News Archive

BCB faculty member and artist John Kleckner will be exhibiting his work in a joint show with Maximilian Arnold at the goeben gallery in Berlin.

Titled Sidesteps: Roughly Edged, this is the first show in which Kleckner and Arnold have exhibited together. The two artists share many formal and conceptual ideas about painting and through the process of selecting works for the exhibition it can be said that they are holding a visual conversation, the topics of which range from formal issues of color, texture, and shape to more conceptual themes, such as: the imprecision of memory, illusionism of surfaces, (dis)locations, interior/exterior, and the joy of ambiguity and not knowing.

The vernissage of Sidesteps: Roughly Edged will be taking place on Friday, July 23, from 6:00 to 10:00pm and is open to the public. The exhibition will be showing a the goeben gallery from July 24 to August 28, 2021.

John Kleckner’s works have been exhibited internationally and can be found in prominent public and private collections, such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Charles Saatchi Collection in London. 

Meta: Type(s): Faculty,Berlin | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

BCB alumna Wafa Mustafa spoke to the Guardian about the disappearance of her father Ali Mustafa, a human rights activist, who was detained by the Syrian Regime in July 2013 and has not been heard from since.

In the interview she reflects on how this family tragedy has affected her activism as well as her personal life. She also speaks about her experiences protesting during the Syrian revolution in 2011 and being detained in a Syrian government prison herself.

Wafa is a 2020 Humanities, Arts and Social Thought graduate and a former PIESC Program scholar. She is a journalist and activist, who works together with the organization Families for Freedom, campaigning for the freedom of those who have been detained by the Syrian Regime.

Read the interview here >>
 

Meta: Type(s): Berlin,Alumni | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

BCB Professor of Literature and Film Studies Matthias Hurst has published an essay on renowned German director Wim Wenders and his film Don't Come Knocking (2005) in a new book, Kontinuität im Wandel. Begegnungen mit dem Filmemacher Wim Wenders (München: edition text + kritik, 2021), edited by Jörn Glasenapp.

The essay is called "How The West Was Lost: Don't Come Knocking und der lange Abschied vom Amerikanischen Traum" and explores Wenders's ambivalent relation to, and perception of, the American myth and the American Dream, and the specific presentation of this topic in the Post-Western Don't Come Knocking (2005), co-written by Sam Shepard and starring Shepard, Jessica Lange, Sarah Polley and Tim Roth.

Wenders has been influenced by American pop culture and American movies since his youth ("Is 'America' not an invention of the movies? Would there be the dreaming of America, all over the world, without the  movies?" -- Wim Wenders) and in many of his films we see his critical vision of the American Dream in contrast to social reality in the US. In Don't Come Knocking Shepard plays an aging cowboy actor of trite Western movies who realizes the superficiality and meaninglessness of his hedonistic lifestyle and wants to reconcile with his 'family' that he actually never had. Inspired by classical Western films and road movies, the visual art of Edward Hopper, and a bitter sense of fate and irony, Wenders presents a postmodern meta-Western of a very special kind that shows both his love and his critical, disillusioned stance towards America, and "the Western's double movement of yearning and mourning" (Neil Campbell).

Meta: Type(s): Faculty,Berlin | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

Bard College Berlin is delighted to announce that Prof. Dr. Gale Raj-Reichert will be joining the faculty as Associate Professor of Politics with a focus on public policy and policy analysis.

Prof. Raj-Reichert joins BCB from the Queen Mary University of London where she held a lectureship in economic geography. She received her PhD in development studies from the Manchester Global Development Institute.

Prof. Raj-Reichert comes with a research background in labor governance in global production networks, specializing in the Asia Pacific region. In the fall semester, students at BCB will be able to attend her seminar on "Global Public Policies and their Impact on the Global South".

We are looking forward to welcoming Prof. Raj-Reichert on campus!
 

Meta: Type(s): Faculty,Berlin | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin,Academics | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

Bard College Berlin is proud to announce that rising fourth-year Economics, Politics, and Social Thought student Sohaib Alzoubi has won a highly competitive Studienstiftung fellowship. Besides having demonstrated excellence in his studies, Sohaib has worked with international NGOs on projects focused on Syria and has contributed to the establishment of a number of Syrian organizations and civil society coalitions.

Bard College Berlin was able to nominate Sohaib through its DAAD sponsored Integra Program that provides support for displaced and international persons in the form of academic workshops and seminars.

The Studienstiftung is one of the oldest, largest, and most prestigious scholarship foundations in Germany that supports young scholars with exceptional talent who can be expected to make a meaningful contribution to society.

As the standard application process is geared towards German speakers, the Studienstiftung initiated a cooperation with the DAAD in 2017, through which Integra course leaders would be able to nominate their students for the selection process, therefore giving those with refugee status a fair chance at winning the coveted fellowship.

Congratulations to Sohaib on this tremendous achievement!

