Faculty member Laura Scuriatti recently contributed to the online platform “Mina Loy - Navigating the Avant-garde,” set up by scholars and dedicated to artist, writer & inventor Mina Loy. The platform is an attempt to chart Mina Loy’s navigation of Futurism, Dada & Surrealism, while rethinking the notion of Avant-garde to be more inclusive and to incorporate a feminist point of view.

From the platform’s manifesto:
Rather than attempting to rehabilitate the term “avant-garde,” we offer a new, more inclusive term: en dehors garde. Taking a cue from classical ballet rather than warfare, we propose the term en dehors garde to describe the strategies of writers and artists whose mode of experimentation does not conform to the “martialised,” oppositional stance associated with the historical avant-garde.
“En dehors” means “toward the outside,” implying that artists are turning away from the center or norm, moving in a circular motion, with an eye toward the center. Upon return, the center is transformed, adjusted, and reformed by the arc of the revolution.
Rather than assuming a militant position at the forefront of culture, women, people of color, and queer or disabled artists often came from the outside and circulated on the margins. They rarely enjoyed the power, privilege, or authority derived from membership in the institutions of art. Instead, they worked and moved strategically to transform gendered, racialized literary traditions and visual cultures that excluded or objectified them.
Our proposed feminist theory pivots on the notion of “turning outward,” as we seek to engage YOU—students, scholars, artists, writers, and the general public—in the work of reimagining the avant-garde as a more inclusive en dehors garde. We’re not just proposing a new theory of the en dehors garde; we’re proposing a new method of production.

Scuriatti’s contribution is entitled “Greetings from another side of the avant-garde” and is a visual representation of the exchanges and influences that characterize Loy’s work in the larger context of the European literary avant-garde. The postcard is designed by Irina Stelea. 

You can view Scuriatti’s contribution here>> 

The paper "As Innovations Drive Economic Growth, Do They also Raise Well-Being?" co-authored by Martin Binder with Ulrich Witt (Max Planck Institute, Jena) will appear in the forthcoming volume Understanding Economic Change – Contributions to an Evolutionary Paradigm in Economics, edited by Ulrich Witt and Andreas Chai (2018, Cambridge University Press). 

From the paper’s abstract:
While there is little doubt that innovations drive economic growth, their effects on well-being are less clear. One reason for this are ambivalent effects of innovations on well-being that result from pecuniary and technological externalities of innovations, argued to be inevitable. Another major reason lies in the fact that, as a result of innovations, preferences can change over time. Under such conditions, a time-consistent measuring rod for changes in well-being is hard to construct. Existing conceptions of well-being are shown not yet to solve the problem in a way that provides an unambiguous answer to the question in the title.

Read the working paper>>

On October 1, 2018, BCB faculty Michael Weinman will give a lunchtime talk entitled “Arendt after Postmodernity: Humanistic Social Research and Contemporary Political Culture” at the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College. 

In the presentation Weinman will seek to sketch out two pairs of questions that set out an agenda for research into "life after postmodernity" on the basis of Arendt’s practice of “thinking without banisters.” The first pair is: (A) How, after what Adorno and Arendt identified as 20th-century barbarism, is it possible to articulate a critical assessment of "the Western tradition" that does not amount to rejectionism? (B) Why, can it be argued, is it worthwhile or even necessary to do so? The second pair is: (A) When we do engage the tradition in this way—as did, among others, Kantorowicz and Strauss—how and where do we find the points of continuity between earlier forms and institutions of late-modern civil society not subject to the critique of modern barbarism? (B) On what basis, and through which Weltanschauung, is it possible to offer a robust defense of such forms and such institutions? 

Read more about the talk>>

Berlin – Sara Mardini, a 23-year-old Syrian refugee student and scholarship recipient of Bard College Berlin, was arrested in Greece last Tuesday, August 21, 2018. She was on her way back from Lesbos to Germany to resume her studies after a period of several months’ service as a volunteer rescuing refugees in Greek waters. Sara and Sean Binder, a German citizen and fellow volunteer, who was also arrested, are in detention and have been accused of human trafficking, membership in a criminal organization, spying, and money laundering.

Sara and her sister Yusra Mardini, who participated as one of 10 athletes on the “Refugee Olympic Team” in Rio in 2016, became internationally known because they saved the lives of the other 18 forced migrants in their life raft by swimming their water-logged boat to the Greek coast during their own flight across the Mediterranean in 2015.

“We are in close contact with Sara’s legal counsel and these charges seem more about halting the operations of the NGO in question than about any actions of Sara or her fellow volunteer,” said Dr. Florian Becker, Managing Director of Bard College Berlin. “A long period of imprisonment in Greece awaiting a potential trial would be devastating for Sara and her life plans. We will leave no stone unturned to get Sara released from prison, so that she can spend this time in Berlin and continue her studies, which she has earned with so much difficulty.”

After their arrival in Germany, Sara and Yusra continued to be engaged as volunteers, demonstrating great personal commitment to the interests of refugees. Sara was invited as a speaker by Harvard University and Dartmouth College; her sister spoke before the UN General Assembly and with personalities like Pope Francis and Barack Obama.

Sara Mardini became a student at Bard College Berlin in August 2017 when she was awarded a full scholarship under the Program for International Education and Social Change (PIE-SC). The PIE-SC scholarship program is aimed at promising students from regions of crisis or conflict. Currently there are 30 PIE-SC students enrolled in the two B.A. degrees at Bard College Berlin – 27 Syrians, one Iraqi, one Afghan and one Greek student.

Reactions from the international press and other organizations>>

On September 17, 2018 faculty member Seraphine Maerz will participate in a workshop on computational social science (CSS) methods organized by the Center for Advanced Internet Studies in Bochum, Germany. The workshop brings together German and international experts to discuss the interplay between the various theoretical perspectives within CSS, their interface with social science theories, and a resulting methodology.

On September 27, Maerz will give a paper co-authored with Carsten Q. Schneider (Central European University, Budapest) at the conference Frontiers of Democracy, held on September 25-28, 2018 at the Goethe University Frankfurt. Entitled “Out of democratic bounds? An automated text analysis of speeches by European heads of government,” the paper surveys thousands of speeches to argue that the language used by some heads of government inside the EU is more similar to the language used by their authoritarian counterparts.