RKC 103 The big consequences for the West of losing "small wars" (like Algeria, Vietnam, or Afghanistan) are due to the constitutive role of "the Orient" in Western identities. This talk will discuss how these identities are committed, in diverse ways, to notions of Western vitality, strength and dominance over non-European peoples. There is no more obvious sign of Western weakness and "Oriental" strength than defeat in war or failure to obtain victory. Unsurprisingly then, such setbacks become sites of political and cultural disruption and production at all levels of Western society.Sponsored by: Co-sponsored by the Ukraine and Decolonial Thought Common Course, the Human Rights Project, and the Anthropology, Politics, and GIS Programs.
For more information, call 845-758-7662, or e-mail [email protected].
The Poetry of Physics: What Literature Can Teach Us About the Ultimate Nature of Reality
William Egginton, Decker Professor in the Humanities, Chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, and Director of the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute, Johns Hopkins University
Thursday, April 3, 2025 5:30–7 pm
Olin Humanities, Room 102 In this lecture I explore the two major physical theories of the twentieth century, relativity and quantum mechanics, by way of what we could call their poetic and philosophical foundations. Key to this approach will be the idea that reality isn’t an unfiltered picture of what’s out there, but rather a complex human construct, and that because of that we need essentially human means to understand it, among them literature and philosophy. In this light I argue that philosophers like Plato and Kant, and poets like Dante and Borges, are key to understanding the ideas of Albert Einstein and Werner Heisenberg.
William Egginton is the Decker Professor in the Humanities, Chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, and Director of the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of multiple books, including How the World Became a Stage (2003), Perversity and Ethics (2006), A Wrinkle in History (2007), The Philosopher’s Desire (2007), The Theater of Truth (2010), In Defense of Religious Moderation (2011), The Man Who Invented Fiction: How Cervantes Ushered in the Modern World (2016), The Splintering of the American Mind (2018), and The Rigor of Angels (2023), which was named to several best of 2023 lists, including The New York Times and The New Yorker. He is co-author with David Castillo of Medialogies: Reading Reality in the Age of Inflationary Media (2017) and What Would Cervantes Do? Navigating Post-Truth with Spanish Baroque Literature (2022). His most recent book, on the philosophical, psychoanalytic, and surrealist dimensions of the work of Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky, was published in January 2024.Sponsored by: Division of Languages and Literature; LAIS Program; Literature Program; Philosophy Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Institute of Advanced Theology Spring Lecture Series
Monday, April 7, 2025 12:30–2 pm
Bard Hall A lecture series from Bruce Chilton, Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Philosophy and Religion; Director, Institute of Advanced Theology The Bible does not mean only what Christianity says it means, or only what Judaism says it means, or only what Islam says it means. Biblical meaning also cannot be reduced to the caricatures produced by a small but strident coterie of atheist Fundamentalists in recent years.
The Bible unfolded over the course of a millennium of development. During that process social forces in each phase shaped the texts as they stand today, and in some cases the texts can be seen to push back against their contexts. The formation of the Bible resulted in the evolution of a social message, what the Aramaic, and Hebrew, and Greek languages of composition call a “gospel.” Our series is designed to uncover the grounding principles of this gospel as it unfolded over time and was articulated by the Bible in its own terms, before Judaism, Christianity, and Islam emerged.Sponsored by: Institute of Advanced Theology.
For more information, call 845-758-7667, or e-mail [email protected].