Meta: Type(s): Student,Berlin | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin,Academics | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

BCB Professor of Politics and Middle Eastern Studies Hanan Toukan discussed her book The Politics of Art: Dissent and Cultural Diplomacy in Lebanon, Palestine, and Jordan with other scholars as part of the EUME Berliner Seminar. The Berliner Seminar is hosted by Europe in the Middle East – The Middle East in Europe (EUME), a multi-disciplinary research program at the Berlin based Forum Transregionale Studien.

The other discussants were Diana Abbani (EUME Fellow of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation 2020/21), Amal Eqeiq (Williams College/EUME Fellow 2029-21), and Zeina Maasri (University of Brighton).
 

Meta: Type(s): Faculty,Berlin | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

BCB faculty member and artist John Kleckner was amongst the recipients of the 2021 Pollock-Krasner Foundation artist grants.

Through its individual artist grants, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation supports working artists by providing the financial resources to cover expenses, such as: art supplies, studio space, exhibition preparation etc. Since its founding in 1985, the foundation has awarded 5,000 grants, totaling $82 million, to recipients in seventy-eight countries.

John Kleckner’s works have been exhibited internationally and can be found in prominent public and private collections, such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Charles Saatchi Collection in London. Kleckner will be opening the exhibition: Sidesteps: Roughly Edged together with Maximilian Arnold at the goeben gallery in Berlin. The exhibition will be showing from July 24 to August 28, 2021.
 

Meta: Type(s): Faculty,Berlin | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

BCB Professor of Theater and Performance Nina Tecklenburg and BCB faculty member Ramona Mosse are involved in the organization of a day of public online workshops under the title Staging Viral Theatres.

The event will investigate the changes to theater infrastructures and aesthetics during the pandemic. The three sessions will be an exploration of how the shift to digital forms has affected the notion of liveness, what constitutes participation in the digital sphere, and how the current moment can be creatively documented.

The focus will be on putting specific pandemic projects by Berlin theater institutions and performance makers in dialogue with a series of international guest artists and scholars, in order to capture and compare the forms of attention brought to digital theaters.

Viral Theatres is a practice-based research project and a collaboration between the Freie Universität Berlin, the Humboldt University Berlin, and Bard College Berlin. It is funded by the VolkswagenFoundation.


The event wil take place on July 1, 2:00 - 8:00 pm CEST. 
Further information available here>>
 

Meta: Type(s): Faculty,Berlin | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

BCB student residences Henry Koerner Hall have been nominated for a further architectural prize, they are in the running for the DAM Prize awarded by the German Architecture Museum.

The nomination announcement notes how the residences' stacked maisonette apartments seek inspiration from Le Corbusier's “Immeuble Villa.” Despite the functional design, the buildings' apartments are spacious, the large windows and surrounding trees making for a peaceful and pleasant living environment.

Henry Koerner Hall was designed by Rotterdam-based Atelier Kempe Thill, the inauguration took place in May 2019. The residences have previously been nominated for the Architekturpreis Berlin.

Further information on the prize nomination here >>
Download brochure on Henry Koerner Hall here >>
 

Meta: Type(s): Berlin | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin,Architecture | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

BCB Professor of Philosophy Katalin Makkai has published a new monograph, Kant’s Critique of Taste: The Feeling of Life (Cambridge University Press, 2021).

Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgment is widely recognized as a founding document of modern aesthetics, but its legacy has fallen into disrepute. In this book Katalin Makkai calls for the rediscovery of Kant’s aesthetics, showing that its centerpiece, his investigation of the judgment of taste, paints a compelling portrait of our relationships with works of art that we love. At its heart is a scene of aesthetic encounter in which one feels oneself to be “animated”—brought to life—by an object, finding there to be something in one’s experience of it, beyond what there is to know about it, that one wants to explore and articulate. Tracing Kant’s insight that to judge is to reveal one’s sense of what bears judging, and hence of what matters, Makkai situates Kant’s aesthetics within his larger study, begun in the first Critique, of judgment’s fundamental role in the life of the mind.

Meta: Type(s): Faculty,Berlin | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

Bard College, which has worked to spread liberal-arts education around the globe, has been designated as an “undesirable” organization by the Russian government, prevented from all activity and operations in the country. The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office announced the blacklisting on June 21, saying that Bard’s work “threatens the constitutional order and security of Russia.”
Read Leon Botstein's message to the College community here.

Meta: Type(s): General | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

BCB faculty member April Gertler and Adrian Schiesser have co-founded a new exhibition space WIRWIR, situated in the heart of the Neukölln area in Berlin. 

WIRWIR joins the Berlin project space scene in 2021 with the inaugural exhibition series "WIR BAUEN EINE NEUE STADT" (June 10 - September 10 2021). Taking its title from the eponymous song by the Palais Schaumburg, the exhibition/event series considers how community can be built, supported and understood and examines metaphorical and lyrical ideas of creating a city through the three chapters of the series, titled BUILD, IDENTIFY and ACTIVATE.

WIRWIR is part of DÉRIVE UG which is an umbrella organization that has hosted a wide variety of projects over the years such as; SONNTAG, PICTURE BERLIN, DETLEF, and IN SEARCH OF THE MIRACULOUS.

