Interview: New York Times South Asia Correspondent Emily Schmall ’05 Talks About Sri Lanka’s Uprising
Emily Schmall ’05, who reports on Sri Lanka for the New York Times, discusses the country’s recent civil uprising and presidential resignation. “After about 24 hours, a gleefulness overtook the place, and some people swam in the president’s pool. They had done it: They had forced this extremely powerful president–who was accused of war crimes, who was feared–to leave his own home and even the country. But they did it peacefully, without taking up arms,” said Schmall.
Interview: New York Times South Asia Correspondent Emily Schmall ’05 Talks About Sri Lanka’s Uprising
Post Date: 07-26-2022
Bard Professor Peter L’Official Wins Rabkin Prize for Visual Art Journalism
Peter L’Official, associate professor of literature and director of the American Studies Program at Bard College, has won a Rabkin Prize of $50,000 for his work in visual art journalism. L’Official is one of eight visual art journalists to receive a Rabkin Prize from the Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation. “I am humbled to be recognized among such a brilliant group of fellow recipients by the Rabkin Foundation. Thank you to the jurors, the anonymous nominators, the Rabkin Trustees, and—most especially—to all the editors and writers and readers who make the work of arts criticism both possible and worthwhile,” said L’Official.Bard Professor Peter L’Official Wins Rabkin Prize for Visual Art Journalism
“I am humbled to be recognized among such a brilliant group of fellow recipients by the Rabkin Foundation. Thank you to the jurors, the anonymous nominators, the Rabkin Trustees, and—most especially—to all the editors and writers and readers who make the work of arts criticism both possible and worthwhile,” said L’Official.
Peter L’Official (he/him) is a writer, arts critic, and teacher of literature and American studies from The Bronx, NY. He is an associate professor in literature and director of the American Studies Program at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, where he teaches courses in African American literature and culture, twentieth- and twenty-first century American literature, and on how the visual arts intersect with literature, place, and architecture. He is also the project coordinator for “Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck,” a grant supported by the Mellon Foundation “Humanities for All Times” Initiative.
L'Official is the author of Urban Legends: The South Bronx in Representation and Ruin, published by Harvard University Press in 2020. His writing has appeared in Artforum, The Believer, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The New Yorker, The Paris Review Daily, The Village Voice, and other publications, and he is on the editorial board of The European Review of Books. He has written catalogue essays for exhibitions by artists such as Carl Craig and Becky Suss, and his next book project will explore the intersections of literature, architecture, and Blackness in America. L’Official has a B.A. in English from Williams College, and an M.A. in Journalism from New York University’s Cultural Reporting and Criticism program. He received his Ph.D. in American studies from Harvard University, and was formerly a fellow at the Charles Warren Center for American History at Harvard University in 2014-15.
Now in its sixth cycle, the Rabkin Prize started in 2017. To date, the Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation has given a total of $2,775,000 to individual art writers. The award program is by nomination only. A distinguished group of 16 nominators, working in the visual arts in all parts of the country, provided the list of potential winners. The nominators were asked to identify, “The essential visual art journalist working in your part of the country.” Candidates for the award submitted two recent published articles and a brief curriculum vita. Writers can be re-nominated and are eligible until they win a Rabkin Prize. This is an annual program and a central initiative of the foundation.
This cycle’s other winning journalists include: Shana Nys Dambrot (Los Angeles); Bryn Evans (Decatur, Georgia); Joe Fyfe (New York City); Stacy Pratt (Tulsa); Darryl F. Ratcliff, II (Dallas); Jeanne Claire van Ryzin (Austin); Margo Vansynghel (Seattle).
Post Date: 07-19-2022
Francie Prose on the January 6 Hearings for the Guardian: “We Narrowly Escaped a Far Worse Disaster”
We came very close to an even darker reality on January 6, 2021, writes Distinguished Writer in Residence Francine Prose for the Guardian. “There’s a very particular, very specific chill we feel when our worst suspicions have been confirmed, when our darkest fears and imaginings turn out to be mere shadows of reality,” Prose writes.Francie Prose on the January 6 Hearings for the Guardian: “We Narrowly Escaped a Far Worse Disaster”
Post Date: 06-21-2022
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The Zora Neale Hurston Writing Fellowship at Bard College Welcomes Seven Writers for Its Inaugural Summer Residency Program
The Zora Neale Hurston Writing Fellowship at Bard College Welcomes Seven Writers for Its Inaugural Summer Residency Program
The new Zora Neale Hurston Writing Fellowship at Bard College welcomes its inaugural cohort of seven writers, Danielle Elizabeth Chin, Neşe Devenot ’09, Shoshanna Edwards-Alexander, Mona Kareem, Madhu Kaza, Obi Nwizu, and Dianca London Potts, this summer. The Hurston Fellows are in residence for three weeks from June 4 through June 26, 2022. During their residency, fellows reside on Bard’s campus with housing and meals provided. Founded and directed by Visiting Associate Professor of Literature and American Studies Donna Ford Grover, the Hurston Fellowship enables writers from all disciplines who have not had the opportunity to develop their scholarship, and supports writers who are currently employed as adjuncts or visiting professors with terminal degrees and who have not yet published a book-length work.
