Main Image for Equity and Justice Initiatives

Equity and Justice Initiatives

Photo by Sonita Alizada ’23
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.

Recommended Reading

The course of study offered by Bard’s Literature Program provides students with the knowledge, the tools, and the confidence needed to interpret, to question, and ultimately to transform the systems of meaning-making that have constructed the world as we know it. As a faculty, and as a scholarly and creative community, we affirm these commitments to our students: to foster open dialogue about the history of literary studies at the College, in the U.S., and throughout the world; to aid and encourage all efforts to redress systemic injustices and to effect meaningful change; and to model the ethos of mutual trust, care, and respect needed to undertake such risks and to sustain the honest self-scrutiny they demand.


Our Initiatives

In addition to our ongoing work to enhance the diversity and accessibility of our classes, our pedagogy, and our curriculum, the Literature Program is spearheading several targeted initiatives to which all members of the community are invited to contribute. Please contact the Literature Program [email protected] for more information.

  • The Program History Initiative
    Drawing on Bard’s archives and the ongoing scholarship of our faculty members, and in collaboration with past and present students, faculty, and members of the administration, we are studying the program’s history of inclusion in relation to race, ethnicity, class, ability, gender, and sexuality.
  • The Text Equity Project
    Working closely with the Scale Project and the staff and students of Bard’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Programs (HEOP, BOP, ECO, and Posse Scholars), we are investigating ways to ensure that all literature students have affordable access to books and other course materials.
  • THE LITERATURE PROGRAM BOOK FUND
    The Literature Program Book Fund has been endowed by the generous support of an anonymous donor. This fund provides physical copies of assigned books to any student in financial need, enrolled in a literature class taught in English or in a foreign language.

LAND ACKNOWLEDGMENT FOR BARD COLLEGE IN ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON

Developed in Cooperation with the Stockbridge-Munsee Community

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. 

This land acknowledgement, adopted in 2020, required establishing and maintaining long-term, and evolving, relationships with the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians. The Mellon Foundation's 2022 Humanities for All Times grant for “Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck” 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.