Upcoming Events:

BUILD

June 23, 7:00 pm: Soydivision - Jendela Sonorama: Listening session

June 26, 7:00pm: Onur Ceritoğlu - 7m3: Sound performance

June 27, 7:45pm:  Andrew J. Burford - I think I’m done with the kitchen table, baby: Artist walk


Find out more about WIRWIR's upcoming events here.

Meta: Type(s): Faculty,Berlin | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

BCB Professor of Art History Aya Soika is participating in an online panel discussion organized by the Association for Art History.

The event is titled: “Curating Art of Curating Artists, the Thorny Question of an Artists Biography” and will be discussing the question: “How much should an artist’s life be used to frame our understanding and experience of their artwork?” As well as examining the role and responsibilities of the curator in engaging with artist’s biographies in their work.

Further panelists are: Eleanor Nairne: Curator at Barbican Art Gallery, Bernhard Fulda, Fellow and Director of Studies in History, Cambridge University, Oscar Murillo: Turner Prize winning artist, and Louisa Buck: art writer and broadcaster.

The Association for Art History leads the collective effort in the UK to advance the study and practice of art history.
Further information here.

The event will take place on June 22, 2021 at 8:30 pm CEST, further information here.
 

Meta: Type(s): Faculty,Berlin | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

BCB alumni and former PIESC scholar Ahmad Mobayed helped lead a Q&A with 2019 Nobel Prize Laureate in chemistry Stanley Whittingham as part of the 2021 Nobel Prize Summit: "Our Planet, Our Future" (26- 28 April, 2021).

In his questions Ahmad focused on what role youth and education could play in the transition to renewable energy sources. Further guests on the panel were Nobel Prize Laureate in physics David Gross and Beatie Wolfe, artist and innovator for UN Women.

Originally from Syria, Ahmad completed his Bachelors in Economics, Politics and Social Thought at Bard College Berlin in 2019 and is now enrolled in a Masters of Public Policy at the Hertie School in Berlin. During his studies Ahmad has worked for Kiron, an NGO that offers free online learning opportunities to displaced persons and underserved communities. He is co-founder of the Syrian Youth Assembly, who work to empower young people to participate in the peace process in Syria.

Read more about Ahmad's story here>>
Watch a recording of the event here>>
 

Meta: Type(s): Berlin,Alumni | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

In an event hosted by the international online seminar Lirica & Teoria, William Franke (Vanderbilt University) will discuss his book Dante’s Paradiso and the Theological Origins of Modern Thought: Toward a Speculative Philosophy of Self-Reflection (New York, Routledge 2021) with BCB faculty member Francesco Giusti. The event takes place on June 25 at 5:00 pm CEST, online. The opening conversation will be held in Italian, but questions in English or German are welcome. 

The seminar Lirica & Teoria is coordinated by Francesco Giusti and Christine Ott (Goethe University Frankfurt). The seminar brings together a group of scholars based in different countries to discuss questions of lyric as well as new approaches to the lyric, with a particular focus on the Italian poetic tradition. On the occasion of the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death, the seminar will also host events open to the public and related to Dante’s lyric poetry.

Join the event here >>

Meta: Type(s): Faculty,Berlin | Subject(s): Academics | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

BCB faculty member Francesco Giusti and Benjamin Lewis Robinson co-edit the recently published volume of essays: The Work of World Literature.

The contentious discourse around world literature tends to stress the ‘world’ in the phrase. This volume, in contrast, asks what it means to approach world literature by inflecting the question of the literary. Debates for, against, and around ‘world literature’ have brought renewed attention to the worldly aspects of the literary enterprise. Literature is studied with regard to its sociopolitical and cultural references, contexts and conditions of production, circulation, distribution, and translation. But what becomes of the literary when one speaks of world literature? Responding to Derek Attridge’s theory of how literature ‘works’, the contributions in this volume explore in diverse ways and with attention to a variety of literary practices what it might mean to speak of ‘the work of world literature’. The volume shows how attention to literariness complicates the ethical and political conundrums at the center of debates about world literature

Dr. Giusti contributes the essay: Transcontextual Gestures: A Lyric Approach to the World of Literature to the volume. The Work of World Literature is published by ICI Berlin Press and is available as an open access download here>>

Meta: Type(s): Berlin | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin,Academics | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

Last Saturday, on May 22, 2021, Bard College Berlin celebrated the graduating Class of 2020/2021 in an online Commencement ceremony.
This year’s commencement speaker was Arjun Appadurai, Goddard Professor in Media, Culture and Communication at New York University. Addressing approaches to issues like climate change, forced migration, and inequality in his commencement speech, Professor Appadurai stressed that learning is a collective endeavor: “…because one joins a conversation between minds, books, works of art and music and literature, which bridges continents, centuries and cultures,” Appadurai said and encouraged graduates: “You are now part of this ceaseless conversation. You will never be alone.”
For a second year in a row, friends and family were invited to join the BCB Community online to honor the achievements of the graduating cohort of OLIve students, Academy Year students, and Bachelor students. While we could not share a physical space to mark the occasion, the virtual gathering drew attendants of all ages from near and far to reminisce about the past four years and cheer graduates on for all their future endeavors. Families had prepared heartfelt video messages, fellow students contributed musical performances, and faculty recollected moments of hard work, joy, and shared learning.

