Five Bard Faculty and Bard MFA Faculty and Graduates Awarded 2021 Guggenheim Fellowships
The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has awarded five Bard faculty and Bard MFA faculty and graduates 2021 Guggenheim Fellowships. Bard Assistant Professor of Film and Electronic Arts Ephraim Asili MFA ’11, Bard MFA faculty Roberto Tejada and A.K. Burns MFA ’10, and MFA graduates Luba Drozd MFA ’15 and Irene Lusztig MFA ’06 were named 2021 Guggenheim Fellows.
Five Bard Faculty and Bard MFA Faculty and Graduates Awarded 2021 Guggenheim Fellowships
“We are delighted and impressed that so many Bard MFA alums and faculty have been named 2021 Guggenheim Fellows,” said Hannah Barrett, director of the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts. “The Milton Avery School for the Arts wishes to congratulate these faculty and alumni on their 2021 Guggenheim awards. Their recognition is richly deserved and we will follow their careers with pride and admiration.”
“As an experimental filmmaker, our colleague Ephraim Asili has won critical acclaim for The Diaspora Suite (2017), an ambitious cycle of 16 mm short films, and most recently his feature-length The Inheritance (2020), a poetic meditation on history, politics, art, and Black liberation,” said Bard’s Dean of the College, Deirdre d’Albertis. “Asili's presence on the faculty of Bard’s Film and Electronic Arts Program represents for our students both deep continuity with Bard's storied past as a haven for artistic experimentation and a stunningly contemporary approach to documentary and narrative with full awareness of the urgency of our present moment.”
“I am thrilled to announce this new group of Guggenheim Fellows,” said Edward Hirsch, president of the Guggenheim Foundation, “especially since this has been a devastating year in so many ways. A Guggenheim Fellowship has always been meaningful, but this year we know it will be a lifeline for many of the new Fellows at a time of great hardship, a survival tool as well as a creative one. The work supported by the Fellowship will help us understand more deeply what we are enduring individually and collectively, and it is an honor for the Foundation to help them do what they were meant to do.”
Created in 1925 by Senator Simon and Olga Guggenheim in memory of their son John Simon Guggenheim, the Guggenheim Foundation has offered fellowships to exceptional individuals in pursuit of scholarship in any field of knowledge and creation in any art form, under the freest possible conditions. The great range of backgrounds, fields of study, and accomplishments of Guggenheim Fellows is a unique characteristic of the Fellowship program. In all, 49 scholarly disciplines and artistic fields, 73 different academic institutions, 28 states and two Canadian provinces are represented in this year’s class of Fellows, who range in age from 31 to 85. Close to 60 Fellows have no full-time college or university affiliation. Since its establishment in 1925, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has granted nearly $400 million in Fellowships to over 18,000 individuals, among whom are more than 125 Nobel laureates, members of all the national academies, winners of the Pulitzer Prize, Fields Medal, Turing Award, Bancroft Prize, National Book Award, and other internationally recognized honors. For more information on the 2021 Fellows, please visit the Foundation’s website at gf.org.
Ephraim Asili MFA ’11 is a filmmaker, artist, educator and DJ whose work focuses on the African diaspora as a cultural force. His award-winning films have screened in festivals and venues all over the world, including the Berlinale, New York Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, San Francisco International Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, MoMA PS1, LAMOCA, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, The Whitney Museum, and The Barbican Center in London. Asili's 2020 feature debut, The Inheritance, premiered at the 2020 Toronto International film festival and was recently acquired for distribution by Grasshopper Films. As a DJ, Asili has been a regular program host on WGXC, and done guest sets for NTS Radio, Afropop Worldwide, and WFMU. He also hosts a monthly dance party Botanica. Asili currently resides in Hudson, NY, and is a professor in the Film and Electronic Arts Program at Bard.
