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Bard College’s Literary Magazine Conjunctions Wins Prestigious Whiting Literary Prize

Conjunctions, the celebrated literary magazine published by Bard College, has been awarded a 2020 Whiting Literary Magazine Prize. Since 2018, a total of 13 literary magazines have won this prize for excellence in publishing, advocacy for writers, and a unique contribution to the strength of the overall literary community. Conjunctions has propelled literature forward for four decades by publishing groundbreaking fiction, poetry, plays, and creative nonfiction that marry visionary imagination with formally innovative execution. Each issue illuminates a complex theme—such as exile, desire, the body, or climate change—in a book-length format that gives space to long-form work and a multitude of perspectives. From its home in Bard College, Conjunctions and its founding editor, Bradford Morrow, have earned recognition for uplifting both new writers and contemporary masters who challenge convention.

“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,” the Whiting judges commented. “Its longevity is a testament to its cultural staying power. Organized around a unifying idea, each issue stitches together work by storytellers and scholars to create a fluid and expansive survey of our most pressing human concerns.”

“The 2020 Whiting Literary Magazine Prize could not have come at a more significant time for Conjunctions, which will be celebrating its fortieth anniversary in the coming year,” said Bradford Morrow, Editor of Conjunctions and professor of literature at Bard. “The pandemic has inflicted unprecedented challenges on all of us, including literary journals and writers, and thanks to the Whiting Foundation, Conjunctions will be able to continue publishing both our print and online journals without interruption. This grant will enable us to broaden and deepen our ongoing search for innovative poetry, fiction, essays, and multi-genre works by those who write fearlessly, and greatly strengthen our outreach to those who, as we at Conjunctions like to say, read dangerously.”

Morrow gave special thanks to those who supported Conjunctions’ Whiting application. “I want to take the opportunity also to express my gratitude to our former managing editor, Nicole Nyhan, for all her hard work on the application to the Whiting Foundation,” he said. “And to the three writers who shall remain unnamed, my thanks for graciously writing letters of support on our behalf.”

The Whiting Literary Magazine Prizes were launched in 2018 to acknowledge, reward, and encourage the publications that are actively nurturing the writers who tell us, through their art, what is important. The purpose of the prizes is first and foremost to recognize excellence, and also to help outstanding magazines reach new audiences, find new sources of revenue, and travel the path to sustainability and growth. The matching grants in years two and three are intended to give these publications enough runway to make serious progress toward achieving these goals. For more information about the Whiting Foundation, visit whiting.org.

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 nearly four decades, Conjunctions has challenged accepted forms and styles, with equal emphasis on groundbreaking experimentation and rigorous execution. The Washington Post says, “Conjunctions offers a showplace for some of the most exciting and demanding writers now at work.” Named a “Top Literary Magazine 2019” by Reedsy, the journal was a finalist for both the 2018 and 2019 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, and The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2019.

For more information on the latest issue, please visit conjunctions.com/print/archive/conjunctions74. To order a copy, go to annandaleonline.org/conjunctions, call the Conjunctions office at 845-758-7054, e-mail conjunctions@bard.edu, or write to Conjunctions, Bard College, PO Box 5000, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504-5000. Visit the Conjunctions website at conjunctions.com.

[Note to editors: To obtain review copies, please call Mark Primoff at 845-758-7412 or e-mail primoff@bard.edu.]
 

Post Date: 09-16-2020

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Bard Center for the Study of Land, Air & Water Partners with City of Kingston to Monitor Air Quality

“Although Kingston's air quality is, for the most part, doing well, we know that increased traffic, train activity, wood burning, and household heating systems can contribute to short-term air quality issues and long-term health issues if not appropriately managed,” said Eli Dueker, director of the Center for the Study of Land, Air, & Water, which partnered with the City of Kingston’s Conservation Advisory Council’s Air Quality Sub-Committee to form the Kingston Air Quality Initiative. “This research addresses what Kingston needs to be able to meet its sustainability goals long-term.”

Post Date: 09-01-2020

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Bard College Conservatory of Music Appoints Highly Acclaimed Violinists Gil Shaham and Adele Anthony to Faculty

The Bard College Conservatory of Music announces the faculty appointments of violinists Gil Shaham and Adele Anthony. Shaham, one of the most celebrated violinists of his generation, performs regularly with the Berlin Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, and New York Philharmonic, among many others. With an extensive recording career of more than two dozen concerto and solo CDs, he is a Grammy Award winner and recipient of Gramophone’s Editor’s Choice award. Anthony is an acclaimed international performer, appearing regularly with the Houston, Seattle, and San Diego symphony orchestras and performing throughout North America, Europe, Australia, India, and Asia. An avid and accomplished chamber musician, she appears regularly at La Jolla’s SummerFest and the Aspen Music Festival.

