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.
A talk by Jeffrey Gibson (Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians/Cherokee) Lecture with Studio Arts
Jeffrey Gibson (born 1972) is an interdisciplinary artist. A member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and of Cherokee descent, Gibson grew up in major urban centers in the United States, Germany, and Korea. He was awarded honorary doctorates from Claremont Graduate University and the Institute of American Indian Arts. He is currently an artist-in-residence at Bard College.
E-mail: [email protected]
3/04
Tuesday
Stevenson Library
Food and Memory Exhibition
Tuesday, March 4, 2025 – Friday, March 14, 2025 | Stevenson Library
Featuring Stephanie Kyuyong Lee’s Hard Labor, Soft Space
Food and Memory, curated by Olivia Tencer, Mayss Al Alami, and Melina Roise, is an exhibition to accompany the third and final Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuk annual conference. This exhibition showcases 10 works by artist and architect Stephanie Kyuyoung Lee. As part of Lee’s project Hard Labor, Soft Space: The Making of Radical Farms, these maps “examine the rural future in the context of climate disasters and political upheavals by exploring the intersections of race, labor, and land in agriculture-based collective living projects, particularly in the Northeastern United States.”
Through a research-based investigation with collective farms and food systems changemakers in the Hudson Valley, Lee “reframes rurality as a site of radical reclamation.” Displayed alongside dried food ingredients representing the building blocks of recipes from Indigenous cookbooks, Food & Memory attempts to reveal both the textural and ecological micro– and social and political macro– of our dinner plates.
Contact: Melina Ann Roise E-mail: [email protected]
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]
Professor Joshua Glick Writes About AI in Film for the Los Angeles Review of Books
Professor Joshua Glick critiqued the movie Here in his recent article for the Los Angeles Review of Books. He considers the movie through the lens of its use of AI, finding that the film’s dependence on the technology mirrors “an embattled film and television industry in dire need of creative reinvigoration and struggling to find a path forward.”
Professor Joshua Glick Writes About AI in Film for the Los Angeles Review of Books
Associate Professor of Film and Electronic Arts Joshua Glick.
Associate Professor of Film and Electronic Arts Joshua Glick critiqued the movie Here in the Los Angeles Review of Books. He considers the movie through the lens of its use of AI, finding that the film’s dependence on the technology mirrors “an embattled film and television industry in dire need of creative reinvigoration and struggling to find a path forward.” Glick analyzes the film’s machine-learning AI, which lets Here represent thousands of years across time and de-age its two main actors: “while Here aimed to be a proof of concept for how AI could be ethically applied to a project at a moment when labor unions, cinephiles, and a wary public have risen up against it, the film once again exposed its fault lines.”
Bard College Hosts Third Annual Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck Conference on Food & Memory, March 6–8
Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck, a Mellon Foundation Humanities for All Timesinitiative, hosts its final annual conference from March 6 through 8, at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. Centered around the theme of the Rethinking Place project’s third year, the conference, “Food & Memory,” will aim to explore food systems, agricultural practices, and culinary histories as a point of entry into place-making past, present, and future.
Bard College Hosts Third Annual Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck Conference on Food & Memory, March 6–8
Clockwise from top left: Lucy Grignon, Ancient Roots Homestead (photo by Thatcher Keats); Vivien Sansour, founder and director of the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library (photo by Samar Hazboun); Misty Cook, author of Medicine Generations, Natural Native American Medicines Traditional to the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohicans Indian Tribe; Jalal Sabur, cofounder of Freedom Food Alliance and Sweet Freedom Farm.
Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck, a Mellon Foundation Humanities for All Timesinitiative, hosts its finalannual conference from March 6 through 8, at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. Centered around the theme of the Rethinking Place project’s third year, the conference, “Food & Memory,” will aim to explore food systems, agricultural practices, and culinary histories as a point of entry into place-making past, present, and future.
The two prior Rethinking Placeconferences, “The DRE: Disturbance, Re-Animation, and Emergent Archives” and “Refusal, Creation, and Intersectionality,” focused on emergent and disruptive archives and on Indigenous research methods, and engaged themes that continue to apply to “Food & Memory.” Our complex food systems and their many human and non-human players—recipes and seeds, plants and care—can be seen as living archives, locations of research, and sites of knowledge production.
From March 6 through 8, Rethinking Place hosts a multidisciplinary gathering to interrogate questions of food and memory, building on 24 months of work in adjacent areas. This conference brings together agricultural workers including Jalal Sabur of Sweet Freedom Farm and Kenny Perkins (Mohawk)of the Akwesasne Seed Hub, chefs including Farah Momen, food systems scholars including Ozoz Sokoh, and artists, notably Vivien Sansour and Marie Watt (Turtle Clan of the Seneca Nation of Indians), to create fertile ground for interdisciplinary discussion.