Roberto Tejada, Bard MFA writing faculty, is the author of poetry collections Full Foreground (Arizona, 2012), Exposition Park (Wesleyan, 2010), Mirrors for Gold (Krupskaya, 2006), Todo en el ahora (Libros Magenta, 2015), selected poems in Spanish translation, and a LatinX poetics of the Americas, Still Nowhere in an Empty Vastness (Noemi, 2019). He is the author of art histories that include National Camera: Photography and Mexico’s Image Environment (Minnesota, 2009), Celia Alvarez Muñoz (Minnesota, 2009), and with Michelle White and others the co-author of Allora & Calzadilla: Specters of Noon (Yale, 2021) He is the Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished Professor in Creative Writing and Art History at the University of Houston.
A.K. Burns MFA ’10, Bard MFA film & video faculty, is an interdisciplinary artist who views the body as a contentious domain wherein issues of gender, labor, ecology and sexuality are negotiated. Burns is currently producing Negative Space, a cycle of video-installations that take speculative fiction as a point of departure. The opening episode, A Smeary Spot (2015) debuted at Participant Inc., NY, followed by an exhibition at Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, OR, in 2016. The second in this series, titled Living Room (2017) debut at the New Museum, and was subsequently exhibited at Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia in 2018. Additionally in 2018 Burns exhibited a new video work titled Survivors Remorse (2018) at the Harvard Museum and a public sculpture The Dispossessed (2018) at the FRONT International Cleveland Triennial. As a frequent collaborator and advocate for labor issues in the Arts, Burns was a founding member of W.A.G.E (Working Artists in the Great Economy) in 2008. Burns’ works can be found in public collations including the Museum of Modern Art, NY and Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA. Burns was also a 2018 NYFA Fellow in Interdisciplinary Arts, a 2016-17 Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University as well as a recipient of a 2015 Creative Capital Foundation Visual Arts Award.
Irene Lusztig MFA ’06 is a filmmaker, visual artist, and archival researcher. She is a professor, Film & Digital Media, and director, Center for Documentary Arts & Research (CDAR), at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Her film and video work mines old images, technologies, and objects for new meanings in order to reanimate forgotten and neglected histories. Often beginning with rigorous research in archives, her work brings historical materials into conversation with the present day, inviting viewers to explore historical spaces as a way to contemplate larger questions of politics, ideology, and the production of personal, collective, and national memories. Much of her work is centered on public feminism, language, and histories of women and women’s bodies, including her debut feature Reconstruction (2001), the feature length archival film essay The Motherhood Archives (2013), the ongoing web-based Worry Box Project (2011), and her newest performative documentary feature Yours in Sisterhood (2018). Her work has been screened around the world, including at the Berlinale, MoMA, Film Society of Lincoln Center, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Anthology Film Archives, Pacific Film Archive, Flaherty NYC, IDFA Amsterdam, Hot Docs, AFI Docs, and RIDM Montréal, and on television in the US, Europe, and Taiwan. She has received grants from the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities, Massachusetts Cultural Council, LEF Foundation, New York State Council for the Arts, and Sustainable Arts Foundation and has been awarded fellowships at the MacDowell Colony, the Flaherty Film Seminar, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and Harvard’s Film Study Center. She was the 2016-17 recipient of a Rydell Visual Arts Fellowship and a Fulbright Fellowship in Portugal.
Luba Drozd MFA ’15 is an interdisciplinary multimedia artist. She earned a BFA from Pratt Institute and an MFA from Bard College. Her films and installations articulate the absurd in the established exploitative social structures and demonstrate how the systems of control are manifested and echoed in restrictive architectural environments. Luba’s works screened at Smack Mellon, Apexart, Anthology Film Archives, the New York Video Festival at Lincoln Center and Art in General. She is a 2015 Media Arts fellow at BRIC in Brooklyn, NY. In 2020, Drozd was featured by the New York Post as “hero of the day” and highlighted in the New York Times for her work making and distributing face shields for hospital workers in the early weeks of the pandemic. Drozd is a recipient of the 2020 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship in Digital/Electronic Arts. Her two-room site specific sound, sculpture, and 3D animation installation piece, “The Aesthetic Limits of Water,” was commissioned and exhibited by the Hessel Museum in 2020.
