News Archive

Bard College Berlin Board of Governors member and civil rights advocate Kimberly Marteau Emerson recently published a contribution co-written with Nina Smidt (Director, ZEIT-Foundation) and entitled "Berlin: The Beating Heart of European Civil Society" on the blog of the Center on Public Democracy at USC.  

In the aftermath of the closing of Open Society Foundation and the Central European University in Budapest, as well as similar situations that threaten liberal democracy in Europe, the two authors turn their attention to Berlin and its status as a safe haven for civil society institutions and initiatives. Emerson and Smidt urge that, with the support of the federal government, Berlin plays “a pivotal role in shaping civil society in Germany, Europe and the world at large. It is our hope that it acts on this opportunity.” 

Read the contribution>> 

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

The volume Plato and the Moving Image, co-edited by Bard College Berlin faculty member Michael Weinman and Shai Biderman (Tel Aviv University), was recently published by Brill Publishers.

From the book's description:
This book shows how and why debates in the philosophy of film can be advanced through the study of the role of images in Plato’s dialogues, and, conversely, why Plato studies stands to benefit from a consideration of recent debates in the philosophy of film. Contributions range from a reading of Phaedo as a ghost story to thinking about climate change documentaries through Plato’s account of pleonexia. They suggest how philosophical aesthetics can be reoriented by attending anew to Plato’s deployment of images, particularly images that move. They also show how Plato’s deployment of images is integral to his practice as a literary artist.

Weinman also contributed a chapter to the book on "The Myth of Er as Rationalizing Recording Device."

The book is available both in print and in e-book edition and can be found here.

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

On June 19, 2019 Professor of Politics Boris Vormann discussed for Deutsche Welle the formal kick-off of Trump's 2020 re-election campaign. Vormann commented that Trump's re-election bid is not surprising and that it is accompanied by familiar themes which have so far been the focus of Trump's presidency. Vormann also discussed the meaning of the swing states for Trump and urged for cautiousness regarding the current poll numbers. 

Watch the interview>> (source: dw.com) 

Meta: Subject(s): Bard College Berlin |

On June 18-19, 2019 Bard College Berlin representatives participated in the conference "The Other 1 Percent - Refugees at Institutions for Higher Education Worldwide," organized by the German Federal Foreign Office (FFO), the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Berlin, in celebration of World Refugee Day on June 20. The conference was opened by Heiko Mass, the German Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs, and Filippo Grandi, UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

The conference aimed to strengthen collaboration between higher education stakeholders in countries where displaced individuals live to ensure that generations of young people do not lose their opportunity to lead productive, engaged and independent lives today and in future. In panel discussions, workshops and world-cafés, participants explored opportunities to expand access to higher education for displaced individuals, identified good practices, partnership opportunities and possible actions in the areas of financing and partnerships, inclusion and access, research and data, connected learning, internationalization and transition to employment. 

Bard College Berlin was represented at the conference by Associate Dean Kerry Bystrom, who gave a presentation in a workshop on “Research and data” moderated by economist and peace researcher Tilman Brück; by Civic Engagement Manager Xenia Muth, who introduced BCB’s Program for International Education and Social Change in a poster exhibition on the inclusion of qualified refugees in German universities; and by student Ehab Badwi (BA 2022, Syria), who participated in a student panel discussion on “Refugee student experiences at higher education institutions worldwide” and in the workshop "Student-led Initiatives." 

Read more about the conference>>

Meta: Subject(s): Bard College Berlin |

On June 7, 2019 faculty member Aya Soika was a guest on the radio show Forum (SWR 2) to discuss together with art critic and journalist Till Briegleb and art historian Christoph Zuschlag (University of Bonn) the relation of the Expressionist art movement "Die Brücke" to National Socialism. 

The radio show draws on two current exhibitions co-curated by Soika - A German Legend. Emil Nolde and the Nazi Regime at the Hamburger Bahnhof and Escape into Art? The Brücke Painters in the Nazi Period at the Brücke Museum in Berlin, which both grapple with the question of whether the Brücke artists were victims of the National Socialist cultural policy in light of their inclusion in the "Degenerate Art" exhibition. In the radio show, Soika highlights that the exhibitions are trying to go beyond the scope of this question, to look at the case of each painter individually and also in relation to the changes in their painting style and their actions after 1933. 

Listen to the show>> 

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

Professor of Migration Studies Agata Lisiak was recently a guest on the podcast "Who Belongs?", produced by the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society at UC Berkeley.