National Identity, National Minorities, and the Politics of Historical Memory
Memory-Studies Talk Series: Elise Giuliano
Tuesday, April 8, 2025 12:30–2:30 pm
Olin Humanities, Room 303 This talk discusses Dr Giuliano's current research about discourse among ethnic minority populations in Russia’s regions and how to think about the subjectivity and identity of ethnic minorities in multi-ethnic states. Following the end of communist rule in eastern Europe in 1989, most of the new nation-states dedicated themselves to reconstructing a history that viewed Soviet domination following WWII as a departure from their nation’s natural democratic path. Leaders in the post-Soviet states that emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 took a more differentiated approach, especially with regard to the recent Soviet past. In Ukraine, especially since Russia’s invasion in 2022, public memory about Soviet history has become more urgent and politicized. This talk will consider what varied interpretations of critical historical episodes mean for the attempt to define a coherent nation-state and discuss how citizens’ lived experiences and personal family histories interact with attempts by political authorities to define a common public memory.Sponsored by: Center for Civic Engagement; Historical Studies Program; Russian/Eurasian Studies Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Two Lectures Presented by the Inaugural Anthony Lester Fellows in Human Rights
Promoting Legal Protections to Uphold the Ban on FGM in The Gambia (Hilina Degefa) and Training and Supporting Local Human Rights Defenders in Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Trinidad and Tobago (Marian Da Silva)
Wednesday, April 9, 2025 5–6:30 pm
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium Please join us for an evening with Hilina Berhanu Degefa and Marian Alejandra Da Silva Parra, our 2024–25 Lester Fellows in Human Rights. Degefa, an expert on women’s rights from Ethiopia, will discuss her work to combat proposals to legalize female genital mutilation in the Gambia. Da Silva Parra, a human rights lawyer from Venezuela, will discuss her project to train and support local human rights defenders in Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Trinidad and Tobago. The fellowships honor the memory and legacy of Anthony Lester QC (Lord Lester of Herne Hill), one of Britain’s most distinguished human rights lawyers. For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Totalitarianism, Religions, and Architecture: The Impact of Totalitarian Regimes on the Architectural and Monumental Religious Landscape in the Short Twentieth Century
Friday, April 11, 2025 – Saturday, April 12, 2025
Finberg House The “short 20th century” was marked by totalitarian regimes, which profoundly impacted the society they governed. Such regimes comprehensively and tremendously planned to mobilize masses and gain their consensus through direct control of the lives of individuals and by enforcing collective rituals, myths, and rhetoric. Militarized corporality, high–impact aesthetic symbolism, political liturgy and leaders’ worship are just some of the aspects that typified these regimes’ actions in shaping public space. This led authors, like Emilio Gentile and Robert Mallett, to use the term “political religion” to indicate the evocative reach of totalitarian regimes' narratives and symbols to create a cultural memory by which masses can envision themselves as a single, cohesive social body. Building cultural memory involved shaping a material and visual culture that evoked the autopoietic national myths and the palingenetic past inspired by the regimes, as in the case of the Roman Empire for the Italian Fascism. In such a way, Fascist, Nazi and Communist regimes actively used architecture as a tool of creating influence in rational and emotional perspective. They shaped the urban and rural architectural landscape according to their conception of history (past, present, and future) and the people as a nation. This included at times the enshrinement of religious architectural and monumental heritage.
These totalitarian regimes molded their relationship with religious institutions and traditions since their oriented conception of religion. This was discernible, and an extremization of post–Westphalian understanding about religion was based on a dialectical relationship between political power and religious institutions in which the latter are essentially subjugated to the former. However, this did not preclude regimes, such as the fascist one, from establishing agreements and collaborations with religious institutions, nor did it prevent their state secularism from mimetically and selectively embed some religious practices or symbols. In the case of communist and socialist–relative regimes, it could happen that state institutions subjugated religious ones in what we might call the “domestication of religion” which could involve blatant anti–religious conflict, as in the instance of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, or even the incorporation of national worship and state ideology into religious organizations. Indeed, it also included the shaping of the architectural religious landscape, which could be subdued to state purpose or even targeted by the anti–religious campaigns as in Albania’s in 1967 when churches and mosques were closed, destroyed or converted to civilian uses. Yet in the case of communist–inspired regimes as much as fascist ones, it would be inaccurate to believe that state institutions were able to totally erase the religious monumental and architectural landscape: both religious authorities and faithful were able to develop practices of negotiation and resistance through re–using and preserving religious spaces. Specific sacred locations were occasionally used to elaborate the cultural memory of religious communities, as happened in Soviet Central Asia. This workshop aims to investigate, according to various epistemological perspectives (historical, anthropological, architectural, archaeological) and through different methodological approaches how totalitarian regimes in the short 20th century shaped the religious monumental and architectural landscape. For more information, call 845-758-7662, or e-mail [email protected].
The Q&A and I: Agency and Self-Expression in the Survey Era
Speakers: Ingrid Becker, Visiting Assistant Professor of Human Rights; Yarran Hominh, Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Friday, April 11, 2025 12–1:30 pm
Hegeman 204A What is agency? To what extent does it manifest as the expression of internal will or as a response to external circumstances? This salon—part talk, part conversation—will explore these questions through two disciplinary contexts that are not often considered together: sociology and poetry, or more specifically, the sociological survey and lyric poetry. While we might think of the lyric as a pre-eminent space of authentic self-expression that issues from something “inside” an individual, and the survey as a technology that constructs selves through questions that impose a set of “outside” constraints on what individuals express, this salon will consider thinkers and poems from the early-mid 20th century that trouble this binary. For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Moderated by Daniel Brinkerhoff Young, Visiting Assistant Professor in Philosophy at Union College
Friday, April 11, 2025 4–5:30 pm
Union College, Lippmann 100
Please join us for the third session of the Hudson Valley Political Theory Workshop this Friday, April 11. Spring Semester workshops will take place at Union College.
The Hudson Valley Political Theory Workshop is a new collaborative project launched by Bard College and Union College. The workshop aims to bring together political theorists working in or near the Hudson Valley Region in a series of workshops to share their work in progress, create new networks, and open up possibilities for new collaborative research projects that further advance humanities.