About Bard College
Founded in 1860, Bard College is a four-year residential college of the liberal arts and sciences located 90 miles north of New York City. With the addition of the Montgomery Place estate, Bard’s campus consists of nearly 1,000 parklike acres in the Hudson River Valley. It offers bachelor of arts, bachelor of science, and bachelor of music degrees, with majors in nearly 40 academic programs; graduate degrees in 11 programs; eight early colleges; and numerous dual-degree programs nationally and internationally. Building on its 161-year history as a competitive and innovative undergraduate institution, Bard College has expanded its mission as a private institution acting in the public interest across the country and around the world to meet broader student needs and increase access to liberal arts education. The undergraduate program at our main campus in upstate New York has a reputation for scholarly excellence, a focus on the arts, and civic engagement. Bard is committed to enriching culture, public life, and democratic discourse by training tomorrow’s thought leaders. For more information about Bard College, visit bard.edu.
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(4/09/21)Post Date: 04-14-2021
A Diversity of Wildlife Is Good for Our Health, Says New Paper Led by Bard Biology Professor Felicia Keesing
A growing body of evidence suggests that biodiversity loss increases our exposure to both new and established zoonotic pathogens. Restoring and protecting nature is essential to preventing future pandemics. So reports a new Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) paper, led by Bard Biology Professor Felicia Keesing, that synthesizes current understanding about how biodiversity affects human health and provides recommendations for future research to guide management.A Diversity of Wildlife Is Good for Our Health, Says New Paper Led by Bard Biology Professor Felicia Keesing
Lead author Felicia Keesing is a professor at Bard College and a Visiting Scientist at Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies. She explains, “There's a persistent myth that wild areas with high levels of biodiversity are hotspots for disease. More animal diversity must equal more dangerous pathogens. But this turns out to be wrong. Biodiversity isn't a threat to us, it’s actually protecting us from the species most likely to make us sick.”
Zoonotic diseases like COVID-19, SARS, and Ebola are caused by pathogens that are shared between humans and other vertebrate animals. But animal species differ in their ability to pass along pathogens that make us sick.
Rick Ostfeld is a disease ecologist at Cary Institute and a co-author on the paper. He explains, “Research is mounting that species that thrive in developed and degraded landscapes are often much more efficient at harboring pathogens and transmitting them to people. In less-disturbed landscapes with more animal diversity, these risky reservoirs are less abundant and biodiversity has a protective effect.”
Rodents, bats, primates, cloven-hooved mammals like sheep and deer, and carnivores have been flagged as the mammal taxa most likely to transmit pathogens to humans. Keesing and Ostfeld note, "The next emerging pathogen is far more likely to come from a rat than a rhino.”
This is because animals with fast life histories tend to be more efficient at transmitting pathogens. Keesing explains, “Animals that live fast, die young, and have early sexual maturity with lots of offspring tend to invest less in their adaptive immune responses. They are often better at transmitting diseases, compared to longer-lived animals with stronger adaptive immunity.”
When biodiversity is lost from ecological communities, long-lived, larger-bodied species tend to disappear first, while smaller-bodied species with fast life histories tend to proliferate. Research has found that mammal hosts of zoonotic viruses are less likely to be species of conservation concern (i.e. they are more common), and that for both mammals and birds, human development tends to increase the abundance of zoonotic host species, bringing people and risky animals closer together.
“When we erode biodiversity, we favor species that are more likely to be zoonotic hosts, increasing our risk of spillover events,” Ostfeld notes. Adding that, “Managing this risk will require a better understanding of how things like habitat conversion, climate change, and overharvesting affect zoonotic hosts, and how restoring biodiversity to degraded areas might reduce their abundance.”