“I am so excited to welcome Gil Shaham and Adele Anthony to the faculty of the Bard Conservatory,” said Bard Conservatory Dean Tan Dun. “Their musical excellence and dedication to teaching will be a gift to the entire Conservatory community.”

In addition to private teaching, Shaham and Anthony will coach chamber music and lead regular master classes. Shaham and Anthony will perform regularly at Bard with the Bard Conservatory orchestra or TON and in chamber music and recital settings.

About Gil Shaham
Gil Shaham is one of the foremost violinists of our time; his flawless technique combined with his inimitable warmth and generosity of spirit has solidified his renown as an American master. The Grammy Award winner, also named Musical America’s Instrumentalist of the Year, is sought after throughout the world for concerto appearances with leading orchestras and conductors, and regularly gives recitals and appears with ensembles on the world’s great concert stages and at the most prestigious festivals.

Highlights of recent years include the acclaimed recording and performances of J. S. Bach’s complete sonatas and partitas for solo violin. In the coming seasons, in addition to championing these solo works, he will join his long time duo partner, pianist Akira Eguchi, in recitals throughout North America, Europe, and Asia.

Appearances with orchestra regularly include the Berlin Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Israel Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, and San Francisco Symphony, as well as multiyear residencies with the orchestras of Montreal, Stuttgart, and Singapore. With orchestra, Shaham continues his exploration of “Violin Concertos of the 1930s,” including the works of Barber, Bartok, Berg, Korngold, and Prokofiev, among others.

Shaham has more than two dozen concerto and solo CDs to his name, earning multiple Grammys, a Grand Prix du Disque, Diapason d’Or, and Gramophone Editor’s Choice. Many of these recordings appear on Canary Classics, the label he founded in 2004. His CDs include 1930s Violin Concertos, Sarasate: Virtuoso Violin Works, Elgar: Violin Concerto, Hebrew Melodies, The Butterfly Lovers, and many more. His most recent recording in the 1930s Violin Concertos series, Vol. 2, includes Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2 and Bartok’s Violin Concerto No. 2, and was nominated for a Grammy Award. He will release a new recording of Beethoven and Brahms concertos with The Knights in 2020.

Shaham was born in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, in 1971. He moved with his parents to Israel, where he began violin studies with Samuel Bernstein of the Rubin Academy of Music at the age of 7, receiving annual scholarships from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation. In 1981, he made debuts with the Jerusalem Symphony and Israel Philharmonic, and the following year, took first prize in Israel’s Claremont Competition. He then became a scholarship student at Juilliard, and also studied at Columbia University. He was awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 1990 and, in 2008, he received the coveted Avery Fisher Prize. In 2012, he was named Instrumentalist of the Year by Musical America. Shaham performs on an Antonio Stradivari violin, Cremona c1719, with the assistance of Rare Violins In Consortium Artists and Benefactors Collaborative. He lives in New York City with his wife, violinist Adele Anthony, and their three children.

About Adele Anthony
Since her triumph at Denmark’s 1996 Carl Nielsen International Violin Competition, Adele Anthony has enjoyed an acclaimed and expanding international career. As a soloist with orchestra and in recital, as well as an active chamber music player, Anthony has performed throughout North America, Europe, Australia, India, and Asia.

In addition to appearances with all six symphonies of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, recent highlights include performances with the symphony orchestras of Houston, San Diego, Seattle, Fort Worth, and Indianapolis, as well as the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. An avid chamber music player, Anthony appears regularly at the La Jolla SummerFest and Aspen Music Festival. Her wide-ranging repertoire extends from the baroque of Bach and Vivaldi to contemporary works by Ross Edwards, Arvo Pärt, and Philip Glass.

Anthony’s recording work includes releases with Sejong Soloists, Eric Ewazen, Concerto for Violin and String Orchestra (Albany); a recording of Philip Glass’s Violin Concerto with Takuo Yuasa and the Ulster Orchestra (Naxos); Arvo Pärt’s Tabula rasa with Gil Shaham, Neeme Järvi, and the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra (Deutsche Grammophon); and her latest recording of the Sibelius Violin Concerto and Ross Edwards’s Maninyas with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra (Canary Classics/ABC Classics).

