work they are creating and sharing.”
Bard College Hosts Second Annual Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck Conference on Indigenous Research Methods and Practice in the Liberal Arts, October 12–14
“Refusal, Creation, and Intersectionality” Features Keynote Speakers Audra Simpson, Robert Keith Collins, and Corrie Roe
Bard College will host the second annual conference of Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck fromOctober 12 through 14. The conference, “Indigenous Research Methods and Practice in the Liberal Arts: Refusal, Creation, and Intersectionality,” explores the topic of “research” within the humanities. Building on last year’s conference surrounding methods, viewpoints, and experiences of archives within Native American and Indigenous Studies and African American Studies, this conference explores historically marginalized epistemologies of social sciences and arts research. This is the second of three annual conferences supported by Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck, part of the Mellon Foundation’s Humanities for All Times initiative.
As a key mode of academic knowledge creation, in various ways, these lectures, conversations, performances, and workshops aim to unpack the historic and contemporary legacy of harm that social science research perpetuates on Indigenous communities. A special focus will be given to practices of research refusal with the work of Audra Simpson (Kahnawà:ke Mohawk) and to research-as-creation—particularly through musical performance, workshops in researching plants and seeds in archives, and the re-creation and amplification of narrative through Wikipedia edit-a-thons. Cross-disciplinary collaborations will encourage thoughtful conversations about why and how individual and institutional research practices need to shift.
On Thursday, October 12 at 1:30 pm in Bard Campus Center’s Weis Cinema, the conference will open with a workshop with the Director of Cultural Affairs for the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohicans Monique Tyndall (Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican). As Bard College is an institution that produces research and writing on the unceded traditional homelands of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community, this imperative preliminary workshop will provide foundational frameworks for the next three days of learning.
On Friday,October 13 at 9:30 am in Reem-Kayden Center’s Bito Auditorium, Local Contexts, a global initiative that supports Indigenous communities with tools that can reassert cultural authority in heritage collections and data, will share how the Local Contexts Traditional Knowledge and Biocultural Labels and Notices are being used alongside other interventions to lead to Indigenous attribution, authorship, access, authority, and autonomy. Following this keynote address, concurrent morning workshops include a conversation on the creation of an institutional research guidebook by Rethinking Place Post-Baccalaureate Fellows, Wikipedia edit-a-thons, and a tour of a current exhibition at the Hessel Museum of Art (CCS Bard) “Indian Theater: Native Performance, Art, and Self-Determination Since 1969”. After lunch, another round in the early afternoon includes Three Sisters and The Fourth: Natural Dye and Plant Research in the Archives co-led by Lucille Grignon of Ancient Roots Homestead and Beka Goedde of Bard Studio Arts, Land Narratives & Solidarity in the Archives led by Frances Cathryn and Zariah Calliste of Forge Project, and a roundtable on research in the arts with Jonathon Adams, Rebecca Hass, and Luis Chavez.
Friday afternoon’s keynote address at 3:45 pm in Reem-Kayden Center’s Bito Auditorium, “Intersectionality and Ethnography” will be given by Robert Keith Collins, a four-field trained anthropologist and Associate Professor of American Indian Studies at San Francisco State University.
On Saturday, October 14 at 10:30amin Reem-Kayden Center’s Bito Auditorium, recipients of Rethinking Place student research funding will present their work prior to a performance by nêhiyaw michif (Cree-Métis) baritone Jonathon Adams, whose work of recovering and developing a Cree and Metis repertoire, in language and traditional song, is to them “an act of resurgence.” The performance will take place in Olin Auditorium at 2:00pm.
On Saturday, October 14 at 5:30pm in Olin Auditorium, the closing keynote address of the conference and the inaugural Quinney-Morrison Lecture of Rethinking Place, will be delivered by Audra Simpson, a political anthropologist currently based at Columbia University and author of Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States. Her talk, “Savage States: Settler Governance in an Age of Sorrow,” asks “not only in what world we imagine time to stop, but takes up the ways in which those that survived the time stoppage stand in critical relationship to dispossession and settler governance apprehend, analyze and act upon this project of affective governance.”
