Literature

Mary McCarthy and Ralph Ellison

Toni Morrison, “Literature and Public Life"

“Literature allows us—no, demands of us—the experience of ourselves as multidimensional persons. And in doing so, is far more necessary than it has ever been. As art it deals with the human consequences of the other disciplines: history, law, science, economics, labor studies, medicine. As narrative its form is the principal method by which knowledge is appropriated and translated.”

About the Program

Curriculum and Course of Study

The Literature Program at Bard challenges national, cultural, and disciplinary boundaries that have often dictated the terms by which we understand the meaning and value of the written word. Our curriculum emphasizes cultural, linguistic, and geographic diversity, and is engaged with interdisciplinary programs and concentrations such as Africana Studies, Asian Studies, Environmental Studies, Experimental Humanities, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Human Rights, Latin American and Iberian Studies, Medieval Studies, and Middle Eastern Studies.
Curriculum and Course of Study
Community and Resources

The Bard Literature Program has a long-standing commitment to fostering the work of writers and thinkers who challenge political authority, diversify literary canons, and expand the parameters of public discourse. As poets, critics, novelists, scholars, translators, teachers, editors, journalists, and political activists, our faculty, students, and alumni/ae are uniquely positioned to interrogate inherited forms of knowledge and to chart out innovative models of imaginatively and socially engaged responsibility.

Community and Resources
Our Mission and Aims

Literary study wakes us up to the historical weight of our individual and collective voices and expands the analytic and expressive tools we use to engage other beings. Thinking critically, both individually and collectively, speaking up with compassion and conviction, and writing with clarity and purpose are the cornerstones of what we teach and practice as a faculty. These skills are essential to the study of literature, to active citizenship, and ultimately, to having a voice in the world.
Mission and Aims
Equity and Justice Initiatives

To study literature is to insist on the value of our differences, and to learn to encounter difference in expansive ways. Yet when it comes to social inequalities and educational access in this country, the humanities have a long and complicated history. In order to address these systemic injustices, the Bard Literature Program is committed to frank self-scrutiny, to transparency, and to ensuring genuine equity for all members of our community.

Additional Contact

To find out more about the Bard Literature Program, our upcoming events, and current initiatives, please contact us at [email protected].

Literature Events

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2/24
Monday

A bear stands on all fours in a medieval manuscript.
Monday, February 24, 2025
Literature Salon: “You hunt me, and yet I wish you no harm”: A Bear Speaks Back In a Medieval Chronicle
A talk by Karen Sullivan, Irma Brandeis Professor of Romance Literature and Culture
Olin Humanities, Room 201 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm EST/GMT-5
According to the chronicler Jean Froissart, Sir Peter of Béarn, the half-brother of Gaston Phoebus, III count of Foix and X viscount of Béarn, was hunting one day in the Forest of Biscay when he killed a large bear. When he brought the animal’s carcass home back to his castle, his wife fainted and had to be carried off to her chamber. After she came to, she informed her husband that she needed to leave immediately on a pilgrimage with their two children and to take with them a fair amount of her wealth. She never returned from this trip. According to a squire associated with Gaston’s household, she explained to her servants that the bear her husband had killed was same one her father had once hunted. She added that, while her father was pursuing this bear, he had heard someone say, “You hunt me, and yet I wish you no harm.”

Nowadays, we are familiar with animal rights arguments that inveigh against the morality of hunting. But what meaning did the words attributed to the bear in Froissart’s chronicle possess for its fourteenth-century audience? What is the relation between the language of chivalry employed by Gaston’s hunting manual and the language of justice invoked by the bear? How are we to understand who uttered the bear’s words? This talk will discuss these questions and more.

5:00 pm – 6:00 pm EST/GMT-5 Olin Humanities, Room 201

2/27
Thursday

Thursday, February 27, 2025
Expanding Verse: Japanese Poetry at the Edge of Media
Andrew Campana, Assistant Professor, Cornell University
Olin Humanities, Room 102 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm EST/GMT-5
This talk will draw from the just-published book, Expanding Verse, and look at experimental poetic practice in Japan over the last hundred years, focusing on poetry in engagement with cinema in the 1920s and Augmented Reality poetry in the 2010s. Drawing together approaches from literary, media, and disability studies, we will consider how poets push back against the new media technologies of their day, find new possibilities at the edge of media, and in so doing challenge dominant conceptions of both who counts as a poet, and what counts as poetry.

5:00 pm – 6:30 pm EST/GMT-5 Olin Humanities, Room 102