The Hurston Fellowship recognizes the particular challenges that BIPOC women encounter in the academy. Few BIPOC women are tenured or tenure track and most occupy precarious positions at their academic institutions. It is not the aim of the fellowship to increase the number of BIPOC women to the pool of tenure and tenure-track applicants. The program exists to assist these underrepresented voices into the publication of their works.
“For many adjuncts the path to writing and research is closed. The institutions where they labor do not offer funds or sabbaticals for such work. The Hurston Fellowship is one way to help these women find time for their own work. Zora Neale Hurston was one of the first independent scholars—writing on an array of subjects from anthropology to fiction. Like Hurston, our fellows, without institutional support, must make their own way through the world of publication and research,” says Grover.
During their residency, Hurston Fellows may participate in a daily program of workshops and meetings, offered in collaboration with the Bard College Institute of Writing and Thinking. However, fellows may also choose to spend their time working, writing, and researching independently. The residency includes visits by literary agents and editors, as well as readings and lectures by established writers and scholars. This summer, the two guest lecturers include Carolyn Ferrell, author of Miss Metropolitan, which was recently shortlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, and literary agent Charlotte Sheedy of Sheedy Lit in conversation with her client Jive Poetic about the agent-author relationship and how an idea becomes a book. Fellows will also be invited back to Bard College in October of the fellowship year for a weekend-long meeting and workshop.
Danielle Elizabeth Chin graduated Magna Cum Laude from Marymount Manhattan College in May 2013 with a Bachelor of the Arts degree in English and World Literatures and a minor in Creative Writing before receiving her Master of Fine Arts degree from The New School in Creative Writing with a concentration in creative nonfiction. She has been an Adjunct Professor in Creative Writing at Marymount Manhattan College since 2015, where she has taught Introduction to Creative Writing I, Introduction to Creative Writing II, Intermediate Creative Writing, an Independent Study in Nonfiction, and a Special Topics course. She has also served as a Writing Assistant at the Borough of Manhattan Community College and for the CUNY EDGE program. Her other professional experiences include working as a research assistant for poet David Lehman, a teaching assistant for novelist Sigrid Nunez, and an assistant at a literary agency. Her work has appeared in The Inquisitive Eater, The Best American Poetry Blog, and Side B Magazine.
Neşe Devenot ’09 received her PhD in 2015 from the Program in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory at the University of Pennsylvania, where she studied psychedelic philosophy, the literary history of chemical self-experimentation (“trip reports”), and radical poetics. She received her bachelor’s degree from Bard College in philosophy and literature. Devenot is a Postdoctoral Associate at Institute for Research in Sensing (IRiS), University of Cincinnati, and is a Lecturer and Medical Humanities Program Assistant at Pennsylvania State University. She has held positions as a Postdoctoral Scholar in Medicine, Society, and Culture, in the Bioethics Department at the School of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University (2018-20) and an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Digital Humanities in the Humanities Program and English Department at University of Puget Sound (2015-18). Her research explores the function of metaphor and other literary devices in verbal accounts of psychedelic experiences. She was awarded “Best Humanities Publication in Psychedelic Studies” from Breaking Convention in 2016 and received the Article Prize for best publication in Romanticism Studies from European Romantic Review in 2020. She was a 2015-16 Research Fellow at the New York Public Library’s Timothy Leary Papers and a Research Fellow with the New York University Psilocybin Cancer Anxiety Study, where she participated in the first qualitative study of patient experiences. She was a founding member of the MAPS Graduate Student Association, which she moderated during 2011-13, and has presented on psychedelics at conferences in the United States, Mexico, Canada, England, France, the Netherlands, and Australia.