This conference is free, open to all, and provides food. Please note that the Saturday performance may require separate registration.
Indian Theater at Hessel Museum Is a New York Times Critic’s Pick
The art world has been “pitifully slow” to acknowledge “even the existence of contemporary Native American art,” writes Holland Cotter, cochief art critic at the New York Times. But with Indian Theater: Native Performance, Art, and Self-Determination Since 1969, on view now through November 26 at the Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College, “Native American art has a presence in the art world it hasn’t had before.” Candice Hopkins CCS ’03 “has organized a frisky intergenerational group show of some 30 Native American artists,” Cotter writes, including Bard Artist in Residence Jeffrey Gibson and Bard alumni Adam Khalil ’11 and Zack Khalil ’14, members of the “public secret society” New Red Order. Drawing on a treatise written by the late Native American fashion designer Lloyd Kiva New, Indian Theater was created in part “on the premise that much traditional Indigenous art was fundamentally theatrical in nature, incorporating movement, sound, masking, storytelling, communal action, and that these elements could be marshaled to create distinctive new forms.”
The Zora Neale Hurston Writing Fellowship at Bard College Welcomes Five Writers for Its 2023 Summer Residency Program
Now in its second year, the Zora Neale Hurston Writing Fellowship at Bard College welcomes its cohort of five writers, Alcira Forero-Peña, Yu-Yun Hsieh, Juliana Nalerio, Amira Pierce, and Natallia Stelmak Schabner, this summer. The Hurston Fellows are in residence for three weeks from June 8 through June 28. During their residency, fellows are residing on Bard College at Simon’s Rock 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. During their residency, each Hurston Fellow spends their time working, writing, and researching independently on dedicated projects.
“My work is about the people from a small place in the Caribbean that has changed a lot from the 1970s, and yet in April 2023 its population of Afro-Colombians do not have running water while wealthy new ‘neighbors’ do not seem to have that problem,” says Alcira Forero-Peña about her Hurston Fellowship project. “The town of Barú in the ‘island’ of Barú is being sold as ‘paradisiac’ and ‘pristine’ for and by ‘blancos’ or ‘white’ Colombians and foreigners, who little by little bought land on the island, by diverse means, and today’s native ‘baruleros’ have been left without land that used to be a source of their livelihood. The sea, a vital source of food and some income, increasingly is corralled by the hotels and villas whose owners do not want their guests to be ‘bothered’ with boats passing through so fishing is dwindling. What else has changed? The world has changed in and around Baruleros and this is the focus of my work.”
While in residence as a Hurston Fellow, Yu-Yun Hsieh is working on a novel about a foreigner’s adventures in New York City.
As a Hurston Fellow, Juliana Nalerio is working on a literary and historiographic project to read in and instigate a wild alternative to Humanism’s universal man: The Modern Brown Girl. She is interested in anthropological and historiographic approaches to literature and literary theory, as well as sexuality, visual cultural studies, and critical race and ethnic studies.
During her residency, Amira Pierce is working on Genealogy of Hope, a research/memoir project that focuses on her relationship with two ancestors: Wesley Shropshire, a great-great-great grandfather on her father’s side who lived in Rome, Georgia during the US Civil War and was a slave-owner who took a principled and alienating stance supporting the Union, as well as the story of Sheikh Ahmed Aref El-Zein, a great grandfather on her mother’s side who brought the first printing press to Southern Lebanon and published the journal Al-Irfan, which shared a relatively progressive version of Islam with the world.
In her dissertation “For Narrativity: How Creating Narratives Structures Experience and Self,” Natallia Stelmak Schabner argued that Narrativity—an open-ended, dynamic mental process of form finding and coherence seeking over time—is essential for experience of one’s Self. She illustrated this process at work in the interpretation and imaginative experience of literary works, and in subsequent publications extended these ideas, developing connections to theories of emotion, literary appreciation, action, and contemporary digital technology. “In my project, I plan to integrate the argument in my dissertation with this broader body of work, toward the aim of drafting a book manuscript on Narrativity as a core psychological capacity,” she says of her work as a Hurston Fellow.
“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.