On Thursday, March 6, Lucille Grignon (Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican) gives her opening keynote address, titled “In the Kitchen with Our Ancestors,” followed by a presentation by Marie Watt, a community meal with Ozoz Sokoh and BEM Brooklyn, celebrating the release of her new Nigerian cookbook, Chop Chop. A simultaneous exhibition in the Bard Stevenson Library features former Architecture Program Fellow Stephanie Kyuyoung Lee’s work, “Hard Labor, Soft Space: The Making of Radical Farms,” made while in residence at Bard College.
On Friday, March 7, the day’s events feature chef Farah Momen’s talk “Taste the Revolution: The Evolution of Bengali Food Culture,” farmer Jalal Sabur’s workshop “Grow Food Not Prisons: Building a movement towards Liberation and Justice,” and several other concurrent workshops include a medicine walk with Misty Cook (Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican), place-based research and zine making, jam making at Montgomery Place Kitchens, and presentations by Rethinking Place Food & Memory Fellows Sage Liotta ’25 and Tatiana Blackhorse ’27. A Stone Soup Community Dinner and Storytelling, cohosted by the Bard Farm, Fisher Center Anti-Racism Working Group, and Experimental Humanities concludes the day.
On Saturday, March 8, Kenny Perkins of Akwesasne Seed Hub gives the closing keynote address, followed by Choy Common’s talk “Growing Interdependence—Building a Food Sovereignty Cooperative Within and Against Industrial Food Systems,” workshops on student organizing for food justice and building land-based solidarity networks, and the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library Traveling Kitchen.
“We are honored to benefit from the generosity and wisdom of individuals who have long engaged in the hard work of nurturing and defending the flora and fauna vital to a balanced world,” says Christian Ayne Crouch, principal investigator of Rethinking Place and director of the Center for Indigenous Studies at Bard College. “I can think of no better way, on the cusp of spring and a new growing season, to conclude this grant celebrating deep local learning and myriad forms of intellectual and community engagement.”
We are pleased to have joined our efforts in place-based inquiry with other entities on the Bard campus. For their support over the life of the Rethinking Place project, we thank the Bard Farm, the Center for Environmental Science and Humanities, the Center for Experimental Humanities, the Center for Human Rights and the Arts, and the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts. Rethinking Place would also like to extend gratitude to our supporting partners at Center for Indigenous Studies, American and Indigenous Studies, the Fisher Center Anti-Racism Working Group on Food, BEM Brooklyn, Forge Project, Sweet Freedom Farm, and the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library. “Food & Memory” is the final conference of the “Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck” project grant period.
Jeffrey Gibson Reflects on a Standout Year in Artnet
Jeffrey Gibson. Photo by Brian Barlow
Jeffrey Gibson, artist in residence at Bard College, reflects on 2024—a year that started with Gibson being honored as the first Indigenous and openly queer artist to have a solo representation of the US Pavilion in Venice Biennale and continued with MASS MoCA’s commissioning of Power Full Because We’re Different, the largest single museum installation in his career—in an interview with Artnet. Gibson notes the opening events of the Venice Biennale as a personal highlight of 2024 “because of the sheer joy felt by myself and many other Native and Indigenous people who traveled to Venice to celebrate together and bring life to the installation through music, dance, poetry and performance. To see how the images ricocheted through Indian Country in the US was thrilling.” He also mentions Indian Theater: Native Performance, Art, and Self Determination since 1969, organized by Fellow in Indigenous Art History and Curatorial Studies at Bard Candice Hopkins CCS ’03, at the Hessel Museum of Art, as one of the best exhibitions that he saw in 2024. “It is the kind of exhibition that I have been waiting for and it established a fresh starting point for many when considering the history of Native American Art,” says Gibson.
Professor Kite’s Artistic Residency Featured in I Care If You Listen
Kite.
Bard Distinguished Artist in Residence and Assistant Professor of American and Indigenous Studies Kite MFA ’18 was profiled in the multimedia hub I Care If You Listen. The piece focuses on Kite’s two-day residency at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at Rensselaer (EMPAC) where she led seven students through a workshop on dreaming, then let them create and perform their own visual scores based on their dreams. “It’s great to get to work with the students here,” Kite said. “Wrangling crazy ideas, organizing them into something sensible, being sensitive to your audience’s needs, and being careful with time, being self aware—those are all skills I can share.”