Anthony performs on an Antonio Stradivarius violin, crafted in 1728.

About the Bard College Conservatory
Recognized as one of the finest conservatories in the United States, the Bard College Conservatory of Music, founded in 2005, is guided by the principle that young musicians should be broadly educated in the liberal arts and sciences to achieve their greatest potential. All undergraduates complete two degrees over a five-year period: a bachelor of music and a bachelor of arts in a field other than music. The Conservatory Orchestra has performed twice at Lincoln Center, and has completed three international concert tours: in June 2012 to China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan; in June 2014 to Russia and six cities in Central and Eastern Europe; and in June 2016, to three cities in Cuba. For additional information about the Bard College Conservatory of Music, visit bard.edu/conservatory.

Post Date: 08-12-2020

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Bard College Biology Professor Felicia Keesing Coauthors Overview of New Global Study Showing that Human-Caused Changes to Ecosystems Favor Species Most Likely to Cause Human Illness

Large-Scale Study, Published in Nature, Supports Findings of Keesing and Colleague Richard S. Ostfeld’s Two Decades of Research on Lyme Disease Ecology and Other Linkages Between Ecology, Conservation, and Human Health

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered by a coronavirus of animal origin has awakened the world to the threat that zoonotic diseases pose to humans. While examples of land-use changes increasing the risk of zoonotic disease have been accumulating for decades, questions have remained about the scale of the pattern and its specific underlying mechanisms. In a new large-scale study, “Zoonotic host diversity increases in human-dominated ecosystems,” Rory Gibb, Kate Jones, and their coauthors find global evidence that human land use changes natural habitats in ways that favor animals more likely to cause human illness. The study, published today in the journal Nature, strongly supports the findings of Bard College Biology Professor Felicia Keesing and her husband and research partner Richard S. Ostfeld’s two decades of extensive research on Lyme disease ecology and other linkages between ecology, conservation, and human health.

“The transformation of forests, grasslands, and deserts into cities, suburbs, and agricultural land has caused many species to decline or disappear and others to thrive,” write Ostfeld, a disease ecologist at the Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies, and Keesing in a general overview of the primary study published concurrently by Nature. “The winners are often generalists that are small, abundant and have ‘fast’, short lives, such as rats and starlings. Gibb et al. show that, worldwide, these winners are much more likely to harbor disease-causing agents (pathogens) than are the losers. As a result, when we convert natural habitats to our own uses, we inadvertently increase the probability of transmission of what are known as zoonotic infectious diseases, which are caused by pathogens that can jump from animals to humans.”

Ostfeld, and Keesing write that the patterns that Gibb and his coauthors detected from their analyses—which explored 6,801 ecological communities and 376 host species worldwide—were striking and provide strong evidence to lingering questions about the global scale and mechanisms of zoonotic disease transmission. “Is it simply a coincidence that the species that thrive in human-dominated landscapes are often those that pose zoonotic threats, whereas species that decline or disappear tend to be harmless? Is the ability of animals to be resilient to human disturbances linked to their ability to host zoonotic pathogens?” write Ostfeld and Keesing. “Gibb et al. found that the animals that increase in number as a result of human land use are not only more likely to be pathogen hosts, but also more likely to harbor a greater number of pathogen species, including a greater number of pathogens that can infect humans.”

With awareness of and concern about zoonotic diseases surging in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ostfeld and Keesing write that—by showing that the greatest zoonotic threats arise where natural areas have been converted to croplands, pastures, and urban areas—Gibb et al correct the widespread misperception that wild nature is the greatest source of zoonotic disease. This study and others strongly suggest that restoring degraded habitat and protecting undisturbed natural areas would benefit both public health and the environment. “Going forward, surveillance for known and potential zoonotic pathogens will probably be most fruitful if it is focused on human-dominated landscapes,” they write.

To read the full study in Nature, click here. To read Ostfeld and Keesing’s overview, click here.

