News and Events

Ongoing Events

French Language Table: Join us every Thursday, 12:30–1:30pm, for weekly language practice in the College Room in Kline
For information, contact Odile Chilton [email protected]

News
Mason Zoeller '24 is heading to Paris this fall 2023, to pursue his studies of French with the Institute for Field Education (IFE).
Rose Mancuso '25 is also spending the fall 2023 semester studying in Paris with CUPA.

Viveca Lawrie

Sedona, Arizona, native Viveca Lawrie was discovered by a Bard College Conservatory of Music faculty member, who encouraged her to apply to Bard. The opportunity to attain a double degree, a bachelor of music in trumpet performance and a bachelor of arts in French studies, appealed to her.

Viveca Lawrie

Viveca Lawrie wasn’t looking to come to Bard. She was discovered—by a member of the faculty at the Bard College Conservatory of Music.

Lawrie recalls that Edward Carroll, who teaches trumpet, heard her play and asked her to apply to Bard. She enrolled in the Conservatory, as a bachelor of music student in trumpet performance, and in the College, as a bachelor or arts student majoring in French studies, with a concentration in medieval studies. “The double degree appealed to me,” says the Sedona, Arizona, native. “Trumpet and French are two things I enjoy.”

Her first impression of Bard was of “a beautiful campus.” Her next impression was one of welcome. “It’s a small community and I felt part of it right away.” She soon met Karen Sullivan, Irma Brandeis Professor of Romance Literature and Culture, “and that set me up for the rest of my academic career.” She credits Sullivan with teaching classes “that were 100 percent fun,” and Carroll with “being on board with my love of contemporary music, and help with the technical side” of horn virtuosity. “Bard is very good at matching you with someone,” she says.

At the Conservatory, she and colleagues played together and critiqued one another in “brass class.” “We are a tight-knit group. We really support each other,” she says. “Elsewhere there’s competition, but it’s never been that way here.”

At Bard, “I definitely learned how to write an essay and push the boundaries of how to study.” A surprise was realizing how much she enjoyed academic research and “learning history from the perspective not of the conqueror but of those not in power. This is something that will forever influence how I approach all my research.”

With work for her Senior Project in Welsh Arthurian legend, and her Graduation Recital in trumpet, she has little time for extracurricular activities. But she works in the Conservatory audio-visual office on live streaming and recording, and gave AV assistance to a student-organized concert to benefit a Conservatory student whose family is suffering from consequences of COVID-19.

For Lawrie, that kind of outreach exemplifies the Bard community. “I meet people who are interested in what I’m doing and I’m open to what they’re doing. It’s healthy that we all show such curiosity.”

After graduation, she plans to apply to an MA program in Wales, then a PhD in comparative literature; she also wants to commission composers of contemporary works. “I think people should have multiple options,” she says.

How should high school students prepare for Bard? “Come with an open mind. I can’t stress enough how wonderful a preparation Bard’s Language and Thinking Program is for thinking about the world.” She adds, “And come uncomfortable, because you won’t be used to such focused thinking. But don’t feel afraid of it, and be open to listening to others.”

Bard has changed Lawrie’s life in myriad ways. “I am a lot more confident,” she says. “As a homeschooled student, I learned to live on my own. Here I’ve learned how to make friends. I’ve learned—through the support system, counseling, and Upper College students who do tutorials—how to deal when things don’t go my way. Every professor lets me know I can come to them with any problem, especially in the Conservatory. And the French Studies Program has more of a support system than I could imagine, in terms of recommendations, tutoring, wanting to help. Not a lot of colleges have that.”

Post Date: 08-03-2022

Bard College Student Wins Prestigious Study Abroad Scholarship

Rising junior Maxwell Toth ’22, a joint French and American studies major, has been awarded a Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship for study abroad. Max was awarded $4,000 toward his studies in Paris with the Institute for Field Education, a program that matches undergraduates with international internships aligning with their academic interests.

“I’m really honored to have received the Gilman Scholarship,” says Max. “As someone who’s barely traveled outside their home region of New England, studying abroad has been a dream of mine for quite some time.”

Max had originally planned to study abroad this fall, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic he chose to defer his plans to the spring and return to Annandale instead. This fall, he’s taking “a nice smorgasbord of courses,” ranging from The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre to Contagion: Rumor, Heresy, Disease, and Financial Panic. Outside the classroom, he’ll continue his work as a Peer Counselor, campus tour guide, and Bard nursery school aide—“You can see I wear many hats on campus!”