Kite joined Bard in 2023 and has worked in the field of machine learning since 2017. She develops wearable technology and full-body software systems to interrogate past, present, and future Lakȟóta philosophies. She is also the director of the Wihanble S’a Center for Indigenous AI at Bard. I Care If You Listen describes her work as “[uniting] scientific and artistic disciplines through custom worn electronic instruments, research, visual scores, and more… rooted in Lakota ways of making knowledge, in which body and mind are always intimately intertwined.”
Suzanne Kite MFA ’18, director of the Wihanble S’a Center for Indigenous AI.
Suzanne Kite MFA ’18, aka Kite, distinguished artist in residence, assistant professor of American and Indigenous Studies, and director of the Wihanble S’a Center for Indigenous AI at Bard, was interviewed by News10 NBC for an article about how Indigenous engineers and artists are using artificial intelligence for cultural preservation projects. Of the 4,000 Indigenous languages worldwide, it is estimated that one dies every two weeks with its last speaker, according to data from the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. AI can be a valuable tool in the initiatives designed to preserve those languages and other aspects of Indigenous culture and creative practices, such as the art which Kite is using machine learning to create. “My question is simple: How do we create ethical art with AI by applying Indigenous ontologies?” Kite said. “I try to resist Western personification of AI and instead dig into the hyperlocal, grounded and practical frameworks of knowledge that American Indigenous communities provide.”
Center for Indigenous Studies’ Three-Day Convening at the Venice Biennale Featured in Hyperallergic
L–R: Christian Ayne Crouch, Abigail Winograd, Jeffrey Gibson (Mississippi Choctaw/Cherokee), and Kathleen Ash-Milby (Navajo). Photo by Federica Carlet
Bard’s Center for Indigenous Studies (CfIS) hosted a convening in Venice to consider how Indigenous aesthetics, futurity, and arts intersect with global practices and modernism. The name of the convening, “if I read you/what I wrote bear/in mind I wrote it,” from a poem by Layli Long Soldier MFA ’14 (Oglala Lakota), gathered Native and non-Native poets, academics, artists, musicians, curators, teachers, and students to address the interdisciplinary, transnational nature of Bard Artist in Residence Jeffrey Gibson's (Mississippi Choctaw/Cherokee) work in the US Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale Arte.
“The convening as a whole felt like an energizing disco, a kaleidoscopic exploration of Native identities in all their rich dualities, contrasts, and dichotomies: familiar and unfamiliar, past and future, joy and sorrow, detailed and monumental,” wrote Sháńdíín Brown (Navajo) for Hyperallergic.
The three-day event hosted luminaries of Native American and Indigenous studies and cutting-edge performers. Panels on beads, materiality, economies of labor and trade, aesthetics, poetry, performance, silhouette, and color also celebrated contemporary Indigenous artists, writers, and activists while examining the continued segregation of Indigenous voices in conversations regarding taste making, trade, modernity, and power. Several Bard College faculty and staff participated including Christian Ayne Crouch, dean of graduate studies, associate professor of history and American and Indigenous studies, and CfIS director; Brandi Norton (Iñupiaq), CfIS curator of public programs; Melina Roise, CfIS program coordinator; and Dinaw Mengetsu, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of the Humanities and director of the Written Arts Program.
Peter L’Official’s Essay “Black Builders” Published in Places Journal
Peter L’Official, associate professor of literature and director of the American and Indigenous Studies Program. Photo by Liz Munsell
Peter L’Official, associate professor of literature and director of the American and Indigenous Studies Program, has published “Black Builders,” an article exploring the relationship between both writing and architecture, and race and design, for Places Journal. In examining the works of visionary Black architect and urban planner W. Joseph Black (1961–1977), who tragically died of cancer at age 43, novelist Colson Whitehead, and other scholars and writers, L’Official asks: “What do we learn about visions of cities when we consider writing and architecture as mutually defining?” L’Official delves deeply into Black’s archives and grapples with his brilliant unfinished masterpieces including the ambitious Harlem Music Center and Gateway to Harlem complex, as well as two comprehensive volumes Visions of Harlem, intended as an exhibition and catalogue, and Black Builders of America, a compendium focused on the many known and unknown Black builders dating back from 1619 to the contemporary. Inspired by the career and legacy of W. Joseph Black, L’Official proposes a notion: “writing about architecture is also a method of practicing architecture—that is, by thinking it.” In contemplating “how many works by Black architects, planners, builders, and other dreamers lie dormant, still, in archives, or tossed by the wayside in frustration, never to be lauded as great works of even speculative imagination?” L’Official asserts “We should also expand our notions of who and what Black builders and Black building can be—and, indeed, of what it means to ‘build’ in the first place.”
