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.
Equity and Justice Initiatives

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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11/15
Friday

Friday, November 15, 2024
Persian and Dari Language Table
Kline Commons 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Language tables are held at Kline and entail about an hour of casual discussion during meal times, where students interested in a language get to know each other and practice colloquial conversations. They are held by the tutor of the language, and although sometimes professors join the table, it is a very low-stakes and fun setting to immerse yourself in a language, its culture, and the foreign language community at Bard. Join us for Persian language table on Fridays.

1:00 pm – 2:00 pm EST/GMT-5 Kline Commons

11/18
Monday

Monday, November 18, 2024
Frequently Asked: Poetic Voice in the Survey Era
Ingrid Becker
Visiting Assistant Professor of Human Rights, Bard College
Olin Humanities, Room 204 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm EST/GMT-5
This presentation draws on an article-in-progress that examines some impacts of the rise of survey research in sociology—the process of eliciting data from human subjects through standardized sets of questions—on twentieth-century American literary history. Specifically, it explores the ways that poetic practices which have absorbed, interrogated, and reappropriated the forms and formats of surveys unsettle categories like “lyric” and “anti-lyric” poetry and forge new modes of self-expression through the constraints of “objective” lines of questioning.Attendees are invited (though not required) to read short excerpts from the article manuscript in advance; please contact Ingrid Becker ([email protected]) for a copy.

5:00 pm – 6:00 pm EST/GMT-5 Olin Humanities, Room 204