We are delighted to welcome Daniel Brinkerhoff Young, Visiting Assistant Professor in Philosophy at Union College.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Totalitarianism, Religions, and Architecture: The Impact of Totalitarian Regimes on the Architectural and Monumental Religious Landscape in the Short Twentieth Century
Friday, April 11, 2025 – Saturday, April 12, 2025
Finberg House The “short 20th century” was marked by totalitarian regimes, which profoundly impacted the society they governed. Such regimes comprehensively and tremendously planned to mobilize masses and gain their consensus through direct control of the lives of individuals and by enforcing collective rituals, myths, and rhetoric. Militarized corporality, high–impact aesthetic symbolism, political liturgy and leaders’ worship are just some of the aspects that typified these regimes’ actions in shaping public space. This led authors, like Emilio Gentile and Robert Mallett, to use the term “political religion” to indicate the evocative reach of totalitarian regimes' narratives and symbols to create a cultural memory by which masses can envision themselves as a single, cohesive social body. Building cultural memory involved shaping a material and visual culture that evoked the autopoietic national myths and the palingenetic past inspired by the regimes, as in the case of the Roman Empire for the Italian Fascism. In such a way, Fascist, Nazi and Communist regimes actively used architecture as a tool of creating influence in rational and emotional perspective. They shaped the urban and rural architectural landscape according to their conception of history (past, present, and future) and the people as a nation. This included at times the enshrinement of religious architectural and monumental heritage.
These totalitarian regimes molded their relationship with religious institutions and traditions since their oriented conception of religion. This was discernible, and an extremization of post–Westphalian understanding about religion was based on a dialectical relationship between political power and religious institutions in which the latter are essentially subjugated to the former. However, this did not preclude regimes, such as the fascist one, from establishing agreements and collaborations with religious institutions, nor did it prevent their state secularism from mimetically and selectively embed some religious practices or symbols. In the case of communist and socialist–relative regimes, it could happen that state institutions subjugated religious ones in what we might call the “domestication of religion” which could involve blatant anti–religious conflict, as in the instance of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, or even the incorporation of national worship and state ideology into religious organizations. Indeed, it also included the shaping of the architectural religious landscape, which could be subdued to state purpose or even targeted by the anti–religious campaigns as in Albania’s in 1967 when churches and mosques were closed, destroyed or converted to civilian uses. Yet in the case of communist–inspired regimes as much as fascist ones, it would be inaccurate to believe that state institutions were able to totally erase the religious monumental and architectural landscape: both religious authorities and faithful were able to develop practices of negotiation and resistance through re–using and preserving religious spaces. Specific sacred locations were occasionally used to elaborate the cultural memory of religious communities, as happened in Soviet Central Asia. This workshop aims to investigate, according to various epistemological perspectives (historical, anthropological, architectural, archaeological) and through different methodological approaches how totalitarian regimes in the short 20th century shaped the religious monumental and architectural landscape. For more information, call 845-758-7662, or e-mail [email protected].
Institute of Advanced Theology Spring Lecture Series
Monday, April 14, 2025 12:30–2 pm
Bard Hall A lecture series from Bruce Chilton, Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Philosophy and Religion; Director, Institute of Advanced Theology The Bible does not mean only what Christianity says it means, or only what Judaism says it means, or only what Islam says it means. Biblical meaning also cannot be reduced to the caricatures produced by a small but strident coterie of atheist Fundamentalists in recent years.
The Bible unfolded over the course of a millennium of development. During that process social forces in each phase shaped the texts as they stand today, and in some cases the texts can be seen to push back against their contexts. The formation of the Bible resulted in the evolution of a social message, what the Aramaic, and Hebrew, and Greek languages of composition call a “gospel.” Our series is designed to uncover the grounding principles of this gospel as it unfolded over time and was articulated by the Bible in its own terms, before Judaism, Christianity, and Islam emerged.Sponsored by: Institute of Advanced Theology.
For more information, call 845-758-7667, or e-mail [email protected].
Campus Center, Multipurpose Room Our book, Disability Worlds, chronicles our immersion in NYC’s wide-ranging disability worlds as parents, activists, anthropologists, and disability studies scholars. Disability consciousness, we show, emerges in everyday politics, practices, and frictions, from genetic testing to the reimagining of kinship, and the perils of what some call “the disability cliff”, while highlighting the remarkable world-changing creativity of neurodiversity activists and disabled artists. In today’s talk, we will focus on a chapter entitled, “Living Otherwise” that tracks the histories and everyday practices of disability arts activists. We explored projects created by people with diverse bodyminds across a dizzying array of genres, producing new culturalimaginaries centered on disability experiences and aesthetics, reframing the very concept of artistry itself. The disability art world ranges from community theater and poetry readings in neighborhood libraries todisability arts boot camps at cultural institutions such as the Whitney Museum and the Gibney Performing Arts Center, dance at Lincoln Center, The Shed, the High Line, Broadway performances, and more. Our research preceded and coincided with the pandemic when many activities shifted online, creating unexpected challenges and opportunities in the disability arts world. Overall, we show how participation inthe arts offers new opportunities, resources, and models for “living otherwise.”Sponsored by: Anthropology Program and Disability & Difference.
