Review: Writer in Residence Mona Simpson’s “Stunning” New Novel about a Family and Mental Illness
Acclaimed novelist and Bard writer in residence Mona Simpson this week published her seventh novel, Commitment (Knopf). A “minimalist masterpiece” (Ann Levin, Associated Press) the novel follows a California family in the 1970s and 1980s whose three siblings must learn to navigate their lives after their mother is institutionalized for severe depression. “Simpson is an artist of the family saga, the multigenerational narrative. In her seventh novel, she doesn’t revisit this territory so much as animate it anew.” (Kirkus) Commitment is one of Kirkus’s 20 Best Books to Read in March.
Review: Writer in Residence Mona Simpson’s “Stunning” New Novel about a Family and Mental Illness
Post Date: 03-22-2023
Bard Center for the Study of Hate Releases New Publication on the Economic Costs of Hate Crimes
The Bard Center for the Study of Hate has released a new report examining the economic costs of violence stemming from hatred. The study, written by Bard Associate Professor Michael Martell, estimates that the measurable annual cost of hate crimes is nearly 3.4 billion, with the actual cost likely much higher. “Clearly, violence from hate has an economic cost, from property damage to medical costs to policing to psychological damage to the cost of fear rippling through a community,” Martell writes in “Economic Costs of Hate Crimes.” “The costs of hate crimes will also tell us something about the structure of our economy, from direct costs to lost opportunities.”Bard Center for the Study of Hate Releases New Publication on the Economic Costs of Hate Crimes
“Clearly, violence from hate has an economic cost, from property damage to medical costs to policing to psychological damage to the cost of fear rippling through a community,” Martell writes in “Economic Costs of Hate Crimes.” “The costs of hate crimes will also tell us something about the structure of our economy, from direct costs to lost opportunities.”
Martell draws on a particular hate crime—the massacre at a Sikh temple by a white supremacist in 2012—to illustrate the various economic losses, including those to the victims directly and those to society. Using available, if incomplete, data from national sources, the study breaks down, and adds up, the wide-ranging costs of violence from acts of hate, looking at everything from tangible ones—such as lost earnings, medical bills, and destroyed property—to micro and macro social costs that are more nebulous to calculate, from the anguish of victims to the resources allocated to policing and incarceration.
“Martell’s analysis is a good first step in examining the question of what hate costs each and every one of us in economic terms,” says Kenneth Stern, the director of the Bard Center for the Study of Hate. “We were in desperate need of a methodology to think about what we might consider a ‘hate tax,’ and while Martell’s analysis is looking at one subset of what hate costs us, focusing on hate crime, our hope is that it will spur others to think about, and quantify, the costs of other manifestations of hate.” As Stern writes in the foreword to the report, “If we don’t quantify the cost of a societal problem, it’s less likely we’ll do something to address it.”
“We cannot measure the costs that reflect the ways that hate, and hate crimes, fundamentally changes the structure of our economy and the capabilities of those who comprise it,” Martell notes. “We also continue to experience the ramifications of hate crimes of the past. Hate continues to constrain opportunities and to discourage the full development of our capacities as individuals and productive members of society.”
