Requirements

Approximately midway through the spring semester of your sophomore year, the Registrar will email you with a deadline for submitting the two short reflective essays, reflecting on your past and future at Bard and beyond, that are required for Moderation. Only those two reflective essays should be submitted to the Registrar.

The other required Moderation materials, a creative portfolio and an analytic paper, have later submission deadlines and do not go to the Registrar. Copies of those should be submitted directly to each individual member of your board along with additional copies of the two short reflective essays.

Around the same time that you receive the Registrar’s email with the deadline for submission of the short reflective essays, you will also receive an email from the Written Arts Program or the Division of Languages and Literature letting you know the deadline for submitting the online Moderation request form and providing you with a link to that form. Your Moderation board will then be centrally scheduled by the program and division.

On the online Moderation request form you may name up to three faculty members you would like to have on your Moderation board, and the program will attempt to accommodate one or more of those requests. Once your board members have been assigned and the time and date of your board scheduled, you will be notified via email. You may then submit a printed copy of the two short reflective essays, creative portfolio, and analytic paper to each of your board members. 

You will submit a portfolio of approximately 10 pages, but no more than 20 pages, of original writing in your chosen genre. For poetry, this may be one long poem or a collection of shorter poems. For fiction, it may be a single story, an excerpt from a longer work, or several smaller, self-contained pieces.

For creative nonfiction, you should not submit an analytic essay. As above, the creative nonfiction may be a single piece, an excerpt, or a portfolio of shorter writings.

Whatever form your portfolio takes, it should represent your most mature, skilled, imaginative writing: your most accomplished creative work to date. The content of your portfolio can be something you produced in a Written Arts workshop; however, we strongly advise you to revise it in the spirit of leading with your best writing.

You may also choose to submit hybrid work that blends or complicates genres; students who follow this path should discuss the Moderation sample with their advisers or contact the Program Coordinator. 

Students hoping to moderate into Written Arts are required to take five courses in the Division of Languages and Literature prior to Moderation. A portfolio of original writing in the genre in which the student anticipates composing the Senior Project must be submitted, along with a revised version of an analytical paper composed in a past or present literature course. Students must have excelled in their Written Arts courses in order to successfully moderate into the program. All students moderating into Written Arts are strongly encouraged to study a foreign language.

Fiction/Nonfiction
Students hoping to moderate into fiction or nonfiction must take the following classes: 

Poetry
Students hoping to moderate into poetry must take the following classes: 

Students who have moderated into fiction and nonfiction are strongly encouraged to take an upper-level writing seminar prior to the start of their Senior Project. Students who have successfully moderated into poetry are encouraged to take an upper-level course in the writing or analysis of poetry.

At the conclusion of your Moderation board, you will be told whether you have passed, failed, or been deferred. If you are deferred, you may attempt to remoderate into Written Arts at a later time with the same board members if you have a substantially improved portfolio. Even after moderating successfully, however, all Written Arts majors will need to take the additional step of applying for permission to do a creative Senior Project. This permission procedure occurs at the end of junior year. Students who have not fulfilled the promise shown at Moderation may be denied permission to do a Written Arts Senior Project. 

Students often have intersecting interests in literature and written arts; for this reason, the two programs are closely allied within the Division of Languages and Literature. Those who wish to pursue a PhD after graduation or whose own creative work would most benefit from immersion in a wide range of reading, close analysis, and critical theory may choose to do a Senior Project in literature instead. Your adviser, professors, and Moderation board will guide you toward evaluating the best path. 

Senior Projects in Prose
Written Arts Senior Project in prose (fiction/nonfiction) should be between 15,000–40,000 words (approximately 60–150 pages), with any exceptions discussed in advance with your Senior Project advisor. The Senior Project in prose should reflect sustained commitment to a manuscript. This could be a novella, a collection of interrelated short stories, a novel-in-progress, literary essays that speak to a subject (nature, birds) or experience, or a hybrid narrative that engages multiple forms and genres. Projects should be thoroughly revised and edited in advance of submission.

Senior Projects in Poetry
Length: between 40 and 55 pages. The project should be curated, an imagined book manuscript, in which you invite a reader to discover your work. What is the first poem? How does it indicate your formal interests, and your thematic concerns, which will be explored as the pages turn. You might divide the project into several sections, if that suits your sense of it. You want to think about the arc, or the movement of the work from poem to poem. It need not be strictly chronological, but rather reveal how your poems are engaged with each other, with yourself, language and the world.

All projects—in poetry or in prose—must be composed entirely during the project year.

The committee will strive to match you with the appropriate Senior Project adviser, taking into account your preferences, and will notify you of your project adviser via email prior to the start of the first semester of your senior year. 

Senior Projects are due three weeks prior to the last day of classes. This deadline is strictly enforced. Copies must be submitted to the College and individually to each faculty member assigned to your Senior Project board. You will receive reminders from the college regarding the deadline, project submission procedures, and project formatting and binding. 

For more information on how to properly format and submit your senior project, please click on the following link: https://libguides.bard.edu/seniorprojectguidelines

Every student who undertakes a Senior Project in Written Arts will be required to attend the weekly Written Arts Senior Colloquium. The purpose of the colloquium is to give students the tools to complete a creative project successfully, to provide the collaborative experience of a workshop and of exchange with their peers, and to help prepare students for life after Bard through visits from outside speakers—writers, editors, alumni/ae—as well as program faculty.

Students completing Senior Projects in Written Arts must register online for both semesters of the Senior Colloquium.