Congratulations to the graduating class of 2020/2021!









Meta: Type(s): Berlin | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

The theater project Interrobang ( a cooperation between BCB Professor of Theater and Performance Nina Tecklenburg, Till Müller-Klug and Lajos Talamonti) has created a new interactive digital piece for Impulse Theater Festival.

The Impulse-Phone can be accessed through a smart phone or a computer and allows users to navigate through 31 years of archive sound material from the Impulse Theater Festival. The online archive will grow during the course of the festival and can be expanded and shaped by user contributions.

The Impulse-Phone will be available throughout the duration of the Impulse Festival 2021 which runs from June 2 to June. Further information here>>

Meta: Type(s): Faculty,Berlin | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

BCB alumna Natalia Irina Roman (Visual Arts ’08) has developed and will be moderating a discussion panel as part of the Hertie Summit 2021 online conference.

Titled “Community living projects and the New European Bauhaus: what role will they play in the future?”, the panel will discuss co-housing and communal living projects in Berlin, what role they play in the city society, what participatory structures make new housing projects possible and what cooperation models the city of the future needs.

Guests are Wenke Christoph, State Secretary for Housing of the State of Berlin, Dr.Michael LaFond, expert on communal living communities and Caroline Rosenthal, Consultant for “Mietshäuser Syndikat”. The event will be broadcast live from the Spreefeld Cooperative.

Natalia Irina Roman completed the Visual Arts graduate program at Bard College Berlin (then known as ECLA ) in 2008. She now works as a visual artist as well as an art consultant to the Hertie School.

You can register for the Hertie Summit by May 31, 2021 here >>
 

Meta: Type(s): Berlin,Alumni | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

BCB alumni and former PIESC scholar Karam Alhamad has been profiled on the online media outlet Influencive.

The article charts Karam’s career in Syria as a photographer, editor, journalist and activist. After obtaining his Bachelors in Economics, Politics and Social Thought from Bard College Berlin in 2020, Karam will be completing a Masters in Public Policy at Yale University.

Karam also has a great passion for technology: he is CEO of Ze.Fi, a blockchain-centric media, marketing and education company and recently co-founded Phoenix.io, a Blockchain Strategy, Advisory, Solutions and Investment Collective. He sees great potential in blockchain as a tool in the rebuilding process in Syria:“blockchain might be one of the strongest pillars that helps Syria stand again after we get rid of the dictatorship, Decentralization is the answer for all our struggles”.
Read the full article here>>

Bard College Berlin’s Program for International Education and Social Change (PIESC), is a scholarship program for students from areas of crisis and conflict. Find our more here>>
 

Meta: Type(s): Berlin,Alumni | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

BCB students are participating in the cross-university campus program PAF Campus run by the Performing Arts Festival Berlin 2021.

PAF Campus during the 2021 Berlin Performing Arts Festival is organized by LAFT – Landesverband freie Darstellende Künste Berlin e. V. in cooperation with Bard College Berlin, the Free University of Berlin, the Inter-University Centre for Dance Berlin, the Technical University of Berlin and the Berlin University of the Arts.

PAF Campus is an innovative format situated between art and education open to students from all participating universities.

Preceding the festival, students attended half-day workshops with artists from the independent performing arts community in order to become acquainted with the working methods of artists from various performative genres. During the festival week the students will attend performances together and reflect artistically upon the productions they have seen.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic the festival is planned to take place entirely online, with the option for a hybrid itinerary if realizable.
 

Meta: Type(s): Student,Berlin | Subject(s): Event,Bard College Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

BCB faculty member Joshua Paul has published the article: “Because for us, as Europeans, it is only normal again when we are great again”: metapolitical whiteness and the normalization of white supremacist discourse in the wake of Trump, in the journal Ethnic and Racial Studies.

This article analyzes the resurgence of a mainstream white nationalism following the 2016 presidential election using data drawn from websites, interviews with and publications by the alt-right. Through the concept of metapolitical whiteness, it argues that a new conjuncture of white racial politics has emerged since 2016. This is predicated on the normalization of white supremacist discourse which utilizes novel forms of disseminating its message to a younger demographic. Ultimately, it contends that white supremacist discourse is re-entering mainstream political discourse and popular culture through ironic comedy and differentialist discursive strategies borrowed from the French new right.

Access to the full article here>>
 

Meta: Type(s): Faculty,Berlin | Subject(s): Academics | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

BCB German Studies instructor Andreas Martin Widmann has compiled a forum on contemporary German literature in a global context as guest editor for the journal German Quarterly.

Published in the Winter 2021 issue, the forum brings together exclusively commissioned articles from ten German writers, among them winner of the Deutscher Buchpreis 2020 Anne Weber, American-born translator and novelist Isabel Fargo Cole, as well as Matthias Nawrat, recent recipient of the EU Prize for Literature, critically acclaimed multilingual poet and essayist Uljana Wolf, and Deutscher Buchpreis 2019 and 2020 nominees Emanuel Maeß and Roman Ehrlich.