Felicia Keesing, David and Rosalie Rose Distinguished Professor of Science, Mathematics, and Computing, has been on the Bard faculty since 2000. She has a B.S. from Stanford University and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Since 1995, she has studied how African savannas function when the large, charismatic animals like elephants, buffaloes, zebras, and giraffes disappear. She also studies how interactions among species influence the probability that humans will be exposed to infectious diseases. Keesing also studies Lyme disease, another tick-borne disease. She is particularly interested in how species diversity affects disease transmission. More recently, she has focused on science literacy for college students, and she led the re-design of Bard College’s Citizen Science program. Keesing has received research grants from the National Science Foundation, National Geographic Society, National Institutes of Health, Environmental Protection Agency, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, among others. She has been awarded the United States Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (2000). She is the coeditor of Infectious Disease Ecology: Effects of Ecosystems on Disease and of Disease on Ecosystems (2008) and has contributed to such publications as Nature, Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Ecology Letters, Emerging Infectious Diseases, Proceedings of the Royal Society, Ecology, BioScience, Conservation Biology, and Trends in Ecology & Evolution, among others.(8.5.20)
 

Post Date: 08-05-2020

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Bard Assistant Professor of Mathematics Matthew Junge Talks with WAMC about National Science Foundation RAPID Grant to Study COVID-19 Forecasting Models

“What’s really distinguishing [our study} from a lot of the studies that are being quoted by the national press . . . and the Administration is that we look at the local connections inside of communities, and those are usually ignored by bigger studies,” Junge tells WAMC’s Hudson Valley Bureau Chief Allison Dunne. “Our study’s taking this opposite perspective of really finally modelling person-to-person connections that come up in our day-to-day lives, like who we socialize with, where we work, connections of that sort, and we ask how the disease spreads in this sort of zoomed-in picture.”

Post Date: 05-20-2020

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Bard College Professors Win National Science Foundation Rapid Grant to Develop Forecasting Models that Better Capture the Geographic and Social Complexity of the COVID-19 Pandemic

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded Bard College professors Matthew Junge, mathematics, and Felicia Keesing, biology; and Grinnell College professor Nicole Eikmeier, computer science, a $60,000 grant to develop network models that—by more accurately incorporating social distancing measures—better capture the geographic and social complexity of the COVID-19 pandemic. Awarded through the NSF’s Rapid Response Research (RAPID) program, which provides support for urgent scientific research that responds to emergencies and unexpected events, the grant includes funding for salaries, publishing costs, and several undergraduate research assistants over a six-month period.

Junge, Bard assistant professor of mathematics and lead investigator on the project, says their project aims to develop network models and mathematical theory to test the robustness of some prominent models being used by governments to justify the extreme levels of intervention we are living through. One advantage of a network model, which tries to accurately describe the face-to-face interactions each individual in a society has and how an infection might spread, is that it is relatively easy to implement social distancing into the network.

“Mathematicians are fairly adept at modeling the natural evolution of epidemics, but most ‘off the shelf’ models were not built to describe the dramatic levels of intervention—business closures, travel limitations, and social distancing—that we are living through during the COVID-19 pandemic,” says Junge. “The grant brings together a biologist (Felicia), computer scientist (Nicole), and mathematician (myself) as well as a few undergrad research assistants to tackle this problem over the next six months. Felicia is an expert in infectious disease, Nicole in modeling real world networks, and I am experienced in network infection models.”

Matthew Junge, assistant professor of mathematics, comes to Bard from Duke University, where he served as William W. Elliott Research Assistant Professor. He received his doctorate in mathematics from the University of Washington, where he also earned MS, BS, and BA degrees. His areas of interest include probability, statistical physics, and mathematical biology. Junge’s research takes a probabilistic approach to particle systems from physics and biology, including models for chemical reactions, species proliferation, and epidemic outbreaks. He also studies random structures from classical mathematics and computer science, such as permutations and fragmented spaces.

Felicia Keesing, David and Rosalie Rose Distinguished Professor of Science, Mathematics, and Computing, has been on the Bard faculty since 2000. She has a B.S. from Stanford University and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Since 1995, she has studied how African savannas function when the large, charismatic animals like elephants, buffaloes, zebras, and giraffes disappear. She also studies how interactions among species influence the probability that humans will be exposed to infectious diseases. Keesing also studies Lyme disease, another tick-borne disease. She is particularly interested in how species diversity affects disease transmission.

Nicole Elkmeier is an assistant professor of computer science at Grinnell College. She has a PhD in Mathematics from Purdue University and a BA from in mathematics and computer science from Concordia College. Her research is in the field of Network Analysis, specifically focused on studying features of real data and constructing and analyzing graph models which maintain those features. A network, in this case, is a set of nodes (people, web pages, etc.) connected by edges (physical connection, collaboration, etc). She is interested in random graph models, which are used to study how well an algorithm may do on a real-world network, and for testing properties that may further improve algorithms. Her research is at the intersection of math and computer science.
 

Post Date: 05-07-2020