“Regardless of how my semester abroad may be altered due to the pandemic, I am very excited,” Max says. “Beyond the City of Light, I really want to hop a train to Salzburg at some point and take the ‘Sound of Music’ tour—provided travel restrictions have loosened up by then!”

Learn more about the Gilman Scholarship

Post Date: 07-28-2020

Upcoming Events

12/07
Thursday

Thursday, December 7, 2023
French Table
Please join us weekly. Stay for as long as you like.
Kline, College Room 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm EST/GMT-5
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.

12:30 pm – 1:30 pm EST/GMT-5 Kline, College Room

Events Archive

2020 Past Events

Thursday, December 10, 2020
Online Event 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm EST/GMT-5
Please join us weekly for an hour of conversation in French, now on Zoom! Join meeting: https://bard.zoom.us/j/91786482761?pwd=MDdndmllLzM1ZnhxZDRieWl4Z1BXZz09

French-speaking students and professors gather to share about their week, experiences, and culture. Everyone is more than welcome to join in--stay for as long as you'd like.

Meeting ID: 917 8648 2761
Passcode: 1j652w
One tap mobile
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Dial by your location
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+1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma)
Meeting ID: 917 8648 2761
Thursday, December 3, 2020
Online Event 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm EST/GMT-5
Please join us weekly for an hour of conversation in French, now on Zoom! Join meeting: https://bard.zoom.us/j/91786482761?pwd=MDdndmllLzM1ZnhxZDRieWl4Z1BXZz09

French-speaking students and professors gather to share about their week, experiences, and culture. Everyone is more than welcome to join in--stay for as long as you'd like.

Meeting ID: 917 8648 2761
Passcode: 1j652w
One tap mobile
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+16465588656,,91786482761# US (New York)

Dial by your location
+1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)
+1 646 558 8656 US (New York)
+1 301 715 8592 US (Germantown)
+1 346 248 7799 US (Houston)
+1 669 900 9128 US (San Jose)
+1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma)
Meeting ID: 917 8648 2761
Thursday, November 26, 2020
Online Event 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm EST/GMT-5
Please join us weekly for an hour of conversation in French, now on Zoom! Join meeting: https://bard.zoom.us/j/91786482761?pwd=MDdndmllLzM1ZnhxZDRieWl4Z1BXZz09

French-speaking students and professors gather to share about their week, experiences, and culture. Everyone is more than welcome to join in--stay for as long as you'd like.

Meeting ID: 917 8648 2761
Passcode: 1j652w
One tap mobile
+13126266799,,91786482761# US (Chicago)
+16465588656,,91786482761# US (New York)

Dial by your location
+1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)
+1 646 558 8656 US (New York)
+1 301 715 8592 US (Germantown)
+1 346 248 7799 US (Houston)
+1 669 900 9128 US (San Jose)
+1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma)
Meeting ID: 917 8648 2761
Thursday, November 19, 2020
Online Event 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm EST/GMT-5
Please join us weekly for an hour of conversation in French, now on Zoom! Join meeting: https://bard.zoom.us/j/91786482761?pwd=MDdndmllLzM1ZnhxZDRieWl4Z1BXZz09

French-speaking students and professors gather to share about their week, experiences, and culture. Everyone is more than welcome to join in--stay for as long as you'd like.

Meeting ID: 917 8648 2761
Passcode: 1j652w
One tap mobile
+13126266799,,91786482761# US (Chicago)
+16465588656,,91786482761# US (New York)

Dial by your location
+1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)
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+1 301 715 8592 US (Germantown)
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+1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma)
Meeting ID: 917 8648 2761
Thursday, November 12, 2020

Moderated by Alys Moody and Stephen Ross
Online Event 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm EST/GMT-5
To receive the Zoom invitation for this event, please email [email protected]. Invitations will be sent out on the morning of the event.

Global modernism exists only in translation. Its condition of possibility is the circulation of texts through time and space, across languages and in languages that are not the texts’ own. Historically speaking, the texts we think of as modernist are, almost without exception, the products of lively eras of translation in an expanded sense that reaches beyond the strict remit of textual translation between languages. In order to have global modernism, then, there must be translation and, necessarily, its distortions. Global modernism, by foregrounding this established problematic of translation in the context of an awareness of the unevenness of global exchange, highlights the centrality of language politics to modernist literary creation.

The study of global modernism, too, relies on active and continuous translation efforts. Contemporary translators, many of them themselves practicing poets or writers, are increasingly making available modernisms from around the world. In doing so, they underscore the extent to which modernists so often regarded translation as a primary creative act rather than secondary or derivative one.