For more information, call 845-758-7662, or e-mail [email protected].
Uri Shanas, Associate Professor at University of Haifa-Oranim
Tuesday, April 15, 2025 5:30–7 pm
Olin Humanities, Room 201 In this talk, Prof. Uri Shanas, will introduce the TiME (This is My Earth) initiative. TiME is a non-profit and volunteer-based international conservation organization that works with local communities to acquire and steward biodiversity hotspots around the world. The organization is led by an array of environmental leaders and renowned scientists from around the world. Since 2016, TiME has purchased and protected ten biodiversity hotspots in the upper Amazon, the Caribbean, Colombia, Brazil, Kenya, and Ecuador, protecting a total area of over 15 million square yards. After the talk, Professor Shanas will talk with students about potential involvement in TiME.
This event is sponsored by the Sociology and EUS/ES Programs.Sponsored by: Environmental and Urban Studies Program; Sociology Program.
Institute of Advanced Theology Spring Lecture Series
Monday, April 21, 2025 12:30–2 pm
Bard Hall A lecture series from Bruce Chilton, Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Philosophy and Religion; Director, Institute of Advanced Theology The Bible does not mean only what Christianity says it means, or only what Judaism says it means, or only what Islam says it means. Biblical meaning also cannot be reduced to the caricatures produced by a small but strident coterie of atheist Fundamentalists in recent years.
The Bible unfolded over the course of a millennium of development. During that process social forces in each phase shaped the texts as they stand today, and in some cases the texts can be seen to push back against their contexts. The formation of the Bible resulted in the evolution of a social message, what the Aramaic, and Hebrew, and Greek languages of composition call a “gospel.” Our series is designed to uncover the grounding principles of this gospel as it unfolded over time and was articulated by the Bible in its own terms, before Judaism, Christianity, and Islam emerged.Sponsored by: Institute of Advanced Theology.
For more information, call 845-758-7667, or e-mail [email protected].
Richard Ellmann, James Joyce, and Literary Biography: A talk by Zachary Leader
Tuesday, April 22, 2025 5:30–7 pm
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium Richard Ellmann’s James Joyce has been called “the greatest literary biography of the twentieth century.” This talk, by the critic and biographer Zachary Leader, tells the story of the book and its maker, in the process arguing for the artistic claims not only of Ellmann himself, a remarkable man, but of literary biography in general.
Zachary Leader (born 1946) is an Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Roehampton. He was an undergraduate at Northwestern University, and did graduate work at Trinity College, Cambridge and Harvard University, where he was awarded a PhD in English in 1977. Although born and raised in the U.S. he has lived for over forty years in the U.K., and has dual British and American citizenship. His best-known works are The Letters of Kingsley Amis (2001), The Life of Kingsley Amis (2007), a finalist for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Biography, and The Life of Saul Bellow: To Fame and Fortune, 1915-1964 (2015), which was shortlisted for the Wingate Prize in the U.K. The Life of Saul Bellow: Love and Strife 1965 to 2005 was published in 2018. He has written and edited a dozen books, including both volumes of the Saul Bellow biography, and is General Editor of The Oxford History of Life-Writing, a seven-volume series published by OUP. A recipient of Guggenheim, Whiting, Huntington, Leverhulme and British Academy Fellowships, he is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Introduction: Gregory Moynahan, Associate Professor of History, Bard College Q&A Moderator: Elizabeth Frank, Joseph E. Harry Professor of Modern Languages and Literature, Bard CollegeSponsored by: Division of Languages and Literature; Division of Social Studies; German Studies Program; Hannah Arendt Center; Historical Studies Program; Human Rights Project; Irish and Celtic Studies (ICS) Program; Written Arts Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
The Preacher's Flow: Inspired Eloquence as the central skill of Mahāyāna Buddhist Preachers
A talk by Dr. Ralph Craig, Assistant Professor of Religion, Whitman College
Wednesday, April 23, 2025 5–6:30 pm
Olin Humanities, Room 102 This talk first discusses the South Asian Buddhist notion of pratibhāna-pratisaṃvid, or “skillful knowledge of inspired eloquence.” Then it turns to a discussion of how the concept of “inspired eloquence” informs and provides context for Turner’s sermonic stylings on her last recorded albums. It will conclude by considering what the notion of inspired eloquence offers to our understanding of the history of both South Asian Mahāyāna Buddhism and American Buddhism.