Lisiak spoke about her work on Eastern European migration to Western Europe, the experiences of migrant mothers in particular, and the relationship between gentrification and language in European cities. 

Listen to the podcast>>

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

Bard College Berlin is pleased to announce a partnership with OLIve - the Open Learning Initiative through which it will be able to host a full-time, 5-month university preparatory program on campus starting September 2019. Entitled OLIve-Plus, the program is aimed at students with a refugee background in Germany who wish to apply to an MA program at the Central European University in Vienna.

The course of study includes workshops on how to make a successful university application, classes in academic writing and academic skills, a regular academic seminar, auditing degree level classes at Bard College Berlin, and preparation for standardized exams in English such as TOEFL.

The deadline to apply for the program is July 5, 2019. 

More information about the program>>

Open call and eligibility criteria>>

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

On June 12, 2019 faculty member Laura Scuriatti gave a lecture on “Censoring, Understanding, Marketing Modernist Literature: The Trials of Ulysses” at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, in the frame of a course on Joyce taught by Prof. Dr. Claudia Olk. 

The lecture focused on the trials that took place in the US against the publication of Joyce's Ulysses. Scuriatti discussed the role of small magazines in the promotion and dissemination of modernist literature, and the impact of the arguments developed during the time of the first trial (1921) on the structure and style of the book, as well as on its reception.

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

The volume Groups, Coteries, Circles and Guilds. Modernist Aesthetics and the Utopian Lure of Community edited by faculty member Laura Scuriatti was recently published with Peter Lang. 

From the book’s description:
The essays in this volume analyse the significance (and failures) of literary coteries as spaces of aesthetic and political freedom. They explore the internationalist and interdisciplinary practices of the Porza Group, the abstrakten hannover and the anthroposophical group Aenigma; the utopian efforts of the artists’ communities at Dornach (Switzerland) and Farley Farm, in England; the political and aesthetic implications of collaborative practices of cultural mediation, criticism and translation within the Bloomsbury group, the «Young American Critics», and of single individuals in relation to networks and avant-garde coteries, such as Mina Loy, the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and Djuna Barnes. The volume offers an evaluation of the roots and ethos of sociability in the Enlightenment, as the basis of modernist utopias of community; it also reflects on the problematic notion of individual authorship within artistic groups, as in the case of the early-modernist Finnish author Algot Untola, who created around forty fictitious author-names.

The volume includes essays by faculty members Ulrike Wagner ("Utopias of Purposelessness: Sacred and Secular Sociability around 1800") and Dorothea Schöne ("Modernism and Pan-Europeanism: Utopian Concepts and Visions of the Porza Group"), as well as an essay by Scuriatti entitled "Together, on Her Own: A Survey of Mina Loy’s Textual Communities." 

More information>> 

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

On May 31, 2019, Martin Binder gave a talk entitled "Pro-Environmental Norms, Green Lifestyles and Subjective Well-Being" in the Cournot seminar series at the University of Strasbourg. 

The talk was based on a paper co-authored by Binder with Ann-Kathrin Blankenberg (University of Goettingen) and Heinz Welsch (University of Oldenburg). The paper grapples with several explanations offered in literature for the positive relationship between green lifestyles and subjective well-being, more specifically with the effect that social or group norms may have on such behavior. Using panel data from the UK, the paper authors demonstrate that the relationship is a positive one, and their findings support the idea that “the relationship between a green lifestyle and subjective well-being relies (in addition to conformity with a moral norm) on group identity rather than conformity with a society-wide green norm.”

More information about the Cournot seminar series>>

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

On June 3, 2019 Professor of Politics Boris Vormann was invited by Deutsche Welle to comment on Trump's visit to London. 

Vormann noted that Trump's visit to London, which had been planned shortly after Trump took office, coincides with a critical moment in UK's history. One of Trump's goals, in Vormann's view, is to endorse Boris Johnson as successor of Theresa May, given their mutual support of key issues. Vormann further commented on the economic interests of Trump given the Brexit trade deal.

View the interview>>

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

On May 31st, 2019 Professor of Politics Boris Vormann was interviewed by the radio network SWR2 and by the public TV station Das Erste (Tagesschau) on US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s visit to Berlin during his current European tour. 