Center for Indigenous Studies at Bard College Presents Inaugural Public Performances and Artist Talks in June and July
Artists Ya Tseen Led by Nicholas Galanin To Perform at the Spiegeltent on June 24 and Emily Johnson/Catalyst at the Hessel Museum of Art on July 22
Artist Talks Moderated by Candice Hopkins Include Nicholas Galanin in Conversation with Rebecca Belmore on June 25, and Emily Johnson with Jeffrey Gibson on July 23
The Center for Indigenous Studies at Bard College is thrilled to announce its inaugural public presentations on Bard’s Annandale-on-Hudson campus in June and July. Performances by influential artists Ya Tseen and Emily Johnson/Catalyst are presented in partnership with the Fisher Center at Bard College and the Hessel Museum of Art, respectively. Ya Tseen (“be alive” in Tlingit), the electro-soul music project of artist Nicholas Galanin, will perform on Saturday, June 24 at 8:30 pm at the Fisher Center’s Spiegeltent. Being Future Being: Land/Celestial, an outdoor, multi-scalar, movement-based performance work by Emily Johnson/Catalyst, will take place on Saturday, July 22 at 6 pm on the grounds of the Hessel Museum of Art, Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (CCS Bard).
With a mission to develop a network of public programming focused on arts, education, and advocacy in Native American and Indigenous Studies, the Center for Indigenous Studies began its work in November 2022 following a transformational gift from the Gochman Family Foundation. “We are immensely fortunate to receive this visionary gift which has enabled the Center, whose public programming is brilliantly stewarded by Brandi Norton (Iñupiaq), to significantly expand commissions in support of innovative Indigenous artists and thinkers, develop new engagement and curriculum for all generations, and provide research opportunities for students throughout the Bard network,” said Christian Ayne Crouch, director of the Center for Indigenous Studies.
“Presenting the work of both Emily Johnson and Nicholas Galanin for the Center’s inaugural performances that surround this monumental exhibition is an honor,” said Curator of Public Programs at the Center for Indigenous Studies Brandi Norton. “We are so lucky to welcome them and their collaborators, whose artistry and vision will be sure to inspire our audiences.” The Center’s year-round programming serves to both provide a platform for the work of Indigenous theorists, artists, scholars, and activists, and also bring greater awareness to the public of Indigenous histories and contemporary events and issues. The selection of these two inaugural performances showcasing Emily Johnson/Catalyst and Nicholas Galanin and Ya Tseen powerfully demonstrate Indigenous excellence in a range of arts contexts.
Led by Nicholas Galanin (Tlingit/Unangax̂), one of the most dynamic artists in contemporary art today, Ya Tseen will present music from their debut album Indian Yard. This electro-soul album advocates for Indigenous sovereignty and environmental justice, while exploring universal expressions of love, loss, desire and pain from the Indigenous perspective. On their participation in these inaugural performances, Galanin states: “To have a supported space like the Center for Indigenous Studies is essential. I am truly honored to participate in critical conversations in a continuum with generations of creative thought leaders.”
Emily Johnson (Yup’ik) is a Bessie Award–winning choreographer, Guggenheim and United States Artists fellow, and recipient of the Doris Duke Artist Award. Emily Johnson/Catalyst will perform Being Future Being: Land/Celestial on the grounds of the Hessel Museum. Being Future Being is a multi-scalar work created by Emily Johnson for the stage and beyond. Featuring a newly commissioned score by Pulitzer Prize–winning composer Raven Chacon and a stellar cast of performers, Being Future Being: Land/Celestial invites you into a series of intimate encounters with our more-than-human kin. As audiences journey to three separate outdoor locations, they form a powerful processional—one with the capacity to reshape the way we relate to ourselves, and to the human and more-than-human cohabitants of our worlds. Johnson is “thrilled for the possibilities a dedicated place for Indigenous brilliance, like the Center for Indigenous Studies, brings” and says, “I am happy we get to rise and stomp alongside brilliant artists/thinkers/makers here now, and into the future!”