In their contributions, the authors reflect on their own aesthetics in relation to experiences of writing in German in a globalized literary sphere and marketplace. Widmann’s own essay “Global schreiben: Deutschsprachige Gegenwartsliteratur und ein Sense of Planet” contextualizes voices and positions within the global literature paradigm, the rise of English, and links forms of storytelling aimed at multinational audiences to the possibility of a new ecological awareness through writing.

You can access all articles here>>

Meta: Type(s): Faculty,Berlin | Subject(s): Academics | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

The theater project Interrobang (a cooperation between BCB Professor of Theater and Performance Nina Tecklenburg, Till Müller-Klug and Lajos Talamonti) showed their interactive livestream Familiodrome at the Internationales Figurenfestival Erlangen and WUK Verein zur Schaffung offener Kultur- und Werkstättenhäuseron, Vienna on May 14 and 15 and their interactive digital game Soulmachine at FFT (Forum Freies Theater), Düsseldorf from May 5 to 8, 2021.

Familiodrome is inspired by Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Emile, or On Education and explores the greater fundamental questions of humanity and empowerment behind our ideas on education. During the live stream Interrobang raises a child together with the online-audience, who have the option to intervene, vote to influence the development of the child, ensuring a different outcome for every performance.

Soulmachine is a mobile interactive game in which six passengers steer a specially adapted people carrier through an artificial intelligence program on a tablet. The computer creates the journey based on the collective decisions and behavior of the passengers taking them on an allegorical life journey, from childhood to old age. The Soulmachine’s next stop will be the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin in fall 2021.
 

Meta: Type(s): Faculty,Berlin | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

BCB Professor of Politics Boris Vormann appeared as a guest on the Heidelberg Center for American Studies’ Podcast “Quo Vadis USA?”

In the episode “Zwischenbilanz Biden – Ist der Interventionsstaat zurück?“ ( Assessing Biden – Has the interventionist state returned ?) Boris Vormann looks back on President Biden’s first 100 days in office as well as his ambitious future plans to invest large sums in infrastructure, the employment sector and housing whilst also funding subsidies for childcare, paid parental leave and expanding the care sector.

“Quo Vadis USA?” is a bi-weekly podcast produced by the Heidelberg Center for American Studies touching on topics surrounding American society, politics, culture, economy and science. Listen to the episode featuring Boris Vormann here>>
 

Meta: Type(s): Faculty,Berlin | Subject(s): Politics | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

BCB Professor of Politics and Middle Eastern Studies Hanan Toukan has published a new book: The Politcs of Art, Dissent and Cultural Diplomacy in Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan (Stanford University Press, 2021).

In The Politics of Art Hanan Toukan offers a look into the entanglement of art and international politics in Beirut, Ramallah, and Amman to understand the aesthetics of material production within liberal economies. Hanan Toukan outlines the political and social functions of transnationally connected and internationally funded arts organizations and initiatives, and reveals how the production of art within global frameworks can contribute to hegemonic structures even as it is critiquing them—or how it can be counterhegemonic even when it first appears not to be. In so doing, Toukan proposes not only a new way of reading contemporary art practices as they situate themselves globally, but also a new way of reading the domestic politics of the region from the vantage point of art.

Meta: Type(s): Berlin | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin,Academics |

BCB Professor of Economics Ann-Kathrin Blankenberg and former BCB Professor of Economics Martin Binder have written a chapter in Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics (Springer, 2021).

“Self-Employment and Subjective Well-Being” discusses the evidence and explanations why self-employment is positively associate with job satisfaction, despite often going hand in hand with longer hours, less pay and more stress.

Meta: Type(s): Berlin | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

German news outlet taz reports on BCB Faculty Aaron Tugendhaft’s talk at the Einstein Forum on April 20, 2021, in which he spoke about his book The Idols for ISIS, from Assyria to the Internet (University of Chicago Press, 2020).

In the talk Dr. Tugendhaft focused on the key point of his book: that through the destruction of ancient artifacts at the Mosul Museum in 2015, the so-called Islamic State were not just fulfilling their mission to cleanse the world of idolatry but creating new images with which to spread their ideas online.

Read the article here>>
Watch the talk back here>>
 

Meta: Type(s): Berlin,Faculty | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

BCB Professor of Literature and Film Studies Matthias Hurst has published an essay on the Horror Homeroom website as part of a Special Edition celebrating the 50th anniversary of the classic British Folk Horror film The Blood on Satan's Claws (1971).

In his essay "The Judge With no Name and Rebels Without a Cause? Uncanny Evil in The Blood on Satan's Claws" Professor Hurst offers sociological and psychoanalytical interpretations of the film that is about "a cult of young people involved in wicked games, sexual frenzy and sacrificial rituals" in the English countryside of the early eighteenth century.

Read the article here>>

Meta: Type(s): Faculty,Berlin | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin,Academics | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

The Journal of the German Association for American Studies has published an open-access special issue: "Common Grounds? American Democracy after Trump" guest-edited by BCB Professor of Politics Boris Vormann.