This roundtable and reading features the work of four scholars and translators of modernist poetry who contributed original translations to the anthology Global Modernists on Modernism (Bloomsbury, 2020) and whose efforts shine illuminating cross-lights on the modernist labour of translation. As several of our participants are also practicing multilingual poets, the event will offer an occasion to listen to and reflect on the contemporary legacies of modernist poetics.

This conversation, held under the shared auspices of the Literature Program at Bard College and Concordia University’s Centre for Expanded Poetics, is the second in a three-part series exploring global modernism, in celebration of the anthology. It was preceded by a roundtable on “Editing Global Modernism,” held on October 23, and will be followed by a workshop on pedagogy and global modernism on Friday, December 4, 1:30–4:30pm EST.

Speakers
Emily Drumsta is an assistant professor of comparative literature at Brown University, where she works on modern Arabic and Francophone literatures. Her translation, Revolt Against the Sun: A Bilingual Reader of Nazik al-Mala'ika's Poetry was awarded a PEN/Heim Grant in 2018 and is forthcoming with Saqi Books in January 2021. She is a cofounder of Tahrir Documents, an online archive of newspapers, broadsides, pamphlets, and other ephemera collected in Cairo’s Tahrir Square during the 2011 Egyptian uprisings. Her translations have been published in McSweeney's, Asymptote, Jadaliyya, Circumference, and the Trinity Journal of Literary Translation. Emily contributed translations of Nazik al-Mala’ika’s critical writing to the anthology’s section on Modernism in the Arab World.

Klara Du Plessis is a second-year, FRQSC-funded PhD student in English literature at Concordia University, focusing on contemporary, Canadian poetry and the curation of literary events. As part of her dissertation preparation, she is pursuing a practical, experimental research creation component called Deep Curation, which approaches the organization of literary events as directed by the curator and places poets’ work in deliberate dialogue with each another, heightening the curator’s agency toward the poetic product; to date, she has curated eight such poetry readings, most recently with Sawako Nakayasu, Lee Ann Brown, and Fanny Howe at Boston University, in January 2020. Klara is also deeply involved with SpokenWeb, acting both as a researcher and as the student representative of its governing board; SpokenWeb is a SSHRC-funded, multi-institutional research project, founded at Concordia, that digitizes and archives poetry readings from the past seventy years in North America. Parallel to her scholarly activities, Klara is a poet and critic, active in both the Canadian and South African literary scenes. Her writing is informed by a multilingual poetics grounded in a fluently bilingual identity in English and Afrikaans, and a curiosity about languages generally. Her debut multilingual collection of essay-like long poems, Ekke, won the 2019 Pat Lowther Memorial Award for a book of poetry published by a woman in Canada, and was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award for a debut collection. Her second English collection, Hell Light Flesh, was published by Palimpsest Press in September 2020, and her first Afrikaans book, ver taal, is currently under consideration for publication in South Africa. Her chapbook, Wax Lyrical, was shortlisted for the 2016 bpNichol Chapbook Award, and she has appeared at festivals, readings, residencies, and conferences in Canada, South Africa, the United States, and elsewhere.

Ariel Resnikoff is the author of Unnatural Bird Migrator (Operating System, 2020) and the chapbooks Ten-Four: Poems, Translations, Variations (Operating System, 2015), with Jerome Rothenberg, and Between Shades (Materialist Press, 2014). His writing has been translated into Russian, French, Spanish, German, and Hebrew, and has appeared or is forthcoming in Golden Handcuffs Review, Full Stop Quarterly, Protocols, The Wolf Magazine for Poetry, Schreibheft, Zeitschrift für Literatur and Boundary2. With Stephen Ross, he is at work on the first critical bilingual edition of Mikhl Likht’s modernist Yiddish long poem, Processions, and with Lilach Lachman and Gabriel Levin, he is translating into English the collected writings of the translingual Hebrew poet Avot Yeshurun. Ariel is a reviews editor at Jacket2 and a founding editor of the journal and print-archive Supplement, copublished by the Materialist Press, Kelly Writers House, and the Creative Writing Program at the University of Pennsylvania. He has taught courses on multilingual diasporic literatures at the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing (UPenn) and at BINA: The Jewish Movement for Social Change. In 2019, he completed his PhD in comparative literature and literary theory at the University of Pennsylvania, and and he is currently a Fulbright Postdoctoral US Scholar. Ariel lives on Alameda Island in the San Francisco Bay Area with his partner, the artist and designer Riv Weinstock, and their baby, Zamir Shalom.