The Center for Indigenous Studies at Bard College presents Being Future Being: Land/Celestial by Emily Johnson/Catalyst as part of a series of programming developed in partnership with CCS Bard to surround the exhibition Indian Theater: Native Performance, Art, and Self-Determination since 1969. For more information on this major exhibition, please visit Indian Theater.
Two artists talks moderated by the celebrated curator, writer, and researcher Candice Hopkins (Carcross/Tagish First Nation) will enrich the performance experience and will take place at CCS Bard. Nicholas Galanin will be in conversation with Rebecca Belmore (Lac Seul First Nation (Anishinaabe)) on June 25, and Emily Johnson will be in conversation with Jeffrey Gibson (Mississippi Band of Choctaw and Cherokee) on July 23.
Performances: Ya Tseen at Spiegeltent, Fisher Center, June 24, 8:30pm Purchase tickets here.
Being Future Being: Land/Celestial by Emily Johnson/Catalyst at CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art, July 22, 6 pm Free registration here (required).
Artist Talks: Rebecca Belmore and Nicholas Galanin, moderated by Candice Hopkins at CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art, June 25, 2 pm
These artist talks are free and open to the public; please arrive early as seating is limited.
The Center for Indigenous Studies at Bard College is excited to welcome you to Bard. In the spirit of truth and equity, it is with gratitude and humility that we acknowledge that we are gathered on the sacred homelands of the Munsee and Muhheaconneok people, who are the original stewards of the land. Today, due to forced removal, the community resides in Northeast Wisconsin and is known as the Stockbridge-Munsee Community. We honor and pay respect to their ancestors past and present, as well as to future generations, and we recognize their continuing presence in their homelands. We understand that our acknowledgment requires those of us who are settlers to recognize our own place in and responsibilities toward addressing inequity, and that this ongoing and challenging work requires that we commit to real engagement with the Munsee and Mohican communities to build an inclusive and equitable space for all.
Bard College’s land acknowledgment was developed in dialogue with the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians. To learn more about the Stockbridge-Munsee Community, please visit www.mohican.com.
The Center for Indigenous Studies encourages all members of the Bard community and visitors to Bard’s Campus to please consider financially supporting the ongoing and essential work of the Mohican Cultural Affairs Department. Donations may be made here.
Groundbreaking Survey Examining Performance and Objecthood in Native North American Contemporary Art Opens at CCS Bard’s Hessel Museum of Art, June 2023
Featuring over 100 works from the 1960s through today, Indian Theater: Native Art, Performance, and Self-determination Since 1969 centers performance as origin point for the practice of artists from across Turtle Island
Exhibition features commissions and performances by Rebecca Belmore (Anishinaabe), Nicholas Galanin (Tlingit/Unangax̂), Jeffrey Gibson (The Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians/Cherokee), Maria Hupfield (Anishinaabe, Wasauksing First Nation / Canada), and Eric-Paul Riege (Diné)
The first major exhibition to center performance as an origin point for the development of contemporary art by Native American, First Nations, Inuit, and Alaska Native artists opens this June at the Center for Curatorial Studies’ (CCS Bard) Hessel Museum of Art. Curated by leading scholar and curator Candice Hopkins (Carcross/Tagish First Nation), Indian Theater: Native Art, Performance, and Self-determination Since 1969 traces the history of experimentation that emerged from the Institute of American Indian Arts’ Department for New Native Theater in the late 1960s and continues to inform the practice of Native artists today. The exhibition brings together over 100 works by over 40 artists and collectives, including new commissions and performances by Rebecca Belmore (Anishinaabe), Nicholas Galanin (Tlingit/Unangax̂), Jeffrey Gibson (The Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians/Cherokee), Maria Hupfield (Anishnaabek, Wasauksing First Nation / Canada), and Eric-Paul Riege (Diné).
On view from June 24 through November 26, 2023, Indian Theater is part of a sweep of initiatives at Bard College to place Indigenous Studies at the heart of curricular innovation and development, including the appointment of Hopkins as CCS Bard’s inaugural Fellow in Indigenous Art History and Curatorial Studies.