This talk is made possible through the generous support of the Warren Mills Hutcheson Endowed Fund in Religion. For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
RKC 103 The big consequences for the West of losing "small wars" (like Algeria, Vietnam, or Afghanistan) are due to the constitutive role of "the Orient" in Western identities. This talk will discuss how these identities are committed, in diverse ways, to notions of Western vitality, strength and dominance over non-European peoples. There is no more obvious sign of Western weakness and "Oriental" strength than defeat in war or failure to obtain victory. Unsurprisingly then, such setbacks become sites of political and cultural disruption and production at all levels of Western society.Sponsored by: Co-sponsored by the Ukraine and Decolonial Thought Common Course, the Human Rights Project, and the Anthropology, Politics, and GIS Programs.
For more information, call 845-758-7662, or e-mail [email protected].
The Poetry of Physics: What Literature Can Teach Us About the Ultimate Nature of Reality
William Egginton, Decker Professor in the Humanities, Chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, and Director of the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute, Johns Hopkins University
Thursday, April 3, 2025 5:30–7 pm
Olin Humanities, Room 102 In this lecture I explore the two major physical theories of the twentieth century, relativity and quantum mechanics, by way of what we could call their poetic and philosophical foundations. Key to this approach will be the idea that reality isn’t an unfiltered picture of what’s out there, but rather a complex human construct, and that because of that we need essentially human means to understand it, among them literature and philosophy. In this light I argue that philosophers like Plato and Kant, and poets like Dante and Borges, are key to understanding the ideas of Albert Einstein and Werner Heisenberg.
William Egginton is the Decker Professor in the Humanities, Chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, and Director of the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of multiple books, including How the World Became a Stage (2003), Perversity and Ethics (2006), A Wrinkle in History (2007), The Philosopher’s Desire (2007), The Theater of Truth (2010), In Defense of Religious Moderation (2011), The Man Who Invented Fiction: How Cervantes Ushered in the Modern World (2016), The Splintering of the American Mind (2018), and The Rigor of Angels (2023), which was named to several best of 2023 lists, including The New York Times and The New Yorker. He is co-author with David Castillo of Medialogies: Reading Reality in the Age of Inflationary Media (2017) and What Would Cervantes Do? Navigating Post-Truth with Spanish Baroque Literature (2022). His most recent book, on the philosophical, psychoanalytic, and surrealist dimensions of the work of Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky, was published in January 2024.Sponsored by: Division of Languages and Literature; LAIS Program; Literature Program; Philosophy Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Institute of Advanced Theology Spring Lecture Series
Monday, April 7, 2025 12:30–2 pm
Bard Hall A lecture series from Bruce Chilton, Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Philosophy and Religion; Director, Institute of Advanced Theology The Bible does not mean only what Christianity says it means, or only what Judaism says it means, or only what Islam says it means. Biblical meaning also cannot be reduced to the caricatures produced by a small but strident coterie of atheist Fundamentalists in recent years.
The Bible unfolded over the course of a millennium of development. During that process social forces in each phase shaped the texts as they stand today, and in some cases the texts can be seen to push back against their contexts. The formation of the Bible resulted in the evolution of a social message, what the Aramaic, and Hebrew, and Greek languages of composition call a “gospel.” Our series is designed to uncover the grounding principles of this gospel as it unfolded over time and was articulated by the Bible in its own terms, before Judaism, Christianity, and Islam emerged.Sponsored by: Institute of Advanced Theology.
For more information, call 845-758-7667, or e-mail [email protected].
