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From the languages we speak to politics, philosophy, art, and architecture, the ancient Greeks and Romans have profoundly shaped the history of ideas. By engaging with their legacy, we can develop critical tools for considering our own ideas and beliefs in a fresh light. Studying the ancient past, then, is a vital part of a liberal arts education, as we prepare students to engage critically, imaginatively, and empathetically with the contemporary world around us. To encourage and support students pursuing this important course of study, Bard College has established a new scholarship in Classical Studies. Generous donor support for this scholarship reaffirms that classical studies are more important today than ever. 

The Classical Studies Scholarship recognizes academically outstanding students committed to classical studies. Scholarships cover up to full tuition for four years and are awarded based on need. Scholarship students must maintain a 3.3 grade point average or higher while earning at least 32 credits per year. Recipients are also eligible for a $1,500 stipend for classics-related summer programs (e.g. archaeological excavations, American School at Athens/Rome, language study) following their sophomore or junior year. Transfer students are also eligible for Classical Studies Scholarship funding.

Desirable experiences for selection as a Classical Studies Scholar include a proven interest in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds and their legacies; an interest in, and potential for, learning Greek and Latin; strong performance in high school classes related to English and world literature, languages, history, and/or other related humanities subjects. For more information or to apply, go to connect.bard.edu/register/classics_scholar.

“We in the Classical Studies Program are thrilled about this new initiative. These need-based financial aid scholarships, which include support for summer opportunities such as travel abroad and intensive language study, allow Bard College to make a unique contribution to ongoing efforts to widen access and increase equity in the field of Classics. We are excited to welcome the first scholars to Bard in Fall 2020, where they will join our thriving program and work with our award-winning faculty to pursue their passion for the ancient world,” says Associate Professor of Classical Studies Lauren Curtis.

The Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS Bard) and the Human Rights Project announced today that Turkish sociologist, activist, and architectural theorist Pelin Tan has been selected as the sixth recipient of the Keith Haring Fellowship in Art and Activism. Her appointment coincides with the generous renewal by the Keith Haring Foundation of the five year-grant supporting the Fellowship, an annual award for a scholar, activist, or artist to teach and conduct research at CCS Bard and the Human Rights Project at Bard College. Tan’s appointment marks the beginning of the Fellowship’s second phase, and reaffirms the shared commitment of the College and the Foundation both to exploring the interaction between political engagement and artistic practices and to bringing leading practitioners from around the world into Bard's classrooms.

“The Keith Haring Fellowship brings some of today's most incisive and engaged voices to Bard.  This innovative, cross-disciplinary, fellowship provides for research, teaching and production of new ideas among the undergraduate and graduate programs,” said Tom Eccles, Executive Director of the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College.

Pelin Tan's current research concerns political movements that focus on climate justice, landscape, agriculture, and indigeneity, and particularly activist projects that put interactions with the non-human world at the forefront of their practice. She asks about how our concepts of justice and rights can be extended to landscape and territory, and about the role that critical artistic and architectural interventions can play in making these claims. She also continues to explore, and experiment with, alternative modes of pedagogy, new modes of teaching that work from the bottom up to challenge and transform the institutions of art and design education.   

Her practice combines scholarship, curating, and artistic and architectural creation. She was Associate Professor and Vice-Dean of the Architecture Faculty at Mardin Artuklu University in Turkey from 2013-2017, and has held visiting fellowship and research positions around the  world, from Hong Kong to Cyprus. Most recently she curated the Gardentopia: Cosmos of Ecologies project, in Matera, Italy, a program of European Cultural Capital 2019.

"Throughout her career, the work that Pelin Tan calls 'action research' has demonstrated that the borders between scholarship, activism, and creation can and must be transgressed if we want to pursue justice in this world. In this way, Pelin is an artist very much in the spirit of Keith Haring," said Thomas Keenan, director of Bard's Human Rights Project.

Tan will take up her one-year appointment in September 2019, and spend the spring semester of 2020 teaching at the College. She succeeds the artist and curator Tiona Nekkia McClodden, curator Galit Eilat, architects Alessandro Petti and Sandi Hilal, the artist and curator Shuddhabrata Sengupta, and the first recipient, artist Jeanne van Heeswijk.
 

On Monday, October 7, four cadets from the United States Military Academy at West Point joined four members of the Bard Debate Union for a public debate on whether the U.S. prison system should be abolished or reformed. The debate served as an opening event for the annual Hannah Arendt Center Conference, "Racism and Antisemitism," which takes place Thursday and Friday, October 10–11. West Point argued in favor of prison reform, while the Bard team argued in favor of abolishing prisons, drawing upon key arguments about institutionalized racism and criminal justice from Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colourblindness.