“This exhibition marks a critical contribution to contextualizing contemporary Indigenous art as part of a larger artistic movement whose history has been understudied and overlooked,” said Tom Eccles, Executive Director of the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, and Founding Director of the Hessel Museum of Art. “This groundbreaking presentation at the Hessel Museum provides a new framework for the interpretation of Indigenous contemporary art, a field of study that we look forward to continuing to advance with new research and curatorial innovation.”
“This exhibition takes its impetus from a modest, yet significant document: Indian Theatre: An Artistic Experiment in Process, published by the Institute for American Indian Arts (IAIA) in 1969. The treatise was the first to attempt to define ‘New Native’ theater, ushering in a new way of framing the long practice of performance in Indigenous societies across Turtle Island; they were also creating a template for its future,” stated Hopkins. “Inspired by this document, the exhibition, Indian Theater is attuned to the intersections between objects, performance—in its expanded forms—film and video, and visual sovereignty in Native North American contemporary art.”
Taking a broad scope to examining the history of Native contemporary art through the lens of performance, the exhibition engages notions of object and agency, sound and instrumentation, dress and adornment, and the body and its absence. The presentation begins chronologically and cites the 1969 document, Indian Theatre: An Artistic Experiment in Process, published by the IAIA. Featured is early documentation of IAIA theater performances, along with recently digitized footage of Spiderwoman Theater’s evocatively titled 1979 play Cabaret: An Evening of Disgusting Songs and Pukey Images, available for viewing for the first time since its original debut. The longest running theater group in the United States, Spiderwoman Theater emerged from the feminist movement of the 1970s and the disillusionment with the treatment of women in radical political movements of the time. Cabaret reflects the group’s contribution to the national dialogue on gender in its critique and satirization of how women are often made to swallow male platitudes about love and its challenges to homogenizing images of women.
The exhibition progresses with a survey of film, video, performance, sculpture, painting, drawing, and beadwork that at once pay homage to the legacy of innovative Native aesthetic traditions and this continuing tradition of experimentation and performativity. Jeffrey Gibson’s commission responds directly to the 1969 treatise, Indian Theatre, with a new performance, an arced choreography that centers music and oration. White Carver, an installation and performance by Nicholas Galanin features a non-Native carver engaged in carving a surprising object, one that might initially seem like a customary item in the vein of Northwest Coast Native American art. Galanin reconceives traditional carving practices, including the ways in which many Native carvers on the Northwest coast publicly perform their craft to a non-Native public, to confront the history of colonial fetishization of Indigenous cultures and objects. Another performance features artist Eric-Paul Riege as he engages with a series of soft sculptures of oversized pairs of Diné earrings. Over his day-long durational performance, his suspended sculptures are activated and sounded, becoming an extension of the artist’s body and Diné cosmology.
Both the Galanin and Riege performances will take place in the galleries during opening weekend (June 24-25, 2023), joined by Rebecca Belmore, who will activate her large-scale commission, Familia, with a seven-hour durational performance, and participate in an artist talk. Installed on the exterior of the Hessel Museum of Art, Familia is a monumental new work (17 x 30 ft) that will blanket the Museum’s façade. Using worker’s coveralls as raw material, the piece mirrors the dimension of a flag, but instead of symbolizing nationhood or sovereignty, this work questions the colonial impulses behind these gestures and their histories of labor exploitation. Belmore’s related performance will call attention to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, Two-Spirit, and Trans People (MMIWG2ST+)through a collective performance of care that will center objects on the grounds of the Hessel Museum that are often overlooked.