For SWR2, Vormann highlighted that the Trump-led US administration departed from the soft power politics that had characterized the post-war years and had centered on cooperation, military & financial support. Under Trump, the policy has been to re-negotiate everything, Vormann commented, including transatlantic relations and more pressing international conflicts. Listen to the interview>>

On Tagesschau, Vormann focused on the discussions that Pompeo carried out with Angela Merkel and Heiko Maas in Berlin. Vormann commented that the current relation of US to Germany marks a departure from the times of transatlantic alliances; this departure began during Obama's presidency (with the re-orientation of USA towards Asia), and accentuated in Trump's time. Vormann also added that there are aspects in which the USA and Germany hold opposing views, for example in the case of Iran, but this will not affect the current relation between the two countries. Watch the interview>>

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

On May 30 - June 1, 2019 faculty member Ewa Atanassow will participate in the conference “Popular Sovereignty, Majority Rule, and Electoral Politics,” organized by the Institute for the Human Sciences, Vienna—where the event will be held—, the Center for Trans Cultural Studies (Chicago & New York), and the Center for Global Culture and Communication at Northwestern University.

The conference brings together international scholars in political and social sciences, history, philosophy, and anthropology to examine how the concepts “popular sovereignty,” “majority rule” and “electoral politics”—which over the last three hundred years were constitutive of the democratic project—have in recent decades evolved into threats to the spirit and norms of democracy everywhere. 

In the frame of the conference, Atanassow will give a presentation on “Popular Sovereignty on Trial” in a panel discussion on “Popular Sovereignty and Neo-Liberalism” chaired by Dilip Gaonkar (Northwestern University). 

Conference poster>>

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

On May 23, 2019 Professor of Politics Boris Vormann gave a talk in the Urban American Studies colloquium of the research group "Scripts for Postindustrial Urban Futures: American Models, Transatlantic Interventions" (in short: City Scripts) at the University of Duisburg-Essen.

Vormann’s talk was entitled “Urbanization and Infrastructural Statecraft in the American Century.”

The research group City Scripts explores the imaginative strategies and narrative scenarios which the centers of old industries (steel, coal and cars) in the United States and Germany are devising to forge paths into their futures. The public colloquium held between April and July 2019 invites researchers to present their ongoing projects. 

More info>>

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

For the 2019 summer Bard College Berlin joins PAF Campus, a network of Berlin-based universities offering seminars, workshops, artists’ discussions and visits to performances during the Berlin Performing Arts Festival (PAF). 

Between May 28 and June 2, 2019 Bard College Berlin students can participate in a variety of workshops on performance-based practices and discourses related to Berlin’s vibrant independent performing arts scene, from set design to writing, performance-making and performance analysis. 

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

Bard College Berlin guest faculty Daniel Reeve has recently accepted an offer of appointment as Assistant Professor of Medieval English Literature and Culture in the English Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara (USA). The appointment begins in autumn 2019. 

A scholar of medieval culture and literature, Reeve was one of the instructors in the core courses Plato’s Republic and Its Interlocutors (Fall 2018) and Forms of Love (Spring 2019) at Bard College Berlin. In 2018-2019 Reeve has been affiliated with the ICI Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry, after serving as a fellow in 2016-2018. 

Reeve’s profile on the ICI Berlin website>> 

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

Professor of Migration Studies Agata Lisiak and Director of Studio Arts John von Bergen will participate in the conference "Data-stories: New Media Aesthetics and Rhetorics for Critical Digital Ethnography," held in Volos, Greece, on May 31 - June 2, 2019. 

Bringing together young researchers, cultural producers, and the general public, the conference will both explore and perform new media narratives, thus aiming to push contemporary digital culture to its analytical and expressive limits.

In the frame of the conference, Lisiak will moderate the presentation of VR explorations, multimedia & multimodal ethnographic projects, and will participate in a roundtable with scholars from Bard College (New York), KEAE, the University of the Aegean, and the University of Thessaly. Von Bergen will give a presentation on "Exploring VR in the Studio Arts Classroom."

The conference is organized by the Laboratory of Social Anthropology and the Department of History, Archaeology and Social Anthropology of the University of Thessaly.

Read more>>

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

Professor of Migration Studies Agata Lisiak and student Mohamad Othman (BA '21, Syria) will participate in the conference “We, the City. Plurality and Resistance in Berlin and Istanbul,” held on May 23-25 at various locations in Berlin. The conference brings together scholars, activists, and artists from Berlin and Istanbul to explore various forms of knowledge-production, including workshops, panels, and installations. 

On the first day of the conference Mohamad Othman will guide a tour titled “Why We're Here” which offers a unique comparative take on conflict and uprising in Syria and Berlin. Mohamad will engage with recent Syrian history by drawing parallels to selected events from Berlin’s past. The two-hour tour will start at U-Mohrenstrasse in Mitte.