Post Date: 03-14-2023
Bard Professor Nuruddin Farah Interviewed in the Financial Times
Nuruddin Farah, distinguished professor of literature at Bard College, was interviewed in the Financial Times, where he spoke about his ambiguous relationship with his homeland as a Somali novelist who has lived in exile, his identity as a radical secularist, and his refusal to tolerate intolerance. “Like many people forced to live in exile, Farah has a complex relationship with his homeland,” writes David Pilling for the Financial Times. “A liberal who abhors the radical Islam that has overwhelmed his country, a fierce individualist who detests the conformity imposed by many families, Farah is a man who has lived in 13 countries but who can only think about one: Somalia.”Bard Professor Nuruddin Farah Interviewed in the Financial Times
Post Date: 03-14-2023
More CFCD News
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Professor Joshua Glick Talks about AI in Hollywood on Marketplace Tech
Professor Joshua Glick Talks about AI in Hollywood on Marketplace Tech
Visiting Associate Professor of Film and Electronic Arts Joshua Glick spoke with Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino about the manifold ways Hollywood employs artificial intelligence including de-aging star characters, creating synthetic voices, generating digital faces and imagery of crowds, and even using deepfake technology in documentaries to protect vulnerable onscreen subjects. AI’s entree into filmmaking spurs anxiety that it could supplant human creative labor like screenwriting, designing, and directing. “New tools and new technologies have always sustained a productive tension or creative tension with the status quo of the industry. But I’d say that the idea of complete replacement is not something I foresee happening, at least in the near future. Some of the most promising or interesting areas is how these tools have become part of the toolbox,” Glick said. He also discusses what is at stake in Hollywood’s business side using AI analytics to maximize profits by informing filmmakers and studios “what films might make the most money depending on what happens in the plot and depending on who is cast. It leads to this attempt to slow down and challenge risk, which I think is a problem,” notes Glick.
Post Date: 03-14-2023
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“Self-determination is the basis for any decolonial movement”: Candice Hopkins Interviewed in ArtReview about Indigenous Studies and Native Art Initiatives at Bard
“Self-determination is the basis for any decolonial movement”: Candice Hopkins Interviewed in ArtReview about Indigenous Studies and Native Art Initiatives at Bard
Candice Hopkins (Carcross/Tagish First Nation) CCS ’03 recently joined Bard’s faculty as part of the College’s transformative initiatives in Native American and Indigenous studies, developed in partnership with Forge Project and supported by a $50 million endowment. Hopkins, CCS Bard Fellow in Indigenous Art History and Curatorial Studies and Forge Project’s executive director, speaks with Shanna Ketchum-Heap of Birds (Diné/Navajo) for ArtReview about Indigenous self-determination and the importance of this new collaboration between the Native-led arts and cultural organization Forge and Bard College. “We realized that we could attempt to enact quite radical institutional change through a partnership between Forge and Bard,” said Hopkins. “One of those involved naming: American Studies is now American and Indigenous Studies. There are cluster hires for faculty at all different levels, and scholarships (including living expenses) for Native students. There is also support for the recruitment of Native students, because Native students do not always know what opportunities are out there for them. And if they do not know then they are not going to apply. But if they also do not see themselves represented, people are going to feel really alienated when they come to a place.”
Hopkins notes that these College-wide initiatives, including the establishment of a Center for Indigenous Studies, were “built upon the good work that Bard was already doing with their Andrew W. Mellon grant called ‘Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck’. At the center of it was the question of ‘how do we make land acknowledgments actionable?’ because they have become often rote, performative and not based on real collaboration or community engagement.”
Announced in September 2022, these initiatives are having an immediate impact on Bard’s community and its undergraduate and graduate academic programs. “The intent was for this to be felt right away, and I am already seeing it happening. People are coming here; more Native folks are coming to teach and be engaged with postdoctoral students. It will be interesting to see what comes out of it and what students do, what impact that they make,” she said.
Hopkins, who currently advises and teaches at CCS Bard, will curate a major exhibition Indian Theater, opening June 24, 2023 at the Hessel Museum of Art.
Post Date: 03-14-2023
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Paper Magazine: “Jack Ferver Mourns a Lost Generation in Nowhere Apparent”
Paper Magazine: “Jack Ferver Mourns a Lost Generation in Nowhere Apparent”
Nowhere Apparent, a new film by Assistant Professor of Theater and Performance Jack Ferver, is “a poetic meditation on queer isolation and feelings of abandonment by a generation of potential parental figures as a result of a failed response to the AIDS epidemic,” writes Matt Moen for Paper magazine. “I am told by the majority that being queer is unnatural, that it doesn’t exist in the ‘natural world,’” Ferver said, when asked what queer isolation means to them. “I am also told by the majority that I chose it. Using this logic means: I have chosen not to exist.” Nowhere Apparent interrogates “what isn’t said, what is left out, what is abandoned,” bringing those things to light—a lens Ferver also uses in their teaching at Bard. “I teach at Bard College and start every semester talking about AIDS and the culture wars. That gap we will never heal,” they say. What can be done to address such silences and erasures? “Make work about it,” Ferver says to their students.