Shoshanna Edwards-Alexander received her Ed.D. in Educational Leadership from Saint Joseph’s University in 2005, M.S.W. from University of Pennsylvania, School of Social Work in 1995, and B.A. in sociology and history/gender studies from Saint Lawrence University in 1993. Before teaching, she worked as a social worker and counselor. She is a Visiting and Senior Adjunct Professor at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, where she teaches in the Haub School of Business, School of Health and Education, and College of Arts and Sciences. She also serves as a diversity consultant at Saint Joseph’s University. Her research interests include anti-racist and social justice pedagogies, womanist and feminist epistemologies, teacher preparation educational programs, and intersectionality within leadership development. She presents on topics including leadership and student advocacy; mentoring and feminist perspectives; global engagement, training, and development; and social work and mental health. She has won several awards and special recognitions including the Certificate of Recognition for Excellence in Teaching for the Gender Studies Program Department at Saint Joseph’s University (2014).
Mona Kareem holds a PhD and MA in Comparative Literature from the State University of New York at Binghamton and a BA in English and Comparative Literature from the American University of Kuwait. She is a research fellow at Center for Humanities at Tufts University (2021-2022) and a recipient of a 2021 National Endowment for the Arts literary grant. She has taught at Princeton, University of Maryland College Park, SUNY Binghamton, Rutgers, and Bronx Community College. She was an affiliated research fellow at the Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies at the Freie Universität of Berlin. Kareem is the author of three poetry collections. Her most recent publication Femme Ghosts is a trilingual chapbook published by Publication Studio in Fall 2019. Her work has been translated into nine languages, and appeared in Brooklyn Rail, Michigan Quarterly, Fence, Ambit, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Asymptote, Words Without Borders, Poetry International, PEN English, Modern Poetry in Translation, Two Lines, and Specimen. She has won several awards and honors including a nomination for the Best Translated Book Award in 2016 for her English translation of Ashraf Fayadh’s Instructions Within, which was reprinted by English PEN in 2017.
Madhu H. Kaza received her MFA in fiction, M.Phil and MA in Comparative Literature from New York University, and a BA in English from the University of Michigan. She serves as Associate Director of Microcollege Program and Faculty Development at the Bard Prison Initiative and teaches in the MFA program at Columbia University. Born in Andhra Pradesh, India, Kaza is a writer, translator, artist and educator based in New York City. She is a translator of the feminist Telugu writers Volga and Vimala. She is the editor of Kitchen Table Translation and her own writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Paris Review, Guernica, The Yale Review, Two Lines, Gulf Coast, The Margins, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of grants and awards including a non-fiction fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts and a Yaddo residency. She was the founding director of the Bard Microcollege at Brooklyn Public Library and has taught at New York University, The New School, and at Bard College Institute for Writing and Thinking, among other institutions.
Obi Nwizu received her MA in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University in the United Kingdom and her BA in Print Journalism from Georgia State University. Born in Anambra State, Nigeria, raised in Atlanta, Georgia, but currently calling Harlem home, Nwizu is a lover of month-long international vacations, vegan food, afrobeat, and rom-coms. When not writing, she teaches creative writing for the City University of New York and composition writing for the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Selected publications include “Gathered Pieces of the Sun” in The Almbec, “Grapeseed Fields” in Torch Literary Arts, and “Lust Painted Walls” in Imagine Curve.
Dianca London Potts earned her MFA in fiction from The New School, MA in English and MA in Humanities from Arcadia University, and BA in English from Temple University. She is Visiting Assistant Professor in the Writing Department at Pratt Institute and teaches writing courses at Eugene Lang Liberal Arts College at The New School and John Jay College of Criminal Justice. She is a Kimbilio Fiction Fellow, a VONA Voices alumna, and the former online editor of Well-Read Black Girl. Her words have been featured in Lenny Letter, The Village Voice, Vice, Shondaland, and elsewhere. Her memoir, Planning for the Apocalypse, is forthcoming from 37 Ink / Simon and Schuster.
About the Zora Neale Hurston Writing Fellowship at Bard College
The Zora Neale Hurston Writing Fellowship at Bard College is a 3-week residential program designed to enable writers from all disciplines who have not had the opportunity to develop their scholarship, specifically, those who are without access to sabbaticals or their institution’s research funding. We seek fellows who are currently employed as adjuncts or visiting professors with terminal degrees and who have not yet published a book length work. Prospective Fellows should submit a vita, a letter of recommendation by someone familiar with their work, and an abstract of the project they wish to work on during the three-week residency. The abstract should not exceed 2000 words. Applicants need a college or university affiliation and should have a minimum of five years of teaching as an adjunct, lecturer or visiting professor. The application deadline is April 15, 2023. All applicants will be notified of the admission Committee’s decision by May 15, 2023. To submit materials or for questions please email [email protected].