The speakers in the panel “Re-Writing the City Through Engaged Walking” co-organized by Agata Lisiak will explore various political efforts centered on the idea of walking, which aim to re-write hegemonic narratives of cities. The speakers (academics and activists from Istanbul and Berlin) will also closely consider walking as an ethnographic and activist method of engagement with the urban and discuss with the audience how we can make cities more inclusive through walking and how we can make walking more inclusive.

More about the conference>>

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

On May 16-18, 2019 faculty member Aya Soika participated in the conference "Unbewältigt? Ästhetische Moderne und Nationalsozialismus. Kunst, Kunsthandel, Ausstellungspraxis" [“Unresolved? Aesthetic Modernism and National Socialism. Art, art trade, exhibition practice”], conceived by Meike Hofmann (Research Center 'Degenerate Art’, Freie Universität), Dieter Scholz (Neue Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin), together with Bernhard Fulda (University of Cambridge) and Soika, and supported by the Ferdinand-Möller-Stiftung.

The international conference brought together experts in National Socialism and early 20th century Art and Culture to introduce and discuss the latest findings from research and exhibition practice. The participants aimed to examine the motivations of artists, art historians, and art dealers in connecting the forms of expression of modernism with National Socialism, as well as to explore how the multifaceted and contradictory image of the German art world in 1933-1945 could be presented in the institutional context of a museum. 

In the frame of the conference, Soika was invited to speak on co-curating the exhibitions A German Legend. Emil Nolde and the Nazi Regime (Nationalgalerie, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin) and Escape into Art? The Brücke Painters in the Nazi Period (Brücke Museum, Berlin), and to moderate a panel on the "Persecution Narrative and Heroic Stories of Modernity in Post-war Germany." 

Read more about the conference>>

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

Faculty member Marion Detjen contributed to a radio show on the history of the German Basic Law, which aired on Bayerischer Rundfunk on May 20, 2019 to mark the 70th anniversary since the birth of this text.

Detjen, who is co-author of the volume Die Deutschen und das Grundgesetz: Geschichte und Grenzen unserer Verfassung [The Germans and the Basic Law: The History and Limits of our Constitution], was invited to speak about the Germans’ perception of the Basic Law around its birth. Detjen noted that in the aftermath of the Second World War, feelings such as freedom or self-determination were far from the German population, and it took a while to realize the constitutional and liberal potential of the Basic Law. Detjen also discussed the constitutional experiments that took place before the reunification and the organic character of the Basic Law. 

Listen to the piece here>>  

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

On Tuesday May 14, 2019, Bard College Berlin celebrated the inauguration of its new student residence, Henry Koerner Hall.

Named after the Austrian-born American painter and graphic designer Henry Koerner (1915-1991), the building was designed by the renowned Rotterdam-based Atelier Kempe Thill. 

The festivities began with a ribbon cutting ceremony which featured short addresses from Leon Botstein, President of Bard College; Peter Baldwin, Co-founder of the Arcadia Fund and Member of the Board of Governors of Bard College Berlin; André Kempe, Co-founder and Partner at Atelier Kempe Thill; and Sӧren Benn, Mayor of Berlin-Pankow. Two exhibitions were on view at Henry Koerner Hall following the inauguration. The first presented a group of prints by Henry Koerner, including My Parents based on an iconic painting by the artist. Also on view was a selection of issues of TIME magazine featuring portraits by Koerner on the cover. The second exhibition, The Skin of the Law. European Migration Regimes and their Global Realities, showed works created by students from Bard College Berlin and was curated by professors Dorothea von Hantelmann and Marion Detjen. 

The day continued with a series of discussions at St. Maria Magdalena Church, located in the proximity of Henry Koerner Hall. Joseph Leo Koerner, Harvard art historian, author and son of Henry Koerner, gave a presentation on the work and life of his father. The college was delighted to host keynote speeches by Sigmar Gabriel, Member of the German Bundestag, and the artist, architect, and filmmaker Alfredo Jaar. The closing event was a panel discussion and open forum with Tracey Emin, artist; Barbara Haskell, curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art; Orwa Nyrabia, Artistic Director of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam; and Joseph Koerner, moderated by Leon Botstein. 

The college wishes to thank Arcadia, A charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin, for making the construction of Henry Koerner Hall possible. 