Sho Sugita writes and translates poetry in Matsumoto, Japan. His translation of Hirato Renkichi’s Spiral Staircase: Collected Poems (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2017) is the first book of Japanese Futurist poetry to appear in English. He is currently working on translating Japanese Dada/anarchist poetry by Hagiwara Kyojiro.

Moderators
Alys Moody is assistant professor of literature at Bard College. She is the author of The Art of Hunger: Aesthetic Autonomy and the Afterlives of Modernism (OUP, 2018) and is currently working on a second book, provisionally entitled The Literature of World Hunger: Poverty, Global Modernism, and the Emergence of a World Literary System. She is one of the general editors of Global Modernists on Modernism (Bloomsbury, 2020), and section editor or coeditor of the sections on modernism in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean, the Arab world, Japan, and the South Pacific.

Stephen J. Ross is assistant professor of English at Concordia University. He is the author of Invisible Terrain: John Ashbery and the Aesthetics of Nature (OUP, 2017). He is one of the general editors of Global Modernists on Modernism (Bloomsbury, 2020), and was section editor or coeditor of the sections on modernism in the Caribbean, the Arab world, and greater China.
Thursday, November 12, 2020
Online Event 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm EST/GMT-5
Please join us weekly for an hour of conversation in French, now on Zoom! Join meeting: https://bard.zoom.us/j/91786482761?pwd=MDdndmllLzM1ZnhxZDRieWl4Z1BXZz09

French-speaking students and professors gather to share about their week, experiences, and culture. Everyone is more than welcome to join in--stay for as long as you'd like.

Meeting ID: 917 8648 2761
Passcode: 1j652w
One tap mobile
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Dial by your location
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Meeting ID: 917 8648 2761
Thursday, November 5, 2020
Online Event 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm EST/GMT-5
Please join us weekly for an hour of conversation in French, now on Zoom! Join meeting: https://bard.zoom.us/j/91786482761?pwd=MDdndmllLzM1ZnhxZDRieWl4Z1BXZz09

French-speaking students and professors gather to share about their week, experiences, and culture. Everyone is more than welcome to join in--stay for as long as you'd like.

Meeting ID: 917 8648 2761
Passcode: 1j652w
One tap mobile
+13126266799,,91786482761# US (Chicago)
+16465588656,,91786482761# US (New York)

Dial by your location
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Meeting ID: 917 8648 2761
Thursday, October 29, 2020
Online Event 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
Please join us weekly for an hour of conversation in French, now on Zoom! Join meeting: https://bard.zoom.us/j/91786482761?pwd=MDdndmllLzM1ZnhxZDRieWl4Z1BXZz09

French-speaking students and professors gather to share about their week, experiences, and culture. Everyone is more than welcome to join in--stay for as long as you'd like.

Meeting ID: 917 8648 2761
Passcode: 1j652w
One tap mobile
+13126266799,,91786482761# US (Chicago)
+16465588656,,91786482761# US (New York)

Dial by your location
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Meeting ID: 917 8648 2761
Thursday, October 22, 2020
Online Event 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
Please join us weekly for an hour of conversation in French, now on Zoom! Join meeting: https://bard.zoom.us/j/91786482761?pwd=MDdndmllLzM1ZnhxZDRieWl4Z1BXZz09

French-speaking students and professors gather to share about their week, experiences, and culture. Everyone is more than welcome to join in--stay for as long as you'd like.

Meeting ID: 917 8648 2761
Passcode: 1j652w
One tap mobile
+13126266799,,91786482761# US (Chicago)
+16465588656,,91786482761# US (New York)

Dial by your location
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Meeting ID: 917 8648 2761
Thursday, October 15, 2020
Online Event 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
Please join us weekly for an hour of conversation in French, now on Zoom! Join meeting: https://bard.zoom.us/j/91786482761?pwd=MDdndmllLzM1ZnhxZDRieWl4Z1BXZz09

French-speaking students and professors gather to share about their week, experiences, and culture. Everyone is more than welcome to join in--stay for as long as you'd like.

Meeting ID: 917 8648 2761
Passcode: 1j652w
One tap mobile
+13126266799,,91786482761# US (Chicago)
+16465588656,,91786482761# US (New York)

Dial by your location
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Meeting ID: 917 8648 2761
Thursday, October 8, 2020
Online Event 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
Please join us weekly for an hour of conversation in French, now on Zoom! Join meeting: https://bard.zoom.us/j/91786482761?pwd=MDdndmllLzM1ZnhxZDRieWl4Z1BXZz09

French-speaking students and professors gather to share about their week, experiences, and culture. Everyone is more than welcome to join in--stay for as long as you'd like.

