Daniel Mendelsohn Receives One of France’s Highest Cultural Honors
Daniel Mendelsohn, the Charles Ranlett Flint Professor of Humanities at Bard, has been awarded with the rank of Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Minister of Culture Rima Abdul Malak on behalf of France. “It gives me great pleasure to hereby highlight your dedication in the service of culture, which holds such a special place in French people’s hearts,” wrote Malak. One of the primary distinctions from the four ministerial orders of the French Republic, this award is bestowed upon those who have distinguished themselves by their creativity in the cultural spheres, or by their support for the distribution of knowledge and works that form the wealth of French cultural heritage.
Daniel Mendelsohn Receives One of France’s Highest Cultural Honors
Daniel Mendelsohn is an internationally bestselling author, critic, essayist, and translator. Born in New York City in 1960, he received degrees in Classics from the University of Virginia (MA) and Princeton (PhD). Aside from The Lost, which won the National Books Critics Circle Award and the National Jewish Book Award in the United States and the Prix Médicis in France, Mendelsohn’s books include: An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic (2017), named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, Newsday, Library Journal, The Christian Science Monitor, and Kirkus; The Elusive Embrace (1999), a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year; three collections of essays; a scholarly study of Greek tragedy, Gender and the City in Euripides’ Political Plays (2002), and a two-volume translation of the poetry of C. P. Cavafy (2009), which included the first English translation of the poet’s “Unfinished Poems.” His tenth and most recent book, Three Rings: A Tale of Exile, Narrative, and Fate, was published in September 2020, and he has just completed a translation of Homer’s Odyssey, to be published by University of Chicago Press in 2024.
The Order of Arts and Letters (L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres) was established in 1957 by the French Minister of Culture to reward individuals who have distinguished themselves by their creativity in the arts or literature or by the contribution they have made to the influence of arts and letters in France and worldwide. It consists of three ranks: Knight (Chevalier), Officer (Officier), and the highest honor, Commander (Commandeur).
Post Date: 02-21-2023
Bard College Professor Jenny Xie Awarded a 2023 Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship in Literature
Assistant Professor of Written Arts and National Book Award finalist Jenny Xie has been selected as a 2023 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow in literature. Xie received one of 54 fellowships awarded to early-career artists based in Minnesota and New York City. Xie will receive $50,000 over two years ($25,000 per year) in direct support to create new work, advance artistic goals, and/or promote professional development. “I strive to create work that demonstrates the vital force unassimilated language can have, of the power and charge that can pulse through words when they behave differently, against rules and convention, and against forces that collude to render language more utilitarian, more homogenous, and free of nuance and rich complexity,” she writes.Bard College Professor Jenny Xie Awarded a 2023 Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship in Literature
Jenny Xie is a New York City-based writer and educator. She is the author of two poetry collections, Eye Level (Graywolf Press, 2018) and The Rupture Tense (Graywolf Press, 2022), and the chapbook Nowhere to Arrive (Northwestern University Press, 2017). Her work has been supported through fellowships and grants from Kundiman, New York Foundation of the Arts, Civitella Ranieri Foundation, and the Vilcek Foundation. She is an assistant professor of written arts at Bard College.
“I strive to create work that demonstrates the vital force unassimilated language can have, of the power and charge that can pulse through words when they behave differently, against rules and convention, and against forces that collude to render language more utilitarian, more homogenous, and free of nuance and rich complexity,” she writes.
Field-specific panels, composed of artists, curators, artistic leaders and arts administrators, reviewed a total of 702 applicants before identifying 129 as finalists for fuller discussion in advance of recommending a slate of fellows to the Jerome Board of Directors for approval. In their deliberations, panels considered applicants’ past works, artistic accomplishments, the potential impact of a fellowship on their careers and their artistic field, and their alignment with Jerome’s values of diversity, innovation and risk, and humility. This year’s cohort exemplifies Jerome Foundation’s commitment to diversity and the diversity of artists across all fields with 82% of the fellows identifying as Black, Native American, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian or Arab American or as multi-racial or multi-ethnic.