Post Date: 06-17-2022
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Latest Issue of Bard College’s Celebrated Literary Magazine Conjunctions Explores Fear in Its Countless Guises
Latest Issue of Bard College’s Celebrated Literary Magazine Conjunctions Explores Fear in Its Countless Guises
Conjunctions:78, Fear Itself Features New Work from Stephen Graham Jones, Bronka Nowicka, Coral Bracho, Shane McCrae, Rick Moody, Kathryn Davis, Jeffrey Ford, Joyce Carol Oates, and Many Others
Humans have a genius for fear. Terrors of every imaginable kind surround us, as often as not the wily demons of our own creation, and grow more ghastly, untenable, and malignant with every passing generation. “Whether founded in truth or imagination, fear has a toxic genius for pervading our lives,” writes Conjunctions editor Bradford Morrow. “It has many faces and many means of forcing itself upon us.”
Conjunctions:78, Fear Itself—the latest issue of the innovative literary magazine published by Bard College, which is now celebrating more than 40 years of continuous publication—collects fiction, poetry, essays, and genre-bending work from 30 contemporary writers who are willing to interrogate the wide spectrum of apprehensions, terrors, and dread we humans experience. “War, inequality, abandonment, an evolving climate catastrophe born of the relentless degradation of our planet, this tenacious pandemic, the unknown—such are only a few realities that daily generate existential fear . . . ” Morrow continues in his Editor’s Note. “Yet fear is ubiquitous in our myths and fairy tales, songs and theater, art and literature, and the historical legacies of every culture. Fear and its many nemeses—confidence, bravery, faith among them—are locked in a mortal dance in every narrative humans create, both in life and on the page.”
Edited by novelist and Bard literature professor Morrow, Fear Itself features new fiction from Ray Bradbury Prize winner Stephen Graham Jones, novelist and PEN/Martha Albrand Prize winner Rick Moody, Shirley Jackson Award winner Jeffrey Ford, and Jerusalem Prize winner Joyce Carol Oates. The first English translations of “Two Stories” by Polish writer Bronka Nowicka and “Like A Disease Whose Threshold No One Can Cross, She Says,” by Mexican poet Coral Bracho also appear in the issue along with new poems by Whiting Award winner Shane McCrae, Elizabeth Robinson, and Jessica Reed, among others.
Additional contributors to Fear Itself include Julia Elliott, Bennett Sims, Akil Kumarasamy, Katheryn Davis, Kristine Ong Muslim, Brandon Hobson, Monica Datta, Michael Harris Cohen, Brian Evenson, Barbara Tomash, Matthew Baker, Tori Malcangio, Bin Ramke, Rebecca Lilly, Genevieve Valentine, Terese Svoboda, Rob Walsh, Mary Kuryla, Troy Jollimore, Quintan Ana Wikswo, and Eleni Sikelianos.
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. 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 2019” 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.
Post Date: 06-06-2022
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Evan Nicole Brown ’16 on the Kinsey African American Art & History Collection and Correcting the “Myth of Absence”
Evan Nicole Brown ’16 on the Kinsey African American Art & History Collection and Correcting the “Myth of Absence”
“The process of creating art, much like the Black experience in America, relies on an innate ability to see beyond the limits of circumstance and a belief that something beautiful will come through faith and commitment,” writes Bard alumna Evan Nicole Brown ’16. In a report for the Hollywood Reporter on the history of the Kinsey African American Art & History Collection and its current exhibition at SoFi Stadium—a first for the Inglewood facility—Brown documents the importance of this public exhibition of the more than 50-year-old collection of Black art. The exhibition, currently on display through June 2022, features “more than 70 works of art by prominent Black artists,” and serves to “chronicle, in a chronological way, the evolution of African-American life in the United States through the lens of artistic contribution,” says Khalil Kinsey, chief curator of the collection and son of the founders of the Kinsey Collection.
Post Date: 06-01-2022
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Bradford Morrow, Bard Professor and Editor of Conjunctions, Wins 2022 Lord Nose Award
Bradford Morrow, Bard Professor and Editor of Conjunctions, Wins 2022 Lord Nose Award
CLMP awarded Bradford Morrow, professor of literature and editor of Conjunctions, the 2022 Lord Nose Award. Morrow was chosen by CLMP “in recognition of a lifetime of superlative work in literary publishing,” including his own published works, as well as his efforts as the founder and editor of Conjunctions. Morrow is the recipient of many awards, including the Academy Award in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the PEN/Nora Magid Award, and has taught at Bard since 1990.