Meeting ID: 917 8648 2761
Passcode: 1j652w
One tap mobile
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Meeting ID: 917 8648 2761
Thursday, October 1, 2020
Online Event 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
Please join us weekly for an hour of conversation in French, now on Zoom! Join meeting: https://bard.zoom.us/j/91786482761?pwd=MDdndmllLzM1ZnhxZDRieWl4Z1BXZz09

French-speaking students and professors gather to share about their week, experiences, and culture. Everyone is more than welcome to join in--stay for as long as you'd like.

Meeting ID: 917 8648 2761
Passcode: 1j652w
One tap mobile
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Meeting ID: 917 8648 2761
Thursday, September 24, 2020
Online Event 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
Please join us weekly for an hour of conversation in French, now on Zoom! Join meeting: https://bard.zoom.us/j/91786482761?pwd=MDdndmllLzM1ZnhxZDRieWl4Z1BXZz09

French-speaking students and professors gather to share about their week, experiences, and culture. Everyone is more than welcome to join in--stay for as long as you'd like.

Meeting ID: 917 8648 2761
Passcode: 1j652w
One tap mobile
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Dial by your location
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Meeting ID: 917 8648 2761
Thursday, September 17, 2020
Online Event 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
Please join us weekly for an hour of conversation in French, now on Zoom! Join meeting: https://bard.zoom.us/j/91786482761?pwd=MDdndmllLzM1ZnhxZDRieWl4Z1BXZz09

French-speaking students and professors gather to share about their week, experiences, and culture. Everyone is more than welcome to join in--stay for as long as you'd like.

Meeting ID: 917 8648 2761
Passcode: 1j652w
One tap mobile
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+16465588656,,91786482761# US (New York)

Dial by your location
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Meeting ID: 917 8648 2761
Thursday, September 10, 2020
Online Event 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
Please join us weekly for an hour of conversation in French, now on Zoom! Join meeting: https://bard.zoom.us/j/91786482761?pwd=MDdndmllLzM1ZnhxZDRieWl4Z1BXZz09

French-speaking students and professors gather to share about their week, experiences, and culture. Everyone is more than welcome to join in--stay for as long as you'd like.

Meeting ID: 917 8648 2761
Passcode: 1j652w
One tap mobile
+13126266799,,91786482761# US (Chicago)
+16465588656,,91786482761# US (New York)

Dial by your location
+1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)
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+1 301 715 8592 US (Germantown)
+1 346 248 7799 US (Houston)
+1 669 900 9128 US (San Jose)
+1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma)
Meeting ID: 917 8648 2761
Thursday, September 3, 2020
Online Event 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
Please join us weekly for an hour of conversation in French, now on Zoom! Join meeting: https://bard.zoom.us/j/91786482761?pwd=MDdndmllLzM1ZnhxZDRieWl4Z1BXZz09

French-speaking students and professors gather to share about their week, experiences, and culture. Everyone is more than welcome to join in--stay for as long as you'd like.

Meeting ID: 917 8648 2761
Passcode: 1j652w
One tap mobile
+13126266799,,91786482761# US (Chicago)
+16465588656,,91786482761# US (New York)

Dial by your location
+1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)
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+1 301 715 8592 US (Germantown)
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+1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma)
Meeting ID: 917 8648 2761
Tuesday, February 11, 2020

Zoe Griffith, Baruch College (CUNY)
Olin Humanities, Room 102 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm EST/GMT-5
The French invasion and occupation of the Ottoman province of Egypt from 1798 to 1801 is an oft-cited (if misplaced) turning point in the history of the modern Middle East. But just over a decade earlier, another, lesser-known military campaign in Egypt made Napoleon’s invasion possible and thinkable. From 1786 to 1787, the Ottoman central government itself launched a campaign of imperial “reconquest” in Egypt, whose military ruling caste had posed serious challenges to Ottoman sovereignty. These two occupations are rarely discussed in tandem, despite important commonalities. Both occupying powers justified their actions in the language of benevolent “regime change” for the proclaimed benefit of peasants, merchants, and religious scholars. Both the Ottomans and the French used these justifications to extort wealth from Egyptian commercial networks in order to finance the country’s “liberation.” Attention to the networks of debt and obligation incurred during both of these campaigns brings otherwise invisible actors and social categories into the grand narratives of Mediterranean geopolitics and Egypt’s “encounter” with European modernity at the end of the 18th century.

News and Events

Viveca Lawrie

Viveca Lawrie

Bard College Student Wins Prestigious Study Abroad Scholarship

Bard College Student Wins Prestigious Study Abroad Scholarship

Upcoming Events

French Table

Events Archive

2020 Past Events