Also on view are works by artists including KC Adams (Métis); asinnajaq (Inuk); Sonny Assu (Ligwiłda'xw Kwakwaka'wakw from Wei Wai Kum Nation); Natalie Ball (Klamath/Modoc); Rick Bartow (Wiyot); Bob Boyer (Métis); Dana Claxton (Lakota); Theo Jean Cuthand (Plains Cree, Scottish, Irish); Ruth Cuthand (Plains Cree, Scottish, Irish, Canadian); Beau Dick (Kwakwaka’wakw, Musgamakw Dzawada’enuxw First Nation); Demian DinéYahzi’ (Diné); Rosalie Favell (Métis (Cree/ British); Jeneen Frei Njootli (Vuntut Gwitchin, Czech and Dutch); Ishi Glinsky (Tohono O'odham); Raven Halfmoon (Caddo); Gabrielle L'Hirondelle Hill (Métis); Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk Nation/Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians); Matthew Kirk (Navajo/Diné); Kite (Oglala Sioux Tribe); Cannupa Hanska Luger (Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Lakota); Tanya Lukin Linklater (Alutiiq/Sugpiaq); James Luna (Payómkawichum, Ipai, and Mexican); Rachel Martin (Tlingit/Tsaagweidei, Killer Whale Clan, of the Yellow Cedar House (Xaai Hit’) Eagle Moiety); Kent Monkman (Cree member of Fisher River Cree Nation in Treaty 5 Territory, Manitoba); Audie Murray (Métis); Lloyd Kiva New (Cherokee); New Red Order, Adam Khalil (Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians); Zack Khalil (Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians); Jackson Polys (Tlingit); Jessie Oonark (Inuit); Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (Salish member of the Confederated Salish & Kootenai Nation); Walter Scott (Kahnawá:ke); Spiderwoman Theater, Charlene Vickers (Anishinaabe); Kay WalkingStick (Citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and Anglo); Marie Watt (Seneca and German-Scot); Dyani White Hawk (Sičangu Lakota); and Nico Williams (Anishinaabe). A full list of artists is available online here.
Additional performances by Ya Tseen and Emily Johnson/Catalyst as well as a series of artists talks will be curated by the Center for Indigenous Studies in complement with Indian Theater throughout the duration of the show.
Exhibition Publication Indian Theater: Native Art, Performance, and Self-determination Since 1969 will be accompanied by a major publication, Native Visual Sovereignty: A Reader on Art and Performance, edited by Candice Hopkins and co-produced with Forge Project and charting the evolution of Indigenous North American performance in contemporary art over the past 60 years. The reader, which will be available in fall 2023, comprises newly commissioned essays, poetry, and oral history interviews, alongside reprints of critical texts by leading Indigenous scholars and artists.
Exhibition Organization, Credits & Sponsorship The exhibition and associated reader are made possible by Lonti Ebers, the Marieluise Hessel Foundation, the Gochman Family Foundation, the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, the Board of Governors of the Center for Curatorial Studies, and the Center’s patrons, supporters, and friends.
Additional support for Indian Theater: Native Art, Performance, and Self-determination Since 1969 has been provided by Forge Project, Teiger Foundation, and The Kaleta A. Doolin Foundation.
Support for public programs has been provided through the Bard College’s Forge Endowment for American and Indigenous Studies and the Center for Indigenous Studies, generously supported by the Gochman Family Foundation with matching commitments from George Soros and the Open Society Foundation Endowment challenge.
The new commission by Rebecca Belmore for Indian Theater: Native Art, Performance, and Self-determination Since 1969 has been generously supported by Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck, a Mellon Foundation Humanities for All Times project.
Bard Archaeology Students Work on Excavation at Fisher Center’s Maya Lin Building Site, Reports the Daily Catch
Bard archeology students, under the direction of Archaeologist in Residence Christopher Lindner, have been working to unearth cultural clues about the past at a dig site where the new Maya Lin performing arts studio building will be built for the Fisher Center, writes Emily Sachar for the Daily Catch. Ahead of the building construction, the students hope to find artifacts of daily living that may have been used by the Lenape and Muhheakantuck (Mohican), the original stewards of the land where Bard College now resides. “The project is a demonstration of Bard’s commitment to protecting what we can of the Indigenous past,” Lindner, director of the summer Bard Archaeology Field School and Bard’s archaeologist in residence, told Sachar. “It’s a way of showing respect and doing what we can to learn before we have an impact on the land.”
Campus Center, Weis Cinema3:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 Kalen Goodluck ’16 is a Diné, Mandan, Hidatsa, and Tsimshian journalist and photographer based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, whose work focuses on Indigenous Affairs, near and far. Goodluck is a graduate of the Bard College Human Rights Program, class of 2016. kalengoodluck.com