Fellows are also offered one-on-one coaching and peer gathering opportunities through the MAP Fund’s Scaffolding for Practicing Artists (SPA) program, designed to help artists individually and collectively consider, invent and co-devise solutions tailored to their specific practice and aesthetic ambitions.
Post Date: 01-18-2023
Peter L’Official Interviews Architect and Writer Sekou Cooke on Hip-Hop as a Blueprint for Architecture
For Architectural Record, Bard Associate Professor of Literature and Director of the American and Indigenous Studies Program Peter L’Official interviews architect and writer Sejou Cooke, who is the curator of Close to the Edge: The Birth of Hip-Hop Architecture, an exhibition on view at the Museum of Design Atlanta through January 29, 2023.Peter L’Official Interviews Architect and Writer Sekou Cooke on Hip-Hop as a Blueprint for Architecture
In the interview, L’Official quotes from Cooke’s 2021 book Hip-Hop Architecture: “Many have managed to exist simultaneously as successful architects and Black. Few have managed to express their Blackness through their architecture. Within hip-hop culture lies the blueprint for an architecture that is authentically Black with the power to upend the racist structures within the architectural establishment and ignite a new paradigm of creative production.” L’Official references Toni Morrison’s “unapologetic use of codes embedded in Black culture” and “her own struggle for writing that was ‘indisputably black,’” asking Cooke “Does Hip-Hop Architecture also strive for an architecture that is, after Morrison, ‘indisputably black?’”
Post Date: 12-06-2022
More News
-
Works by Bard Faculty Featured in Best of 2022 Lists
Works by Bard Faculty Featured in Best of 2022 Lists
This year, various media outlets are selecting works by Bard faculty members for their Best of 2022 lists. Some notable mentions include:
Assistant Professor of Music Angelica Sanchez’s album Sparkle Beings is named one of the Best Jazz Albums of 2022 by the New York Times.
Professor of Literature Hua Hsu’s memoir Stay True is named one of the 10 Best Books of 2022 by the New York Times Book Review and The Best Books of 2022 by the New Yorker.
Professor of Comparative Literature Joseph Luzzi’s Botticelli’s Secret is named one of the Best Books of 2022 So Far in nonfiction by the New Yorker.
James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and the Humanities Walter Russell Mead’s The Arc of a Covenant: The United States, Israel, and the Fate of the Jewish People is named among 100 Notable Books of 2022 by the New York Times Book Review.
Bard Graduate Center's Threads of Power: Lace From the Textilmuseum St. Gallen featured in the New York Times Best Art Books of 2022.
Post Date: 12-01-2022
-
Opinion: We can’t be lulled into a false sense of security. Trumpism is far from over. Bard Faculty Francine Prose in the Guardian
Opinion: We can’t be lulled into a false sense of security. Trumpism is far from over. Bard Faculty Francine Prose in the Guardian
Distinguished Writer in Residence Francine Prose considers the results of the midterms and a growing sense that Donald Trump “is losing his grip on the Republican party.” But she cautions, “to ‘move on’ from Trumpism, to view his regime as an aberration, a four-year mistake, is to fall victim to the dangerous historical amnesia to which Americans seem so susceptible.” She examines Trump’s announcement of his intention to run for president in 2024 and reflects on some of the most divisive moments of his presidency.
Post Date: 11-22-2022
-
Joseph Luzzi’s Botticelli’s Secret Named Among New Yorker’s Best Books of 2022 So Far
Joseph Luzzi’s Botticelli’s Secret Named Among New Yorker’s Best Books of 2022 So Far
Botticelli’s Secret by Joseph Luzzi, professor of comparative literature at Bard College, was named one of the best books of 2022 by the New Yorker. “In this wide-ranging history, Luzzi considers why the drawings, which illustrated eighty-eight cantos of Dante’s Divine Comedy, had fallen into oblivion, and charts both Dante’s and Botticelli’s reputations across the ages,” they write. “Many of the ideas for the book came from my classroom discussions with our students,” Luzzi says, making the book’s inclusion on this list “especially gratifying.” In Botticelli’s Secret, Luzzi posits “Botticelli’s drawings as ‘a “poem” in their own regard,’ and as a crucial link in the ‘mapping of the human spirit’s transition’ from one era to the next.”