Post Date: 03-07-2023
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Elyria, a New Play Featuring Bard Faculty Member Bhavesh Patel, Is Reviewed in the New York Times
Elyria, a New Play Featuring Bard Faculty Member Bhavesh Patel, Is Reviewed in the New York Times
Bhavesh Patel, Visiting Artist in Residence in Theater and Performance at Bard College, stars in Elyria, a new play by Deepa Purohit which was reviewed by the New York Times. Set in 1982 Ohio, it is a story of the Indian diaspora and centers around the tangled relationships between two women, Dhatta and Vasanta, and Charu, a doctor played by Patel who is husband to Dhatta and former lover of Vasanta. “Watching an actor steal a show is one of the absolute thrills of live performance,” writes Laura Collins-Hughes for the Times about Patel. Exploring motifs of family history, marriages, and parent-child relationships, the play crisscrosses continents from Africa to Europe and North America and weaves a complex tale from many converging narrative threads. “Patel’s Charu is perfect,” Collins-Hughes continues. “Charu is comic and reckless, selfish and decent, myopic and real. It’s an exhilarating performance, a work of actorly alchemy.”
Post Date: 03-07-2023
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Youssef Ait Benasser Joins Bard College Faculty as Assistant Professor of Economics in the Division of Social Studies
Youssef Ait Benasser Joins Bard College Faculty as Assistant Professor of Economics in the Division of Social Studies
Bard College’s Division of Social Studies is pleased to announce the appointment of Youssef Ait Benasser as Assistant Professor of Economics. Their tenure-track appointment will begin in the fall of the 2023–24 academic year.
“Bard’s global engagement provides the ideal environment for my work in international economics,” said Benasser. “I am excited to contribute to the disruptive research and support the transformative learning that sets Bard’s community apart in the social sciences and beyond.”
Born in Rabat, Morocco, Youssef A. Benasser (they/he) received a BA in Political Science from Sciences Po Paris and an MSc in Economics and Public Policy from Ecole Polytechnique (X), before completing their PhD in Economics at the University of Oregon. Their research agenda is influenced by decolonial critics of the Bretton-Wood international economic system and inspired by the Third World’s quest for an alternative economic project. It centers on empirical assessments of recent trends in international trade policy, such as policy uncertainty, reversals, or rivalries, and their impacts on the global flow of goods and money. Passionate about teaching and pedagogy, Dr. Benasser has taught in higher ed institutions for more than seven years. Their courses span macro and international economics at the introductory, intermediate, and advanced levels. Dr. Benasser also has a risk analysis background, having previously held positions in the financial and government sectors.
Post Date: 03-02-2023
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“The Real Developmental Engine:” Jeannette Estruth on the Relationship between Silicon Valley and the Military-Industrial Complex for The Drift
“The Real Developmental Engine:” Jeannette Estruth on the Relationship between Silicon Valley and the Military-Industrial Complex for The Drift
“Despite the persistent myth that Silicon Valley was built by rogue engineers in Palo Alto garages, federal funding — especially from the military — has long been the real developmental engine of the American technology sector,” writes Assistant Professor of History Jeannette Estruth for The Drift. Estruth traces the history of Silicon Valley and its innovations, both software and hardware, outlining the longstanding partnerships between the technology sector and the federal government. “High tech’s value has long been in producing war-making technology for the federal government,” Estruth writes, a relationship that, she argues, has historically gone both ways. With public criticism of “Big Tech” on the rise, “the public is falling out of love” with Silicon Valley and its ilk. The question now, she writes, is “whether Washington could be persuaded to do the same.”
Post Date: 02-28-2023