To predict and prevent spillover, Keesing and Ostfeld highlight the need to focus on host attributes associated with disease transmission rather than continuing to debate the prime importance of one taxon or another. Ostfeld explains, “We should stop assuming that there is a single animal source for each emerging pathogen. The pathogens that jump from animals to people tend to be found in many animal species, not just one. They’re jumpers, after all, and they typically move between species readily.”
Disentangling the characteristics of effective zoonotic hosts – such as their immune strategies, resilience to disturbance, and habitat preferences – is key to protecting public health. Forecasting the locations where these species thrive, and where pathogen transmission and emergence are likely, can guide targeted interventions.
Keesing notes, “Restoration of biodiversity is an important frontier in the management of zoonotic disease risk. Those pathogens that do spill over to infect humans—zoonotic pathogens—often proliferate as a result of human impacts.” Concluding, “As we rebuild our communities after COVID-19, we need to have firmly in mind that one of our best strategies to prevent future pandemics is to protect, preserve, and restore biodiversity.”
This research was supported by a National Science Foundation Grant OPUS 1948419 to Keesing.
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.
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(4.5.21)Post Date: 04-13-2021
Sociologist Karen Barkey Joins Bard Faculty as Charles Theodore Kellogg and Bertie K. Hawver Kellogg Chair of Sociology and Religion
Bard College announces the appointment of sociologist Karen Barkey to the College faculty as Charles Theodore Kellogg and Bertie K. Hawver Kellogg Chair of Sociology and Religion for the five-year period 2021–26, beginning fall 2021. Barkey’s research explores the fields of comparative, historical, and political sociology and the sociology of religion.Sociologist Karen Barkey Joins Bard Faculty as Charles Theodore Kellogg and Bertie K. Hawver Kellogg Chair of Sociology and Religion
“We are honored to welcome distinguished scholar Karen Barkey to the Bard faculty as well as the Open Society University Network at a moment when renewed efforts to understand cooperation, coexistence, and inclusion as well as conflict across difference have become increasingly critical,” said Bard’s Dean of the College, Deirdre d’Albertis.
Karen Barkey has been engaged in the comparative and historical study of the state, with special focus on its transformation over time. She has focused on state society relations, peasant movements, banditry, opposition and dissent organized around the state. Her main empirical site has been the Ottoman Empire, in comparison with France, the Habsburg, and the Russian Empires. She also pays attention to the Roman and Byzantine worlds as important predecessors of the Ottomans.
Her work Empire of Difference (Cambridge UP, 2008) is a comparative study of the flexibility and longevity of imperial systems. In different chapters, the book explores the key organizational and state society related dynamics of imperial longevity. This book demonstrates that the flexible techniques by which the Ottomans maintained their legitimacy, the cooperation of their diverse elites both at the center and in the provinces, as well as the control over the economic and human resources were responsible for the longevity of this particular “negotiated empire.” In the process, it explores important issues such as diversity, the role of religion in politics, Islam and the state as well as the manner in which the Sunni-Shi’a divide operated during the tenure of the Ottoman Empire. Such topics are relevant to the contemporary setting and the conflicts we endure today.
Barkey is now pursing different projects on religion and toleration. She has written on the early centuries of Ottoman state toleration and is now exploring different ways of understanding how religious coexistence, toleration and sharing occurred in different historical sacred sites under Ottoman rule. She published an edited book, Choreography of Sacred Spaces: State, Religion and Conflict Resolution (with Elazar Barkan) (Columbia UP, 2014) that explores the history of shared religious spaces in the Balkans, Anatolia and Palestine/Israel, all three regions once under Ottoman rule. The book explores the politics and culture of conflict and cooperation over religious sites. It also provides the historical antecedents to help us understand the accommodation and contention around specific sites in the modern period, tracing comparatively areas and regime changes over time. In many places the long history of sharing sacred sites serves as an indicator of the possibilities for pluralism in the context of empire.
