2024
Tuesday, April 16, 2024
A Talk with Carol Goodman
Olin Humanities, Room 202 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 Culturally and often personally, fairy tales, folklore, and myth are the humanity’s earliest narratives. Fiction writers have drawn from this source throughout the history of literature—both to get inspired themselves and to inspire others. Carol Goodman will discuss the influence that fairy tales, folklore and myth have had on her writing, from the traditional stories encountered in childhood to the myth-inflected novels, including Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. Carol Goodman is the author of 25 novels, including The Seduction of Water, which won the 2003 Hammett Prize, The Widow’s House, which won the 2018 Mary Higgins Clark Award, and The Night Visitors, which won the 2020 Mary Higgins Clark Award. Her latest novel is The Bones of the Story. She teaches writing and literature at SUNY New Paltz and lives in the Hudson Valley. |
Tuesday, April 2, 2024
A Performance with JJJJJerome Ellis
Bitó Conservatory Building, Performance Space 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 In this performance, artist JJJJJerome Ellis presents portions of their latest project Aster of Ceremonies. Using piano, saxophone, electronics, and voice, they’ll perform excerpts from “Benediction,” a devotional song cycle attending to 18th and 19th century Black runaway slaves who stuttered. This lecture-performance is an ongoing attempt to, in the words of critic Hortense Spillers, “hear [slavery’s] stutter more clearly.” JJJJJerome Ellis (any pronoun) is a disabled animal, artist, and person who stutters. Through music, performance, writing, video, and photography, the artist asks what stuttering can teach us about justice. Born in 1989 to Jamaican and Grenadian immigrants, the artist lives in Norfolk, Virginia, USA with their wife, ecologist-poet Luísa Black Ellis. Ellis has been a lecturer in Sound Design at Yale University. Their debut album, The Clearing (2021), was called “an astonishing, must-listen project” (The Guardian). It was co-produced by NNA Tapes and The Poetry Project, and it was released with an accompanying book published by Wendy’s Subway. The Clearing won the 2022 Anna Rabinowitz Prize. The artist has received a Fulbright Fellowship (2015), a United States Artists Fellowship (2022), a Foundation for Contemporary Art Grants to Artists Award (2022), a Creative Capital Grant (2022). The artist has received residencies at MacDowell (2019, 2022), Ucross (2021), Lincoln Center Theater (2019), ISSUE Project Room (2021), and La MaMa (2021). JJJJJerome’s solo and collaborative musical/performance work has been presented by Lincoln Center, The Poetry Project, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Sawdust, WNYC, and ISSUE Project Room (New York); Venice Biennale 2023; Haus der Kunst (Munich); Rewire Festival (The Hague); Schauspielhaus Zürich; Chrysler Hall (Norfolk, Virginia); MASS MoCA (North Adams, Massachusetts); Arraymusic (Toronto); and the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), among others. The artist’s visual work (video and photography) has been presented by Oklahoma Contemporary (Oklahoma City), Juf (Madrid), Artspace New Haven (New Haven, Connecticut), and Ballroom Marfa (Marfa, Texas). They have received commissions from the Virginia Symphony Orchestra, The Shed, and REDCAT. Ellis is a signed artist with NNA Tapes and is represented by Michaël Gardiner at Heavy Trip, Pascal Mungioli at Stay Service, and Ben Izzo at A3 Artists Agency. The artist’s work has been covered by the Guardian, This American Life, Pitchfork, Artforum, Black Enso, and Christian Science Monitor. Read more about JJJJerome's work here. |
Tuesday, April 2, 2024
Film Screening and Director Q&A with Michael Lockshin
Avery Art Center 5:30 pm – 9:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 “…one of the most dramatic and charged Russian film debuts in recent memory. The movie refashions the novel as a revenge tragedy about a writer’s struggle under censorship, borrowing from the story of Bulgakov’s own life” (Paul Sonne, New York Times). “… a blistering critique of Soviet power and authoritarianism… a box-office smash and a cultural phenomenon …” (Christopher Vourlias, Variety). “As Russia becomes more repressive, it is possible that Master and Margarita could be one of the last films of its kind, a blockbuster where the criticism of the state lies on the surface.” (Andrew Roth, Guardian). The American-Russian film-maker Michael Lockshin was born in the US and moved to the Soviet Union as a child in 1986. His first feature film, Silver Skates (2020) became the first Russian-language original film on Netflix. Lockshin directed and coauthored The Master and Margarita after Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel, composed in 1928–1940 and published posthumously in 1967–68. Released on January 25, the film was blasted by pro-Kremlin propagandists for its “sharp, anti-Soviet, anti-modern Russian theme.” Russian ideologues’ appeals to cancel Lockshin and his film have been brought about by the director’s pronouncements against the war and his support for Ukraine. |