The issue brings together over forty renowned scholars, writers, and poets from both sides of the Atlantic to examine the legacy of Donald Trump’s presidency in a wide variety of contexts. BCB faculty is strongly represented: Aysuda Kölemen discusses the power of the left wing discourse in the Democratic Party in "No, Your Other Left! The Fight for the Soul of the Democratic Party;"  John von Bergen proposes a radical restructuring of the Democratic Party in "74 Million Questions;"  and Michael Weinman negotiates the relationship between US memorials and American exceptionalism in "Twilight of American Idols? Statue Politics between the Movement for Black Lives and Trumpisms." 

In the form of short contributions (essays, poems, and interviews), the volume probes how the Trump Presidency has crystallized, histories of injustice and inequality that still characterize the current state of U.S. democracy.

They tackle questions such as: How do enslavement and settler colonialism continue to impact the democratic order? In what ways can the master narrative of American liberal democracy be reconceptualized along intersecting lines of race, gender, class, sexuality, and ecology? How does the outcome of the 2020 elections change domestic and international political agendas? Can a new, more equitable social contract be negotiated and a “common ground” be recovered and re-invented—and at what cost? 

Read the full issue at the Universitätsverlag Winter, Heidelberg>>

Meta: Type(s): Faculty,Berlin | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

BCB Professor of Art and Society Dorothea von Hantelmann commented on the growing popularity of immersive art installations in the Economist.

According to Dr. von Hantelmann the trend is a sign of “the shift from object to experience”, which results from the excess of material goods in western society, as well has a younger generation with a different aesthetic and way of thinking: “a new kind of thinking which one might call ecological thinking, which is to think in connections, in relations”.

Read the full article on The Economist >>
 

Meta: Type(s): Faculty,Berlin | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

Bard College Berlin is proud to announce that third-year student Noor Ender (BCB ’22) has won the competitive fellowship by Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes.

The Studienstiftung is one of the oldest, largest, and most prestigious scholarship foundations in Germany that supports young scholars with exceptional talent who can be expected to make a meaningful contribution to society. Noor was first nominated by the College and then passed through several rounds of a very competitive selection process.

“As a non-native German speaker, the application process was rather distressing,” Noor said. “But the support of my peers encouraged me to persevere through the uncomfortable and daunting parts of the process.“

Noor is a third-year Literature and Rhetoric student in the HAST program, who joined BCB in 2018. “I came to BCB because of its wonderful interdisciplinary, highly communicative, and deeply enriching approach to education.” In her free time, Noor likes to write, interweaving her wide range of interests from opera, literature and philosophy, to quantum physics.

Congratulations, Noor!

Meta: Type(s): Student,Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

Every year the initiative “Zürich liest ein Buch” (Zurich reads a book) encourages the people of Zurich to engage in a shared reading experience. This years book: Während wir feiern (while we are celebrating) by Ulrike Ulrich, takes inspiration from Virginia Woolf’s classic Mrs. Dalloway, whilst tackling the politics of migration and asylum against a contemporary European backdrop.

BCB Professor for Comparative Literature Laura Scuriatti will be speaking to Ulrike Ulrich on the parallels of her book to Mrs Dalloway on Tuesday, April 27, at 8pm.

Registration details here>>
 

Meta: Type(s): Berlin,Faculty | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

German news outlet Tagesspiegel spoke to BCB faculty member Aysuda Kölemen on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the founding of the Philipp-Schwartz-Initiative.

The Philipp-Schwartz-Initiative was founded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in cooperation with the German Foreign Office in 2015 with the aim to assist academics facing persecution in their home countries, by enabling them to continue their research in Germany.

Dr. Kölemen is one of the 175 academics to receive a fellowship, allowing her to continue her university career at Bard College Berlin after she was fired from the Altinbas University in Istanbul for signing a peace declaration criticizing Erdogan’s attacks on Kurdish settlements.

Today aside from her teaching duties, Dr. Kölemen coordinates the newly launched “Threatened Scholars Integration Initiative”. The Initiative is funded by the Open Society University Network (OSUN) and provides scholars that are threatened by persecution in their home countries with fellowship at OSUN institutions, thus widening the global support network for academics at risk. The program offers 25 fellowships in Europe but also other countries such as Columbia, Ghana, Kyrgyzstan and Bangladesh, hence also creating positions open to non English and German speaking academics.

Meta: Type(s): Berlin,Faculty | Subject(s): Academics,Bard College Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

BCB Professor of Theater and Performance Nina Tecklenburg together with Mario Simon (Akademie für Theater und Digitalität) will be hosting a workshop on the dramaturgical and technical questions of hybrid theater productions.

The closure of theaters in the wake of the pandemic has prompted theater and performance makers to experiment with new theatrical formats, one of which is currently discussed under the label of "Hybridtheater" (hybrid theater) that combines digital and analog elements.

The workshop focuses on such formats in relation to dramaturgical and technical questions: How does the dramaturgy change when switching to digital? How do you address the audience, which is partly sitting in the room and partly watching via live stream? How do you get both together, or has it long since become irrelevant that there are multiple dramaturgies and events happening simultaneously?
What possibilities does hybrid theater offer for questioning traditional theater, social interaction, and political implications of digital culture?