Barkey is one of the curators of the traveling Shared Sacred Sites exhibition. She has worked on the exhibition in the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, the National Museum of Photography and the Yeni Cami in Thessaloniki (2017) and the New York exhibition at the NYPL, Morgan Library and Museum and CUNY Graduate Center (2018). She also runs a website on this topic which brings international participants and expertise on many shared sites around the world. She started this project to promote awareness and understanding of coexistence among religions. You can see more on the site: sharedsacredsites.net.
Barkey was awarded the Germaine Tillion Chair of Mediterranean Studies at IMéRA, for 2021-2022. IMéRA is the Institute for Advanced Study of Aix-Marseille University, and a member of the French Network of Institutes for Advanced Study. Barkey was born in Istanbul, Turkey. After she graduated from the Lycée Notre Dame de Sion, in Istanbul, she moved to the United States for her college education. She got her BA degree from Bryn Mawr College, an MA degree from The University of Washington, and a PhD from the University of Chicago.
About Bard College
Founded in 1860, Bard College is a four-year residential college of the liberal arts and sciences located 90 miles north of New York City. With the addition of the Montgomery Place estate, Bard’s campus consists of nearly 1,000 parklike acres in the Hudson River Valley. It offers bachelor of arts, bachelor of science, and bachelor of music degrees, with majors in nearly 40 academic programs; graduate degrees in 11 programs; eight early colleges; and numerous dual-degree programs nationally and internationally. Building on its 161-year history as a competitive and innovative undergraduate institution, Bard College has expanded its mission as a private institution acting in the public interest across the country and around the world to meet broader student needs and increase access to liberal arts education. The undergraduate program at our main campus in upstate New York has a reputation for scholarly excellence, a focus on the arts, and civic engagement. Bard is committed to enriching culture, public life, and democratic discourse by training tomorrow’s thought leaders. For more information about Bard College, visit bard.edu.
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(4/09/21)Post Date: 04-09-2021
More CFCD News
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Bard College Dance Program Presents a Celebration of Aileen Passloff (1931–2020)
Bard College Dance Program Presents a Celebration of Aileen Passloff (1931–2020)
On Saturday, April 24, the Bard College Dance Program presents A Celebration of Aileen Passloff (1931–2020). For over 40 years, Aileen Passloff was the L. May Hawver and Wallace Benjamin Flint Professor of Dance at Bard, in addition to her numerous contributions to the field of dance. In celebration of her life and work, Passloff’s former students Arthur Aviles ’87, Charlotte Hendrickson ’07, and EmmaGrace Skove-Epes ’08 will give tribute performances.
“I was strong and tireless and full of passion and loved dancing as deeply as one could ever love anything.”—Aileen Passloff
The free, live-streamed event takes place at 4 p.m. and will feature guest speakers, as well as pre-recorded messages and video archives of Aileen’s work. The celebration is presented in collaboration with the Fisher Center at Bard, the President’s Office, the Dean’s Office, and the Office of Development and Alumni/ae Affairs. For more information and to watch, please visit the Fisher Center’s virtual stage, UPSTREAMING, by clicking here.
“I am thrilled to help to create an event to celebrate my mentor and inspiration, Aileen Passloff,” said Bard Professor of Dance Jean Churchil. “All of my work in the dance studio, as a teacher and as a choreographer, is informed by her passion for the arts, and I know that I am only one of so very many people. By her example, she taught us to understand that the arts are essential to our lives. She taught many aspiring artists to understand that to try to make art is to try to make a profound difference in the world. For Aileen, and for many of us whose lives were enriched by her, to try to make art is to discover, to uncover, and to cultivate the courage to be fully alive.”
Aileen Passloff, Professor of Dance at Bard College for over four decades, was born in New York City in 1931. She began performing professionally at the age of 14 for the renowned modern dance choreographer James Waring, and was passionately committed to the art of the dance for 67 more years. Whether it was ballet, experimental dance, or “dance theater,” Aileen was devoted to learning more about the art of the body moving through space; she continued to dance and to choreograph until her death in November, 2020.