Monday, March 25, 2024
The 2019 Shirley Jackson Award winner reads from his work
Campus Center, Weis Cinema 4:30 pm – 5:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 Novelist and short story writer Brian Evenson will read from new work at Bard College on Monday, March 25 at 5:00 pm in Weis Cinema, located in the Bertelsmann Campus Center. Evenson is the author of a dozen books of fiction, most recently the story collection The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell (2021), and the Weird West microcollection Black Bark (2023). The reading, which is being presented as part of Bradford Morrow’s course on innovative contemporary fiction, is free and open to the public. Evenson’s collection Song for the Unraveling of the World (2019) won the Shirley Jackson Award and the World Fantasy Award, and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times’ Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Speculative Fiction. Previous books have won the American Library Association’s RUSA Prize Award and the International Horror Guild Award, and have been finalists for the Edgar Award. He is the recipient of three O. Henry Prizes, an NEA fellowship, and a Guggenheim Award. His work has been translated into more than a dozen languages. A new book, Good Night, Sleep Tight, will be published by Coffee House Press in September of 2024. He lives in Los Angeles and teaches at CalArts. Praise for Brian Evenson “His stories are deeply terrifying and so troubling that they linger in your mind long after you've read them.” —R.L. Stine “There is not a more intense, prolific, or apocalyptic writer of fiction in America than Brian Evenson.” —George Saunders “Brian Evenson is one of the most consistently vital and unnerving voices in writing today. . . . No matter where you start with Evenson’s work, the door is wide ajar, and once you go through it you won't be coming out.” —VICE “Brian Evenson is one of my favorite living horror writers.” —Carmen Maria Machado “You’ve heard of ‘postmodern’ stories—well, Evenson’s stories are post-everything. They are post-human, post-reason, post-apocalyptic. . . . In an Evenson story, there are two horrible things that can happen to you. You can either fail to survive, or survive.” — New York Times |
Tuesday, March 5, 2024
Visiting Professor of Humanities Adam Shatz reads selections from his new book, followed by a conversation with Ziad Dallal, Assistant Professor of Foreign Languages, Cultures, and Literatures and Director of Middle East Studies.
Reem-Kayden Center; Room 103 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm EST/GMT-5 About the Rebel's Clinic: “In the era of Black Lives Matter, Frantz Fanon’s shadow looms larger than ever. He was the intellectual activist of the postcolonial era, and his writings about race, revolution, and the psychology of power continue to shape radical movements across the world. In this searching biography, Adam Shatz tells the story of Fanon’s stunning journey, which has all the twists of a Cold War-era thriller.” |
Monday, February 26, 2024
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm EST/GMT-5
On Monday, February 26 at 5:30 pm in the László Z. Bitó ’60 Auditorium, Reem-Kayden Center (RKC), Richard Deming will read from his book, This Exquisite Loneliness: What Loners, Outcasts, and the Misunderstood Can Teach Us About Creativity. Introduced by Written Arts Program Director Dinaw Mengestu and followed by a discussion with David and Ruth Schwab Professor of Languages and Literature Ann Lauterbach. Richard Deming is a poet, art critic, and theorist whose work explores the intersections of poetry, philosophy, and visual culture. His most recent book, This Exquisite Loneliness, appeared in 2023. He is also the author of Day for Night, Listening on All Sides, and Art of the Ordinary. His collection of poems, Let’s Not Call It Consequence, received the Norma Farber Award from the Poetry Society of America. He contributes to such magazines as Artforum, Sight & Sound, and the Boston Review, and his poems have appeared in the Iowa Review, Field, American Letters & Commentary, and The Nation. Winner of the Berlin Prize, he was the Spring 2012 John P. Birkelund Fellow of the American Academy in Berlin. He teaches at Yale University, where he is the director of Creative Writing. |
Tuesday, February 20, 2024
Olin Humanities, Room 202 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm EST/GMT-5
The Written Arts program will be holding a moderation Q&A in Olin 202. Students intending to moderate into the Written Arts will have the opportunity to speak with faculty about the moderation process and specific Written Arts requirements. Students intending to moderate into Written Arts this semester are required to attend this event. Those who are unable to attend are asked to please notify the program coordinator ([email protected]) in advance. |