Post Date: 05-24-2022
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Bard College Alumnus Among First Peace Corps Volunteers to Return to Service Overseas
Bard College Alumnus Among First Peace Corps Volunteers to Return to Service Overseas
Bard College alumnus Gabriel Braunstein ’20 is among the first Peace Corps volunteers to return to overseas service since the agency’s unprecedented global evacuation in March 2020. The Peace Corps suspended global operations and evacuated nearly 7,000 volunteers from more than 60 countries at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I hope to serve a new community as best I can,” said Braunstein. “I am excited to work in a classroom and meet my new neighbors.”
Braunstein graduated from Bard in 2020 with a degree in literature. He will serve as an education volunteer in the Eastern Caribbean, working in cooperation with local community and partner organizations on sustainable development projects.
The volunteer cohorts are made up of both first-time volunteers and volunteers who were evacuated in early 2020. Upon finishing a three-month training, volunteers will collaborate with their host communities on locally prioritized projects in one of Peace Corps’ six sectors—agriculture, community economic development, education, environment, health or youth in development—and all will engage in COVID-19 response and recovery work.
Post Date: 05-09-2022
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What Is the Cost of Inclusion? Dina Ramadan Reviews Baseera Khan’s I Am an Archive for Art Papers
What Is the Cost of Inclusion? Dina Ramadan Reviews Baseera Khan’s I Am an Archive for Art Papers
As museums and exhibition spaces make efforts to showcase more diverse artwork and perspectives, in her review of Baseera Khan’s I Am an Archive for Art Papers, Dina Ramadan, assistant professor of Arabic, considers the cost for the artist. Noting Khan’s usage of collage and texture, Ramadan calls the exhibition “energetic and ambitious,” with many pieces serving as “a deliberate reflection on capitalist economies of extraction and imperialist trade routes that continually ravage the Middle East and South Asia.” Larger questions arise when it comes to representation and its relation to the labor of artists of color, however. In attempting to to reeducate its audience to “the fundamentals of Islam,” the exhibition “encourag[es] an anthropological approach to the work,” Ramadan writes. “Ultimately, I Am an Archive raises urgent questions about the kind of ‘educational’ labor art institutions expect artists of color to perform in return for their inclusion.”
Post Date: 04-19-2022
Literature Events
- 11/04Friday
- 2/03Friday9:00 am – 3:30 pm EST/GMT-5 Online EventFriday, February 3, 2023
Credit: China JorrinNew Kinds of Attention
An Introduction to Writing-Based Teaching
Online Event 9:00 am – 3:30 pm EST/GMT-5
In 2021, we launched an online workshop series to give teachers a new opportunity to experience IWT’s writing-based teaching practices. This series continues in 2023, allowing teachers to join us for an immersive, online introduction to IWT writing practices. Intended for those who might not be able to attend IWT’s one-day workshops at Bard, these workshops provide a taste of our popular July Weeklong Workshops on the Annandale campus. Check the website for an up-to-date list of offerings!
Workshops include:
• Introduction to Writing and Thinking (February 3)
• Introduction to Writing to Learn (February 3)
• Introduction to Thinking Historically through Writing (March 3)
• Introduction to Writing to Learn in the STEM Disciplines (March 3)
• A selection of online Writer as Reader workshops (TBA)
Participants are welcome to register for one or both dates. Visit iwt.bard.edu for details. - 3/03Friday9:00 am – 3:30 pm EST/GMT-5 Online EventFriday, March 3, 2023
Credit: China JorrinNew Kinds of Attention
An Introduction to Writing-Based Teaching
Online Event 9:00 am – 3:30 pm EST/GMT-5
In 2021, we launched an online workshop series to give teachers a new opportunity to experience IWT’s writing-based teaching practices. This series continues in 2023, allowing teachers to join us for an immersive, online introduction to IWT writing practices. Intended for those who might not be able to attend IWT’s one-day workshops at Bard, these workshops provide a taste of our popular July Weeklong Workshops on the Annandale campus. Check the website for an up-to-date list of offerings!
Workshops include:
• Introduction to Writing and Thinking (February 3)
• Introduction to Writing to Learn (February 3)
• Introduction to Thinking Historically through Writing (March 3)
• Introduction to Writing to Learn in the STEM Disciplines (March 3)
• A selection of online Writer as Reader workshops (TBA)
Participants are welcome to register for one or both dates. Visit iwt.bard.edu for details.