Passloff studied dance at Bennington College; she then led her own company for ten years in New York City. During her performing career she danced with, amongst others, Katherine Litz, Toby Armour and Remy Charlip. She also developed a passion for the art of Flamenco, which prompted her to travel annually to Spain to study. Recently, she appeared in two films by Marta Renzi: “Her Magnum Opus” (2017), in which Passloff portrays the beloved teacher of a group of artists, and a short documentary, “Arthur & Aileen” (2012).
As a beloved teacher of many generations of Bard students and professional dancers, she continued to choreograph until the very last weeks of her life. The Celebration of Aileen Passloff will feature several recordings of her dances as well as live performances by three of her former students, Charlotte Hendrickson, EmmaGrace Skove-Epes, and Arthur Aviles. Other students of Aileen Passloff have included the choreographers Joanna Haigood, David Parker, Dusan Tynek, costume designer Liz Prince, and the director Ann Bogart.
Post Date: 04-05-2021
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Emma L. Briant on the Flawed Methodology and Grim Consequences of an Influential Study on Disinformation from the Oxford Internet Institute
Emma L. Briant on the Flawed Methodology and Grim Consequences of an Influential Study on Disinformation from the Oxford Internet Institute
“A well-regarded research center like OII gets immediate big headlines whenever it produces new research, but the authors have made far more of these findings than they can reasonably claim,” writes Briant, visiting research associate in human rights. “Misleading reporting about such weak findings risks undermining public confidence in research and new policies on disinformation, making it more urgent than ever that we get the difficult research that’s needed done.”
Post Date: 02-18-2021
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New York Times Classical Music Critic Anthony Tommasini Reviews Complete RCA Recordings of the Late Bard Conservatory Professor and Renowned Pianist Peter Serkin and Reflects on Their Intersecting Careers and Friendship
New York Times Classical Music Critic Anthony Tommasini Reviews Complete RCA Recordings of the Late Bard Conservatory Professor and Renowned Pianist Peter Serkin and Reflects on Their Intersecting Careers and Friendship
“The collection offers a rich variety of solo pieces, chamber works and concertos by Beethoven, Berio, Chopin, Mozart, Takemitsu, Stravinsky, Schoenberg and more — in probing, lucid, often exhilarating performances. Some of these recordings I didn’t know; others I’d not listened to in years. The set has rekindled strong memories of Peter — as I came to know him — and his great artistry, and the intersection of our lives and professions,” writes Tommasini.
Post Date: 02-09-2021
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Bard College’s Award-Winning Literary Magazine Conjunctions Celebrates the Launch of Its Latest Issue with a Zoom Reading and Performance by Contributors on February 26
Bard College’s Award-Winning Literary Magazine Conjunctions Celebrates the Launch of Its Latest Issue with a Zoom Reading and Performance by Contributors on February 26
On February 26, novelist and Bard College literature professor Bradford Morrow, founding editor of Conjunctions, the celebrated literary journal published by Bard College, hosts an evening of readings and performances with some of the contributors to Conjunctions:75, Dispatches from Solitude. This issue gathers fiction, poetry, essays, and genre-bending work from writers far and wide who respond to the deficits of quarantine, self-isolation, and distancing. Morrow will be joined by contributors Sandra Cisneros and Henry Cisneros, Brandon Hobson, Nathaniel Mackey, and Barbara Tran. The livestreamed event, presented by Conjunctions and Elliott Bay Book Company, takes place Friday, February 26, at 8 p.m. For reservations, please click here.