Post Date: 11-22-2022
-
Latest Issue of Conjunctions, Bard College’s Celebrated Literary Magazine, Features New Work by Fred Moten, Can Xue, John Crowley, Nathaniel Mackey, Sofia Samatar, Yxta Maya Murray, Russell Banks, and Many Others
Latest Issue of Conjunctions, Bard College’s Celebrated Literary Magazine, Features New Work by Fred Moten, Can Xue, John Crowley, Nathaniel Mackey, Sofia Samatar, Yxta Maya Murray, Russell Banks, and Many Others
Conjunctions 79: Onword, the latest issue of the innovative literary magazine published by Bard College which has been in print for more than 40 continuous years, has just been released. “Like many endeavors in the arts,” writes Conjunctions editor Bradford Morrow, “literary journals are quixotic undertakings, and no matter how vigorous are the idealism, resilience, and stubbornness that sustain them, they are fragile enterprises. Fragile and yet crucial constituents in the literary ecosphere.” As its title suggests, Onword celebrates the continuation of the journal’s storied legacy.
Edited by novelist and Bard literature professor Morrow, Conjunctions:79, Onword features new work by Fred Moten, Can Xue, John Crowley, Nathaniel Mackey, Sofia Samatar, Yxta Maya Murray, Deb Olin Unferth, Rae Armantrout, G. C. Waldrep, Bonnie Nadzam, Vi Khi Nao, Carole Maso, Julia Alvarez, Fred D’Aguiar, Peter Gizzi, Shane McCrae, a novella by Russell Banks, as well as three previously unpublished poems by C. D. Wright. In his Editor’s Note, Morrow adds, “If the title was ambidextrous, the theme was nonexistent. Our organizing principle was simply great writing by great writers. Yet commonalities, shared themes, did arise over the course of putting the issue together.” He notes that themes of survival, migration, loss and renewal, evolution of mind and place, reimagining and rebuilding, stillness, how to live with disappointment, and how to move onward through difficult spiritual terrains, thread through the works collected in this issue.
Additional contributors to Onword include Leah Newsom, Alyssa Pelish, Jack Shear and Forrest Gander, Cole Swensen, Barrie Jean Borich, Jai Chakrabarti, Karla Kelsey and Nancy Kuhl, Melissa Pritchard, Peter Orner, Minna Zallman Proctor, Yannick Murphy, John Yau, Martine Bellen, and Andrew Mossin.
The Washington Post says, “Conjunctions offers a showplace for some of the most exciting and demanding writers now at work.”
Edited by Bradford Morrow and published twice yearly by Bard College, Conjunctions publishes innovative fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction by emerging voices and contemporary masters. For four decades, Conjunctions has challenged accepted forms and styles, with equal emphasis on groundbreaking experimentation and rigorous execution. Morrow won PEN America’s 2007 Nora Magid Award for Magazine Editing and the 2022 Community of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP) Lord Nose Award, given in recognition of a lifetime of superlative work in literary publishing. In 2020, Conjunctions received the prestigious Whiting Literary Magazine Prize. The judges noted, “Every issue of Conjunctions is a feat of curatorial invention, continuing the Modernist project of dense, economical writing, formal innovation, and an openness to history and the world.” Named a “Top Literary Magazine” of 2019, 2020, and 2021 by Reedsy, the journal was a finalist for the 2018, 2019, and 2021 ASME Award for Fiction and the 2018 CLMP Firecracker Award for General Excellence. In addition, contributions to recent issues have been selected for The Best American Essays (2018, 2019), The Pushcart Prize XLIV: Best of the Small Presses, Best American Experimental Writing 2020, Best Small Fictions 2019, The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2019, and The Best American Short Stories (2021, 2022).
For more information on the latest issue, please visit conjunctions.com/print/archive/conjunctions79. To order a copy, go to bardian.bard.edu/portal/conjunctions, call the Conjunctions office at 845-758-7054, email [email protected], or write to Conjunctions, Bard College, PO Box 5000, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504-5000. Visit the Conjunctions website at conjunctions.com.
