Literature News
WAMC’s On the Road Broadcasts Live from Arendt Center’s Annual Conference “JOY”
Opening the show, Donahue will speak with Bard President Leon Botstein and Academic Director of the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and the Humanities at Bard College Roger Berkowitz.
Ingrid Becker Named a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study
Becker will work on a new research project about the rise of the questionnaire—a sociological technology and ubiquitous mass cultural form—in relation to the shifting status of the question in post-1945 Anglo-American poetry.
Robert Kelly and Charlotte Mandell ’90 Write About Pierre Joris ’69 for the Poetry Foundation
“He was never jealous of anybody,” said Mandell. “He was always happy for other people's success.”
Upcoming Events
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2/16Monday5:00 pm – 6:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Olin Humanities, Room 201
Literature Salon: Written on Stone and Wax: Ovid, Ancient Literature, and the Historical Archive
Lauren Curtis, Director, Classical Studies, Associate Professor of Classics, Bard College
Monday, February 16, 2026This presentation tackles how scholars of literature can approach historical archives, using the Roman poet Ovid as an example. Exiled to the northeastern frontier of the Roman empire (modern Romania) by the emperor Augustus in 8 CE, Ovid continued to write deeply personal poetry to friends and a wider reading public. Scholars have long noticed how his poetry is transformed by the experience of exile; this presentation argues that if we put his work in dialogue with the surviving written archives from the Roman frontier (military and diplomatic documents, for example, inscribed on wax, bronze, and stone), we see that not just his themes but also his very language is transformed by local written culture.Curtis will discuss how the traditional siloing of academic disciplines and subfields can occlude such connections, and argue that attempting to bridge them can result in new approaches to (ancient) literature.
5:00 pm – 6:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Olin Humanities, Room 201
Contact: Franco Baldasso
E-mail: [email protected]
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2/24Tuesday5:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Preston Theater
Korean Science Fiction and the Boundaries of the Imaginable
Dr. Sangkeun Yoo, (Assistant Professor at Marist University)
Tuesday, February 24, 2026This lecture examines the overlooked history of Korean science fiction and what it reveals about the political limits of imagination. Tracing the genre from early twentieth-century translations of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells to contemporary popular Korean film, television, and popular media such as K-pop Demon Hunters, the talk challenges Western-centered narratives of science fiction’s origins.
5:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Preston Theater
Focusing on Korea’s experience of colonialism, Cold War geopolitics, and national division, the lecture argues that science fiction is a privileged site for understanding not only what futures were imagined, but what futures remained impossible to imagine. By situating Korean science fiction within a global framework, the talk rethinks science fiction as a politically embedded, transnational genre rather than a purely Western one.
Contact: Soonyoung Lee
E-mail: [email protected]
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4/22Wednesday5:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Stevenson Library
Literature Open House
Wednesday, April 22, 2026
5:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Stevenson Library
Please join us for the Literature Program's Spring 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 spring semester.
Everyone, whether or not you've already taken a course in Literature, is welcome!
Contact: Marisa Libbon
E-mail: [email protected]