The participation slots are fully booked but the workshop can be watched live online here>>
 

Meta: Type(s): Berlin | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

BCB faculty member Aaron Tugendhaft will discuss his book The Idols of ISIS. From Assyria to the Internet (University of Chicago Press, 2020) with BCB Professor of Politics Boris Vormann in an online event in cooperation with the Einstein Forum.

The book discusses the destruction inflicted by the Islamic State on the artifacts of Iraq’s Mosul Museum, unpacking three key political facets of the event: idolatry as a political charge, the museum as an institution that produces political meaning and the internet as a space for both image circulation and algorithmically governed iconoclasm.

Drawing connections across the millennia, with discussions ranging from Assyrian palace reliefs to medieval Islamic philosophy to first-person shooter video games, the book investigates the perennial impulse to destroy images and the concomitant practice of producing images that depict that destruction.

The Idols of Isis compels readers to reconsider the political power of images from multiple perspectives and ask whether political life is possible without idolatry.

Register for the event >>
 

Meta: Type(s): Faculty,Berlin | Subject(s): Politics,Event | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

The theater project Interrobang ( a cooperation between BCB Professor of Theater and Performance Nina Tecklenburg, Till Müller-Klug and Lajos Talamonti) has created a new digital performance piece.

The MÜLLER-PHONE brings the legendary GDR poet, writer, essayist and theater director Heiner Müller back to life. Through the analysis, sound montage and digitalization of the extensive Müller audio material Interrobang have created an artificial Müller intelligence who the audience can phone up from a virtual telephone box.

Callers can decide on a topic by selecting a key and then listen to Müller’s comments on a wide variety of topics from social inequality to the current theater landscape.

Callers can reach Heiner Müller here until April 30.
 

Meta: Type(s): Faculty,Berlin | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

Bard College Professor of Politics Boris Vormann was asked to share his analysis of Joe Biden’s announcement of a two trillion dollar stimulus package to overhaul infrastructure in the US.

Boris discusses the political challenges facing Biden when implementing the scheme and sheds a light on the historical background over large scale infrastructure undertakings in the US.

Watch the full interview here.
 

Meta: Type(s): Alumni,Berlin | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin,Politics | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

BCB faculty member Frank Wolff has published a history of the General Jewish Labour Bund in migration which investigates the organization’s transformation from a revolutionary protagonist in early twentieth-century Russia to a socialist institution of secular Jewish life in North and South America. The book follows the paths of activists from the shtetls of Eastern Europe to the working class Yiddish neighborhoods of New York and Buenos Aires.

This book is a revised translation of Neue Welten in der Neuen Welt: Die transnationale Geschichte des Allgemeinen Jüdischen Arbeiterbundes, 1897-1974, which was awarded the Humanities International Award in 2016.

Yiddish Revolutionaries in Migration, The Transnational History of the Jewish Labour Bund is published by Brill. More details here >>
 

Meta: Type(s): Faculty,Berlin | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin,Academics | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

Fourth-year Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought student Sam Zamrik has published a literary essay under the title of “I am starch, water and fat” on the online portal weiterschreiben.jetzt.
In the essay he recounts how food connects to his experiences growing up in Damascus, as well as his time spent in refugee camps in Germany.

weiterschreiben.jetzt is a project run by the non-profit Wir Machen Das, which collects work from writers from regions of crisis and conflict.

Sam is a student of the Program for International Education and Social Change (PIESC) which enables students from areas of crisis and conflict to earn a Bachelor's Degree in the humanities or social sciences. 

Read Sam's essay here >>
 

Meta: Type(s): Student,Berlin | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

BCB Professor of Art and Society Dorothea von Hantelmann will be moderating the upcoming talk with artist Sean Scully at the American Academy in Berlin.

Sean Scully will be discussing his belief that the “dry, linear thinking” behind conceptual art has detached the natural world from the world of art. Scully is an American-Irish artist. His work is displayed in museum collections worldwide and has twice been nominated for the Turner Prize.

“Sean Scully: By Hand” will be hosted online by the American Academy in Berlin on April 26 at 7:00pm CET.

Further details here >>
 

Meta:

Fourth year Humanities Arts and Social Thought and PIESC student Sam Zamrik has been featured by Deutschlandfunk Kultur.

Sam speaks to Deutschland Funk about the roles that metal music and writing poetry play in his life as well as his experiences studying in Damascus during the Syrian Civil War.

Read the full article here>>
 

Meta: Type(s): Student,PIESC,Berlin | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

In a long form essay for the Heinrich Böll Stiftung BCB fourth year Economics, Politics and Social Thought and PIESC student Ameenah Sawwan looks back on the 10 years since the beginning of the uprisings in Syria and reflects on her experiences of this time of conflict.

Read the full essay here>>
 

Meta: Type(s): Student,PIESC,Berlin | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

Unrest in Syria began on March 15 2011 as part of the Arab Spring protests which escalated into the ongoing Syria Civil War. To mark 10 years passing since these events Euronews spoke with BCB ’20 Humanities, Arts and Social Thought alumna Wafa Mustafa.