Post Date: 11-18-2022
-
To Hell and Back: Professor Joseph Luzzi’s New Book Traces the History of Botticelli’s Unfinished Illustrations of Dante’s Divine Comedy
To Hell and Back: Professor Joseph Luzzi’s New Book Traces the History of Botticelli’s Unfinished Illustrations of Dante’s Divine Comedy
Sandro Botticelli (c. 1445–1510) was “unquestionably the greatest artist to take up the challenge” of illustrating Dante’s Divine Comedy, writes Graeme Wood for the American Scholar. Botticelli died with his series of 100 drawings, one for each canto, unfinished, and then the illustrations went missing for over 400 years. In Botticelli’s Secret: The Lost Drawings and the Rediscovery of the Renaissance (W. W. Norton), Professor of Comparative Literature Joseph Luzzi traces the history of Botticelli’s project, the drawings’ rediscovery, and their role in the resurgence of Renaissance art in the 19th century.
Post Date: 11-08-2022
-
Francine Prose on the Work of Imprisoned Iranian Filmmaker Jafar Panahi for the New York Review of Books
Francine Prose on the Work of Imprisoned Iranian Filmmaker Jafar Panahi for the New York Review of Books
After being banned from making films for 20 years, Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi made This Is Not a Film while under house arrest. “We see him talking to his lawyer on the phone; watching TV; feeding his daughter’s pet iguana, Iggy; politely turning down invitations; and acting out a movie he wants to make about an isolated young woman,” writes Francine Prose, distinguished writer in residence, for the New York Review of Books. Tracing Panahi’s work through the decades, Prose draws attention to his intermixture of fiction and documentary, his dedication to the depiction of the lives of Iranian women, and his now regular appearances as a character in his own films, where he appears “genial, kindly, easily amused, remarkably easygoing—an unlikely candidate for an enemy of the state.” Now imprisoned as his newest film debuts in New York, sick with Covid and receiving “intentionally inadequate medical care,” Prose sees Panahi’s films as “a testament to the determination, perseverance, and courage required to keep making art, no matter what.”
Post Date: 10-18-2022
Literature Events
- 3/27Monday5:00 pm – 6:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 Aspinwall 302Monday, March 27, 2023
Literature Program Salon
Matthew Mutter, Associate Professor of Literature; Chair, Languages and Literature Division
Aspinwall 302 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Please join us for the second Literature Salon of the spring. We’ll have the pleasure of speaking with Prof. Matthew Mutter about his recent writing on the question of value in, and the value of, the humanities. All students interested in Literature are encouraged to attend! Food provided.
A recent essay by Prof. Mutter is available on request. For a copy of this reading or for more information about the event, contact Adhaar Desai ([email protected]) or Alex Benson ([email protected]). - 3/31Friday2:00 pm – 3:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 Olin, Room 102
- 4/17Monday6:00 pm – 7:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 AuditoriumMonday, April 17, 2023
Sara Freeman (Courtesy Jeff Landman)A Reading with Sara Freeman
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
On Monday, April 17th at 6pm in the László Z. Bitó ’60 Auditorium, Reem-Kayden Center (RKC), writer Sara Freeman will read from her work. Introduced by Bard faculty member Gabriella Lindsay, and followed by a Q&A, the reading is free and open to the public.
Sara Freeman is a Canadian-British writer based in the United States. She graduated from Columbia University with an MFA in fiction in 2013. At Columbia, she won the Henfield Prize for the best piece of short fiction by a graduate student. Her debut novel, Tides, published in 2022, was the winner of The Bridge Book Award and named one of the 100 Must-Read Books of 2022 by Time Magazine.
Gabriella Lindsay comes to Bard from New York University, where she was a postdoctoral teaching fellow in the Department of French Literature, Thought and Culture. She is the recipient of a Georges Lurcy Fellowship and numerous research fellowships and travel awards from NYU. Her work has appeared in Comparative Literature Studies (special issue), American Philosophical Association Blog, and Études littéraires africaines, and elsewhere.
Read more about Sara's work here.