The debate was moderated by Dyjuan Tatro '18, a Bard alumnus who began his college career with the Bard Prison Initiative while incarcerated, completed his degree at Bard College in Annandale, and now serves as BPI's government affairs and advancement officer. Dyjuan was also a member of the famous BPI Debate Union team that defeated Harvard in 2015 and is featured in the upcoming PBS documentary College Behind Bars, directed by Lynn Novick and executive produced by Ken Burns. This four-part series follows a dedicated group of BPI students as they pursue their educations while incarcerated. The film is currently in previews and will air and stream on PBS on November 25 and 26.
 

James Beard Award–winning Chef Sean Sherman, Oglala Lakota from the Pine Ridge reservation and founder of the company The Sioux Chef, is committed to revitalizing Native American cuisine. Chef Sean comes to the Fisher Center to discuss The (R)evolution of Indigenous Food Systems of North America, Tuesday, October 29, in the LUMA Theater at 5 p.m. The talk will be followed by a question and answer period and book signing. Admission is free; to reserve tickets and for additional information visit fishercenter.bard.edu or call the Fisher Center box office at 845-758-7900.

Through his research Chef Sean has uncovered and mapped out the foundations of the indigenous food systems through an indigenous perspective. His book, The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen, earned a 2018 James Beard Award and was a top 10 cookbook of 2017. He has become renowned nationally and internationally in the culinary movement of indigenous foods and is leading a movement to completely redefine North American cuisine.

Copies of The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen will be available for purchase in the lobby of LUMA Theater courtesy of Oblong Books. In addition, Ken Greene from Seedshed will be showcasing Haudenosaunee crops grown in the Native American Seed Sanctuary, a collaborative initiative with the St. Regis Mohawk tribe Seedshed and The Hudson Valley Farm Hub.

This event is sponsored by Bard College’s Center for the Study of Land, Air and Water, American Studies, Environmental and Urban Studies, Bard Farm, Bard Office of  Sustainability, Experimental Humanities, The Bard Center for Civic Engagement, Trustee Leader Scholar Program, and Oblong Books. The Fisher Center’s presentation of the event is in tandem with the upcoming Live Arts Bard Biennial, Where No Wall Remains: An International Festival About Borders, November 21–24, 2019.

Chef Sean Sherman, Oglala Lakota, born in Pine Ridge, SD, has been cooking across the US and Mexico over the past 30 years, and has become renowned nationally and internationally in the culinary movement of indigenous foods. Chef Sean has studied extensively to determine the foundations of Native American indigenous foods systems to bring back a sense of Native American cuisine to today’s world. In 2014, he opened the business titled The Sioux Chef as a caterer and food educator in the Minneapolis/Saint Paul area. He and his business partner Dana Thompson also designed and opened the Tatanka Truck, which featured pre-contact foods of the Dakota and Minnesota territories.  

In October 2017, Sean was able to perform the first decolonized dinner at the James Beard House in Manhattan along with his team. His first book, The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen was awarded the James Beard medal for Best American Cookbook for 2018 and was chosen as one of the top ten cookbooks of 2017 by the LA Times, San Francisco Chronicle, as well as the Smithsonian Magazine. This year, Chef Sean was selected as a Bush Fellow, as well as receiving the 2019 Leadership Award by the James Beard Foundation. The Sioux Chef team of twelve people continues with their mission to help educate and make indigenous foods more accessible to as many communities as possible through the recently founded nonprofit North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems (NATIFS). Learn more: natifs.org.

The Fisher Center develops, produces, and presents performing arts across disciplines through new productions and context-rich programs that challenge and inspire. At once a premier professional performing arts center and a hub for research and education, the Fisher Center supports artists, students, and audiences in the development and examination of artistic ideas and perspectives from the past, present, and future. The organization’s home is the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, designed by Frank Gehry and located on the campus of Bard College in New York’s Hudson Valley. The Fisher Center offers outstanding programs to many communities, including the students and faculty of Bard, and audiences in the Hudson Valley, New York City, across the country and around the world. The Fisher Center illustrates Bard’s commitment to the performing arts as a cultural and educational necessity. Building on a 150-year history as a competitive and innovative undergraduate institution, Bard is committed to enriching culture, public life, and democratic discourse by training tomorrow’s thought leaders.