National Identity, National Minorities, and the Politics of Historical Memory
Memory-Studies Talk Series: Elise Giuliano
Tuesday, April 8, 2025 12:30–2:30 pm
Olin Humanities, Room 303 This talk discusses Dr Giuliano's current research about discourse among ethnic minority populations in Russia’s regions and how to think about the subjectivity and identity of ethnic minorities in multi-ethnic states. Following the end of communist rule in eastern Europe in 1989, most of the new nation-states dedicated themselves to reconstructing a history that viewed Soviet domination following WWII as a departure from their nation’s natural democratic path. Leaders in the post-Soviet states that emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 took a more differentiated approach, especially with regard to the recent Soviet past. In Ukraine, especially since Russia’s invasion in 2022, public memory about Soviet history has become more urgent and politicized. This talk will consider what varied interpretations of critical historical episodes mean for the attempt to define a coherent nation-state and discuss how citizens’ lived experiences and personal family histories interact with attempts by political authorities to define a common public memory.Sponsored by: Center for Civic Engagement; Historical Studies Program; Russian/Eurasian Studies Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Two Lectures Presented by the Inaugural Anthony Lester Fellows in Human Rights
Promoting Legal Protections to Uphold the Ban on FGM in The Gambia (Hilina Degefa) and Training and Supporting Local Human Rights Defenders in Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Trinidad and Tobago (Marian Da Silva)
Wednesday, April 9, 2025 5–6:30 pm
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium Please join us for an evening with Hilina Berhanu Degefa and Marian Alejandra Da Silva Parra, our 2024–25 Lester Fellows in Human Rights. Degefa, an expert on women’s rights from Ethiopia, will discuss her work to combat proposals to legalize female genital mutilation in the Gambia. Da Silva Parra, a human rights lawyer from Venezuela, will discuss her project to train and support local human rights defenders in Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Trinidad and Tobago. The fellowships honor the memory and legacy of Anthony Lester QC (Lord Lester of Herne Hill), one of Britain’s most distinguished human rights lawyers. For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Totalitarianism, Religions, and Architecture: The Impact of Totalitarian Regimes on the Architectural and Monumental Religious Landscape in the Short Twentieth Century
Friday, April 11, 2025 – Saturday, April 12, 2025
Finberg House The “short 20th century” was marked by totalitarian regimes, which profoundly impacted the society they governed. Such regimes comprehensively and tremendously planned to mobilize masses and gain their consensus through direct control of the lives of individuals and by enforcing collective rituals, myths, and rhetoric. Militarized corporality, high–impact aesthetic symbolism, political liturgy and leaders’ worship are just some of the aspects that typified these regimes’ actions in shaping public space. This led authors, like Emilio Gentile and Robert Mallett, to use the term “political religion” to indicate the evocative reach of totalitarian regimes' narratives and symbols to create a cultural memory by which masses can envision themselves as a single, cohesive social body. Building cultural memory involved shaping a material and visual culture that evoked the autopoietic national myths and the palingenetic past inspired by the regimes, as in the case of the Roman Empire for the Italian Fascism. In such a way, Fascist, Nazi and Communist regimes actively used architecture as a tool of creating influence in rational and emotional perspective. They shaped the urban and rural architectural landscape according to their conception of history (past, present, and future) and the people as a nation. This included at times the enshrinement of religious architectural and monumental heritage.
These totalitarian regimes molded their relationship with religious institutions and traditions since their oriented conception of religion. This was discernible, and an extremization of post–Westphalian understanding about religion was based on a dialectical relationship between political power and religious institutions in which the latter are essentially subjugated to the former. However, this did not preclude regimes, such as the fascist one, from establishing agreements and collaborations with religious institutions, nor did it prevent their state secularism from mimetically and selectively embed some religious practices or symbols. In the case of communist and socialist–relative regimes, it could happen that state institutions subjugated religious ones in what we might call the “domestication of religion” which could involve blatant anti–religious conflict, as in the instance of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, or even the incorporation of national worship and state ideology into religious organizations. Indeed, it also included the shaping of the architectural religious landscape, which could be subdued to state purpose or even targeted by the anti–religious campaigns as in Albania’s in 1967 when churches and mosques were closed, destroyed or converted to civilian uses. Yet in the case of communist–inspired regimes as much as fascist ones, it would be inaccurate to believe that state institutions were able to totally erase the religious monumental and architectural landscape: both religious authorities and faithful were able to develop practices of negotiation and resistance through re–using and preserving religious spaces. Specific sacred locations were occasionally used to elaborate the cultural memory of religious communities, as happened in Soviet Central Asia. This workshop aims to investigate, according to various epistemological perspectives (historical, anthropological, architectural, archaeological) and through different methodological approaches how totalitarian regimes in the short 20th century shaped the religious monumental and architectural landscape. For more information, call 845-758-7662, or e-mail [email protected].
The Q&A and I: Agency and Self-Expression in the Survey Era
Speakers: Ingrid Becker, Visiting Assistant Professor of Human Rights; Yarran Hominh, Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Friday, April 11, 2025 12–1:30 pm
Hegeman 204A What is agency? To what extent does it manifest as the expression of internal will or as a response to external circumstances? This salon—part talk, part conversation—will explore these questions through two disciplinary contexts that are not often considered together: sociology and poetry, or more specifically, the sociological survey and lyric poetry. While we might think of the lyric as a pre-eminent space of authentic self-expression that issues from something “inside” an individual, and the survey as a technology that constructs selves through questions that impose a set of “outside” constraints on what individuals express, this salon will consider thinkers and poems from the early-mid 20th century that trouble this binary. For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Moderated by Daniel Brinkerhoff Young, Visiting Assistant Professor in Philosophy at Union College
Friday, April 11, 2025 4–5:30 pm
Union College, Lippmann 100
Please join us for the third session of the Hudson Valley Political Theory Workshop this Friday, April 11. Spring Semester workshops will take place at Union College.
The Hudson Valley Political Theory Workshop is a new collaborative project launched by Bard College and Union College. The workshop aims to bring together political theorists working in or near the Hudson Valley Region in a series of workshops to share their work in progress, create new networks, and open up possibilities for new collaborative research projects that further advance humanities.