L’Official’s “Black Builders” is the first essay in An Unfinished Atlas, a series funded by the Mellon Foundation and published by Places Journal that brings together scholars, cultural critics, essayists, and novelists of color to enrich the cultural record of place-based narratives across what is now called North America.
Bard Professor Christian Ayne Crouch Participates in “Unsettled Landscapes” Roundtable Discussion
Christian Ayne Crouch, dean of graduate studies and associate professor of history and American and Indigenous studies at Bard College.
Christian Ayne Crouch, dean of graduate studies and associate professor of history and American and Indigenous studies at Bard College, participated in a roundtable conversation with Alan Michelson, an artist and Mohawk member of the Six Nations of the Grand River, and Dr. Scott Manning Stevens, who is a citizen of the Akwesasne Mohawk Nation and curator of the exhibit Native Prospects: Indigeneity and Landscape, featuring works by Michelson and other contemporary Indigenous artists. The event, “Unsettled Landscapes,” was sponsored by the Bard College Center for Indigenous Studies and took place at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site in Catskill, where Native Prospects is on display. In presentations, Stevens and Michelson examine the concepts of landscape, wilderness and the Sublime in western artistic tradition, and offer perspective on how fundamentally these notions differ in Native American modes of thought. “What I wanted to do, then, in the exhibition that’s up, is bring in both older representations of Native people thinking of landscape and abstract, lived experience ways, and then contemporary expressions of landscape,” said Stevens. “Because, it’s not that we don’t love the landscape—we love the beauty of it. But it’s not a commodity which we frame and own, but much more reflect on the experience of living in.”
Wihanble S’a Center at Bard College Receives $500,000 Grant and Named NEH Humanities Research Center on Artificial Intelligence
Suzanne Kite MFA ’18, director of the Wihanble S’a Center for Indigenous AI.
Bard College is pleased to announce that the Wihanble S’a Center for Indigenous AI, directed by Dr. Suzanne Kite, distinguished artist in residence and assistant professor of American and Indigenous Studies, has been designated as a Humanities Research Center on AI by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). This prestigious recognition will confer a $500,000 grant in support of the Center, and position Wihanble S’a at the forefront of innovative research that integrates Indigenous Knowledge systems with cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.
Beginning in Fall 2024, the Wihanble S’a Center will embark on groundbreaking research aimed at developing ethical AI frameworks deeply rooted in Indigenous methodologies. The Center’s mission is to explore and address the ethical, legal, and societal implications of AI through an Indigenous lens, ensuring that AI technologies reflect diverse perspectives and contribute positively to society.
“This award is a tremendous honor and a recognition of the importance of American Indian perspectives in the rapidly evolving fields of AI,” said Dr. Kite, who is an award-winning Oglála Lakȟóta artist and academic, and Bard MFA ’18 alum. “Our goal is to develop ethical methodologies for systems grounded in Indigenous knowledge, offering new guidelines and models through collaboration between Indigenous scholars and AI researchers, challenging the predominantly Western approach to AI. Wihanble S’a (WEE hah blay SAH) means dreamer in Lakota, and we are dreaming of an abundant future.”
The NEH designation will support the Center’s initiatives, including the establishment of a dedicated facility on Bard College’s Massena Campus. This facility will serve as a collaborative hub, bringing together scholars from across diverse academic disciplines—including computer science, cognitive and neuroscience, linguistics, ethics, and Indigenous Studies—to engage in interdisciplinary research and educational activities.
In addition to research, the Center will host public events, workshops, and an interdisciplinary Fellowship and Visiting Scholars program, all aimed at advancing the field of Indigenous-informed AI. The Center’s work will complement the recruitment and support of Indigenous students ongoing at Bard’s Center for Indigenous Studies, enhancing Bard College’s commitment to being a leader in Indigenous studies in the United States as well as complementing Dr. Kite’s work with the international Abundant Intelligences Indigenous AI research program. Wihanble S’a Center’s designation as an NEH Humanities Research Center on AI underscores Bard College’s dedication to fostering innovative, socially responsible research that bridges the humanities and technological advancements.
Black History Month Screening Hosted by Bard Center for Indigenous Studies and the Office of the Dean of Inclusive Excellence Weis Cinema7:00 pm – 8:00 pm EST/GMT-5 A film by Marcos C. Barbery and Sam Russell.
By Blood chronicles American Indians of African descent as they battle to regain their tribal citizenship. The film explores the impact of this battle, which has manifested into a broader conflict about race, identity, and the sovereign rights of indigenous people. The film demonstrates both sides of the battle, the shared emotional impact of the issue, and the rising urgency of the debate: Native American and African American history has been overlooked, and a tribal body feels as though their sovereignty is under siege.