Edited by Morrow, Dispatches from Solitude features two previously unpublished poem-songs by Sandra Cisneros; fiction by the late H. G. Carrillo; and new writing by Brandon Hobson, Nathaniel Mackey, Barbara Tran, Forrest Gander, Helena María Viramontes, Bennett Sims, Anne Waldman, Colin Channer, Rikki Ducornet, Kyoko Mori, John Yau, Charles Bernstein, Marc Anthony Richardson, Michael Ives, Rick Moody, and many others. In his Editor’s Note, Morrow describes how plans for an entirely different fall issue, States of Play, were dashed as the coronavirus pandemic took over.
“As hundreds, then thousands, began to die—among them dear friends of mine, such as Conjunctions donor Jay Hanus and longtime contributor H. G. Carrillo—New York and other cities were forced into lockdown,” writes Morrow. “COVID-19 became the daily and nightly shadow that fell across our lives. Amid this harrowing outbreak, another, more urgent theme for the fall Conjunctions became imperative, one where we might gather writing from those who were compelled to change their daily routines, even reevaluate what their work and lives meant to them. Contributions didn’t necessarily have to be about the pandemic, as such, but shaped by its constraints, by the terrors and courage it has provoked.”
Additional contributors to Dispatches from Solitude include Jane Pek, Meredith Stricker, David Ryan, Gillian Conoley, Yxta Maya Murray, Vanessa Chan, Cyan James, Clare Beams, Cindy Juyoung Ok, Alyssa Pelish, Erin L. McCoy, Alan Rossi, John Darcy, Rae Armantrout, Sylvia Legris, and Susan Daitch.
Sandra Cisneros is a poet, short story writer, novelist, essayist, and visual artist whose work explores the lives of Mexicans and Mexican Americans. Her numerous awards include a MacArthur Fellowship, the National Medal of Arts, a Ford Foundation Art of Change Fellowship, and the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature. She will be joined by her brother Henry Cisneros, who has set her poetry from Dispatches to music.
Brandon Hobson is the author of the novel The Removed (Ecco, Feb 2021); Where the Dead Sit Talking (Soho Press), a 2019 National Book Award finalist; and other books. An assistant professor of English at New Mexico State University, he also teaches in the low-res MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe.
Nathaniel Mackey is the author of poetry collections Late Arcade, Nod House and Blue Fasa (all New Directions), and Lay Ghost (Black Ocean). He edits the literary magazine Hambone.
Bradford Morrow (editor) is the author of ten books of fiction and the founding editor of Conjunctions. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in fiction, an Academy Award in literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the PEN/Nora Magid Award for excellence in editing a literary journal.
Barbara Tran is a poet, with writing published or forthcoming in Bennington Review, The Cincinnati Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, and The New Yorker. In spring 2021, her first poem film will tour with a Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network exhibition.
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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 nearly 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 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/conjunctions75. 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]
(2.8.21)
Post Date: 02-08-2021
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Professor Sanjib Baruah on the White Supremacy Behind the US Capitol Assault
Professor Sanjib Baruah on the White Supremacy Behind the US Capitol Assault
“The narrative of a stolen election has a racial subtext that has long roots in American history,” writes Professor of Political Studies Sanjib Baruah. “If Trump’s 2016 election victory was partly the result of a racial backlash against the Obama presidency, Biden’s public embrace of diversity and inclusion is sure to reinforce white resentment and disaffection.”
Post Date: 01-15-2021
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Accolades Continue for Bard Artist in Residence Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow with New York Film Critics Circle and Associated Press Naming the Film Best Picture of 2020
Accolades Continue for Bard Artist in Residence Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow with New York Film Critics Circle and Associated Press Naming the Film Best Picture of 2020
“The film critics, assembling virtually, gave its top award to First Cow, a delicate tale of friendship and capitalism in mid-1800s Oregon Territory,” writes AP of the new film by Kelly Reichardt, S. William Senfeld Artist in Residence at Bard. “Reichardt’s film, released in theaters in March just days before the onset of COVID-19 forced cinemas to close nationwide, hasn’t been widely seen but remains one of the year’s most critically acclaimed films.”
Post Date: 12-20-2020
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