We are delighted to welcome Daniel Brinkerhoff Young, Visiting Assistant Professor in Philosophy at Union College.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Totalitarianism, Religions, and Architecture: The Impact of Totalitarian Regimes on the Architectural and Monumental Religious Landscape in the Short Twentieth Century
Friday, April 11, 2025 – Saturday, April 12, 2025
Finberg House The “short 20th century” was marked by totalitarian regimes, which profoundly impacted the society they governed. Such regimes comprehensively and tremendously planned to mobilize masses and gain their consensus through direct control of the lives of individuals and by enforcing collective rituals, myths, and rhetoric. Militarized corporality, high–impact aesthetic symbolism, political liturgy and leaders’ worship are just some of the aspects that typified these regimes’ actions in shaping public space. This led authors, like Emilio Gentile and Robert Mallett, to use the term “political religion” to indicate the evocative reach of totalitarian regimes' narratives and symbols to create a cultural memory by which masses can envision themselves as a single, cohesive social body. Building cultural memory involved shaping a material and visual culture that evoked the autopoietic national myths and the palingenetic past inspired by the regimes, as in the case of the Roman Empire for the Italian Fascism. In such a way, Fascist, Nazi and Communist regimes actively used architecture as a tool of creating influence in rational and emotional perspective. They shaped the urban and rural architectural landscape according to their conception of history (past, present, and future) and the people as a nation. This included at times the enshrinement of religious architectural and monumental heritage.
These totalitarian regimes molded their relationship with religious institutions and traditions since their oriented conception of religion. This was discernible, and an extremization of post–Westphalian understanding about religion was based on a dialectical relationship between political power and religious institutions in which the latter are essentially subjugated to the former. However, this did not preclude regimes, such as the fascist one, from establishing agreements and collaborations with religious institutions, nor did it prevent their state secularism from mimetically and selectively embed some religious practices or symbols. In the case of communist and socialist–relative regimes, it could happen that state institutions subjugated religious ones in what we might call the “domestication of religion” which could involve blatant anti–religious conflict, as in the instance of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, or even the incorporation of national worship and state ideology into religious organizations. Indeed, it also included the shaping of the architectural religious landscape, which could be subdued to state purpose or even targeted by the anti–religious campaigns as in Albania’s in 1967 when churches and mosques were closed, destroyed or converted to civilian uses. Yet in the case of communist–inspired regimes as much as fascist ones, it would be inaccurate to believe that state institutions were able to totally erase the religious monumental and architectural landscape: both religious authorities and faithful were able to develop practices of negotiation and resistance through re–using and preserving religious spaces. Specific sacred locations were occasionally used to elaborate the cultural memory of religious communities, as happened in Soviet Central Asia. This workshop aims to investigate, according to various epistemological perspectives (historical, anthropological, architectural, archaeological) and through different methodological approaches how totalitarian regimes in the short 20th century shaped the religious monumental and architectural landscape. For more information, call 845-758-7662, or e-mail [email protected].
Institute of Advanced Theology Spring Lecture Series
Monday, April 14, 2025 12:30–2 pm
Bard Hall A lecture series from Bruce Chilton, Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Philosophy and Religion; Director, Institute of Advanced Theology The Bible does not mean only what Christianity says it means, or only what Judaism says it means, or only what Islam says it means. Biblical meaning also cannot be reduced to the caricatures produced by a small but strident coterie of atheist Fundamentalists in recent years.
The Bible unfolded over the course of a millennium of development. During that process social forces in each phase shaped the texts as they stand today, and in some cases the texts can be seen to push back against their contexts. The formation of the Bible resulted in the evolution of a social message, what the Aramaic, and Hebrew, and Greek languages of composition call a “gospel.” Our series is designed to uncover the grounding principles of this gospel as it unfolded over time and was articulated by the Bible in its own terms, before Judaism, Christianity, and Islam emerged.Sponsored by: Institute of Advanced Theology.
For more information, call 845-758-7667, or e-mail [email protected].
Campus Center, Multipurpose Room Our book, Disability Worlds, chronicles our immersion in NYC’s wide-ranging disability worlds as parents, activists, anthropologists, and disability studies scholars. Disability consciousness, we show, emerges in everyday politics, practices, and frictions, from genetic testing to the reimagining of kinship, and the perils of what some call “the disability cliff”, while highlighting the remarkable world-changing creativity of neurodiversity activists and disabled artists. In today’s talk, we will focus on a chapter entitled, “Living Otherwise” that tracks the histories and everyday practices of disability arts activists. We explored projects created by people with diverse bodyminds across a dizzying array of genres, producing new culturalimaginaries centered on disability experiences and aesthetics, reframing the very concept of artistry itself. The disability art world ranges from community theater and poetry readings in neighborhood libraries todisability arts boot camps at cultural institutions such as the Whitney Museum and the Gibney Performing Arts Center, dance at Lincoln Center, The Shed, the High Line, Broadway performances, and more. Our research preceded and coincided with the pandemic when many activities shifted online, creating unexpected challenges and opportunities in the disability arts world. Overall, we show how participation inthe arts offers new opportunities, resources, and models for “living otherwise.”Sponsored by: Anthropology Program and Disability & Difference.