In the interview Wafa speaks about her involvement with the protests and the impact the Syrian revolution has had on her and her family, as well as her disappointment in the international community for not intervening in the conflict to prevent human rights abuses.

Wafa is a journalist and human rights activist. She is involved with Families for Freedom who aim to find and free those who have been detained by the Syrian Regime. Wafa’s work is motivated by the disappearance of her father Ali Mustafa, a human rights activist who was detained in July 2013.

Meta: Type(s): Berlin,Alumni,PIESC | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

BCB faculty Marion Detjen has published a literary essay on Zeit Online reflecting on the significance to of the potato in German culture.
Inspired by the satirical Media Award the “Goldene Kartoffel” and the pejorative use of the word “Kartoffel” to refer to Germans, she reflects on how the image of the potato ties to subjects of German identity and immigration as well reminiscing on her own childhood culinary memories.

Read the article on Zeit Online>>
 

Meta: Type(s): Faculty,Berlin | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

Ibrahim al-Kasem, originally from Syria and currently a student at the BCB OLIve Program, fellow researcher at the European center for Constitutional and Human rights (ECCHR).  Ibrahim also is executive director of the volunteer ‘’Caesar Files Group’’, whose aim is to bring attention to the human rights abuses in Syria and to prosecute the perpetrators of these crimes. The Caesar Files Group takes its name from one of its members, the defected military photographer “Caesar” whose photographs make up the key evidence in the currently ongoing al-Khatib Trial in Koblenz. Of the two former Syrian secret service agents on trial, the first was convicted to 4 and a half years imprisonment on Wednesday February 24, 2021.
Read more about the al-Khatib Trial>>

Meta: Type(s): Student,Berlin | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

BCB Professor of Comparative Literature Laura Scuriatti has published an article on Carl Van Vechten’s 1922 novel Peter Whiffle. His Life and Works in the journal Comparative Critical Studies.

In the article Laura explores the complex intertextual presence of George Moore's Confessions of a Young Man in Van Vechten's novel.  Drawing on Adriana Cavarero's and Lucia Boldrini's studies on auto/biographical selves, and on Rebecca Walkowitz's and Homi Bhabha's theories of cosmopolitanism, she argues that Peter Whiffle's emphasis on dialogic subjectivity questions the notion of authorship and creates a problematic, parodic form of cosmopolitanism.

You can access the article here

Meta: Type(s): Faculty,Berlin | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin,Academics | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

BCB student Ehab Badwi and BCB Alumni Karam Alhamad  will be speaking at the 2021 Institute of International Education (IIE) Platform for Education in Emergencies Response (PEER) Forum. The three day event ( March 23 - March 25 2021) will be discussing the future of higher education in states of emergencies.

On the first day of the event Ehab Badwi will be on a panel discussing higher education initiatives in the Americas and Europe. Ehab is a current Economics, Politics, and Social Thought student (class of ‘22) and CEO of the Syrian Youth Assembly.

Karam Alhamad will be holding the opening remarks on the second day of the of the event, which focuses on higher education initiatives in the Middle East and Africa.  Karam is a 2020 graduate of the EPST program at BCB. Karam is a Syrian entrepreneur, international development professional and policy advocate.

Further Information about the event can be found here.

Meta: Type(s): Student,Berlin,Alumni | Subject(s): Politics,Bardians at Work,Bard College Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

The University Alliance for Refugees and At-Risk-Migrants (UARRM) has featured Bard College Berlin in a series of case profiles showcasing higher education institutions who are doing exemplary work to support displaced persons in higher education.

The report highlights Bard College Berlin's Program for International Education and Social Change (PIESC) that “offers pathways to reduce barriers to higher education.” 

Bard College Berlin currently provides full scholarships to 32 students from areas of crisis and conflict, which includes full tuition, room and board, health insurance and a public transportation ticket.  The College provides 70% of the tuition funding and raises the remaining costs with the help of individual donors and partner organizations. 

“Most importantly”, the report notes “ the branch campus in Germany has provided an alternative safe, legal pathway around the travel ban that prevented displaced students whose education has been disrupted by war from getting into Bard in the U.S.,” and praises the psychosocial support the College provides beyond a mere tuition waiver. Read the full UARRM publication here.

Meta: Type(s): PIESC,Berlin | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

BCB Professor for Middle Eastern Studies Hanan Toukan is one of the winners of the 2020 OSUN contest for Innovative Assignment Design. Faculty were asked to submit online assignments and activities that they had found to be particularly effective in a remote learning environment.

In her assignment Hanan asked students to produce an essay reflecting on the visual politics of the corona pandemic and how it has affected issues such as border security, right wing nationalism and neoliberalism. She asked the students to think critically about the significant moment in history they were witnessing and their role in shaping its narrative. The resulting essay is titled “Thinking Solidarity in a Global Pandemic: What the Crisis Uncovers and What Remains Unseen”

Meta: Type(s): Berlin | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin,Academics | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |