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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10/18
Friday

Friday, October 18, 2024
Persian and Dari Language Table
Kline Commons 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
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 EDT/GMT-4 Kline Commons

10/21
Monday

Monday, October 21, 2024
A Reading by Joyce Carol Oates
The internationally renowned writer will read from her work.
Chapel of the Holy Innocents 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Internationally renowned writer Joyce Carol Oates will give a reading at Bard College on Monday, October 21, at 4:00 pm in the Chapel of the Holy Innocents. Oates is a recipient of the National Humanities Medal, the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Life Achievement Award, the National Book Award, the Jerusalem Prize for Lifetime Achievement, the Prix Femina, the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Art of the Short Story, and the Cino Del Duca World Prize, among many other honors. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the national best sellers We Were the Mulvaneys, Blonde, and the New York Times best seller The Falls.

The reading, which is being presented as part of Bradford Morrow’s course on innovative contemporary fiction, is free and open to the public. With Morrow, Oates is co-editing Conjunctions:83, Revenants, The Ghost Issue, which will be published in November. Revenants will bring together fiction and poetry on the “unliving-living” by a wide array of esteemed writers, such as Margaret Atwood, Carmen Maria Machado, Ben Okri, Paul Tremblay, Stephen Graham Jones, Patricia Smith, Valerie Martin, Jonathan Carroll, Reggie Oliver, James Morrow, Can Xue, Brian Evenson, Paul Muldoon, and others.

Praise for Joyce Carol Oates

“It’s hard to think of another writer with as fecund and protean an imagination . . . who is surely on any shortlist of America’s greatest living writers.” —The New York Times Magazine

“Her short stories—she has won more Pushcart Prizes than any other writer—feel perfect, like tight circles around a kind of unspoken abyss.” —The New Yorker

4:00 pm – 5:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 Chapel of the Holy Innocents

10/22
Tuesday

Tuesday, October 22, 2024
Literature Program Open House
Olin Atrium 5:15 pm – 6:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
Please join us for the Literature Program's Fall Open House. The Open House will be an opportunity to meet Literature faculty, hear about next semester's courses, talk with Literature seniors and other students about their experiences, and celebrate the fall semester with local doughnuts and apple cider. Everyone – whether or not you've already taken a course in Literature – is welcome!

5:15 pm – 6:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 Olin Atrium

Literature

Toni Morrison, “Literature and Public Life"

About the Program

Additional Contact

Literature Events

Persian and Dari Language Table

A Reading by Joyce Carol Oates

Literature Program Open House