For more information, call 845-758-7662, or e-mail [email protected].
Uri Shanas, Associate Professor at University of Haifa-Oranim
Tuesday, April 15, 2025 5:30–7 pm
Olin Humanities, Room 201 In this talk, Prof. Uri Shanas, will introduce the TiME (This is My Earth) initiative. TiME is a non-profit and volunteer-based international conservation organization that works with local communities to acquire and steward biodiversity hotspots around the world. The organization is led by an array of environmental leaders and renowned scientists from around the world. Since 2016, TiME has purchased and protected ten biodiversity hotspots in the upper Amazon, the Caribbean, Colombia, Brazil, Kenya, and Ecuador, protecting a total area of over 15 million square yards. After the talk, Professor Shanas will talk with students about potential involvement in TiME.
This event is sponsored by the Sociology and EUS/ES Programs.Sponsored by: Environmental and Urban Studies Program; Sociology Program.
Institute of Advanced Theology Spring Lecture Series
Monday, April 21, 2025 12:30–2 pm
Bard Hall A lecture series from Bruce Chilton, Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Philosophy and Religion; Director, Institute of Advanced Theology The Bible does not mean only what Christianity says it means, or only what Judaism says it means, or only what Islam says it means. Biblical meaning also cannot be reduced to the caricatures produced by a small but strident coterie of atheist Fundamentalists in recent years.
The Bible unfolded over the course of a millennium of development. During that process social forces in each phase shaped the texts as they stand today, and in some cases the texts can be seen to push back against their contexts. The formation of the Bible resulted in the evolution of a social message, what the Aramaic, and Hebrew, and Greek languages of composition call a “gospel.” Our series is designed to uncover the grounding principles of this gospel as it unfolded over time and was articulated by the Bible in its own terms, before Judaism, Christianity, and Islam emerged.Sponsored by: Institute of Advanced Theology.
For more information, call 845-758-7667, or e-mail [email protected].
Richard Ellmann, James Joyce, and Literary Biography: A talk by Zachary Leader
Tuesday, April 22, 2025 5:30–7 pm
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium Richard Ellmann’s James Joyce has been called “the greatest literary biography of the twentieth century.” This talk, by the critic and biographer Zachary Leader, tells the story of the book and its maker, in the process arguing for the artistic claims not only of Ellmann himself, a remarkable man, but of literary biography in general.
Zachary Leader (born 1946) is an Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Roehampton. He was an undergraduate at Northwestern University, and did graduate work at Trinity College, Cambridge and Harvard University, where he was awarded a PhD in English in 1977. Although born and raised in the U.S. he has lived for over forty years in the U.K., and has dual British and American citizenship. His best-known works are The Letters of Kingsley Amis (2001), The Life of Kingsley Amis (2007), a finalist for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Biography, and The Life of Saul Bellow: To Fame and Fortune, 1915-1964 (2015), which was shortlisted for the Wingate Prize in the U.K. The Life of Saul Bellow: Love and Strife 1965 to 2005 was published in 2018. He has written and edited a dozen books, including both volumes of the Saul Bellow biography, and is General Editor of The Oxford History of Life-Writing, a seven-volume series published by OUP. A recipient of Guggenheim, Whiting, Huntington, Leverhulme and British Academy Fellowships, he is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Introduction: Gregory Moynahan, Associate Professor of History, Bard College Q&A Moderator: Elizabeth Frank, Joseph E. Harry Professor of Modern Languages and Literature, Bard CollegeSponsored by: Division of Languages and Literature; Division of Social Studies; German Studies Program; Hannah Arendt Center; Historical Studies Program; Human Rights Project; Irish and Celtic Studies (ICS) Program; Written Arts Program.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
The Preacher's Flow: Inspired Eloquence as the central skill of Mahāyāna Buddhist Preachers
A talk by Dr. Ralph Craig, Assistant Professor of Religion, Whitman College
Wednesday, April 23, 2025 5–6:30 pm
Olin Humanities, Room 102 This talk first discusses the South Asian Buddhist notion of pratibhāna-pratisaṃvid, or “skillful knowledge of inspired eloquence.” Then it turns to a discussion of how the concept of “inspired eloquence” informs and provides context for Turner’s sermonic stylings on her last recorded albums. It will conclude by considering what the notion of inspired eloquence offers to our understanding of the history of both South Asian Mahāyāna Buddhism and American Buddhism.
This talk is made possible through the generous support of the Warren Mills Hutcheson Endowed Fund in Religion. For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
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