Booklet on Henry Koerner Hall>>

Press features
Im Geist von Hannah Arendt, Der Tagesspiegel, May 13, 2019
Wiener Emigrant Henry Koerner wird Namenspatron eines Berliner Studentenheims, Der Standard, May 14, 2019

 

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

The article "Comparing Public Communication in Democracies and Autocracies - Automated Text Analyses of Speeches by Heads of Government" co-authored by faculty member Seraphine Maerz and Carsten Q. Schneider (Central European University) was recently published in the international journal of methodology Quality & Quantity. 

Article abstract:
Renewed efforts at empirically distinguishing between different forms of political regimes leave out the cultural dimension. In this article, we demonstrate how modern computational tools can be used to fill this gap. We employ web-scraping techniques to generate a data set of speeches by heads of government in European democracies and autocratic regimes around the globe. Our data set includes 4740 speeches delivered between 1999 and 2019 by 40 political leaders of 27 countries. By scaling the results of a dictionary application, we show how, in comparative terms, liberal or illiberal the leaders present them-selves to their national and international audience. In order to gauge whether our liberal-ness scale reveals meaningful distinctions, we perform a series of validity tests: criterion validity, qualitative hand-coding, unsupervised topic modeling, and network analysis. All tests suggest that our liberalness scale does capture meaningful differences between political regimes despite the large heterogeneity of our data.

Read more here>>

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

On April 14, 2019 the exhibition Escape into Art? The Brücke Painters in the Nazi Period, co-curated by faculty member Aya Soika with Lisa Marei Schmidt (Brücke Museum) and Meike Hoffmann (Research Center 'Degenerate Art’, Freie Universität), opened at the the Brücke Museum in Berlin. 

The exhibition offers a detailed examination of the artistic practice, scope and everyday life of the initial members of Brücke - Erich Heckel, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Max Pechstein and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner - during the Nazi period. It seeks to take a multifaceted view and approaches the complexity of the Brücke history – between recognition and ‘defamation’ – by means of artworks and extensive documentation.

The exhibition runs through August 11, 2019. 

More information>> 

Reviews
Wer hat hier „entartet“ gesagt?, in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, May 4, 2019
Das Ende der verklärten Bilder, in Süddeutsche Zeitung, April 24, 2019

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

The fourth European Liberal Education Student Conference (LESC) will be held at Bard College Berlin on May 2-5, 2019.

A student-organized conference, this year's LESC welcomes approximately fifty student participants from liberal education institutions all over Europe to consider the central theme "Liberal Education: In Conversation with Today's World of Tomorrow." The student participants are themselves international and come from institutions in Poland, Russia, Germany, the Netherlands, Slovakia, the UK, Belgium, and Lithuania.

LESC 2019 seeks to understand the tone and content of the conversation between a Liberal Education and the world at large, asking how current model(s) of Liberal Education interact with the spheres of politics, technology, society, the global economy, and education historically, today, and into the future. It asks what supports and what stifles Liberal Education and how Liberal Education can help us as individuals and on an institutional level accomplish the needed change in each of these fields.

Lectures in the scope of the conference program will be open to the Bard College Berlin community with advance registration.

The LESC organizing committee wishes to express its gratitude to the Bard College Berlin faculty & community, as well as to Bard Center for Civic Engagement and ECOLAS (The European Colleges of Liberal Arts and Sciences) for their invaluable financial support.  

More information about LESC 2019>>

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

On April 25, 2019 Professor of Politics Boris Vormann was invited by Deutsche Welle’s show “The Day with Brent Goff” to comment with Washington Post’s Jenna Johnson on Joe Biden’s announcement of his candidacy for US President in 2020.

Vormann was reluctant to offer a prognosis at this point in time, especially considering the current split in the US Democratic Party, which is reflected in similar splits beyond the US. He noted that, while Biden is popular with unions and workers, he would have to fight to win over the nonvoters from the previous election, and also to straighten the legacy surrounding his name. 

Watch the video>> (source: dw.com)

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

On April 11, 2019 Bard College Berlin in cooperation with The Bard Institute for the Revival of Democracy through Sortition (B.I.R.D.S.) and the German think tank denkzentrum|demokratie organized a discussion on “Reviving Democracy. Can Citizens’ Assemblies Fix Representation?”.

Part of the event, B.I.R.D.S. had the great pleasure to introduce a surprise guest of honor - Greek social politician Theodore Stathis. As a trustee of Andreas Papadremos, he helped overthrow the Hunta in 1973, was a member of the Greek parliament for over 30 years and has as of recent earned much appreciation for his work at the national bank of Greece, as well as in music composition. Stathis is also an advocate of sortition and, during the discussion, he provided valuable input on electoral parties controlled by sortition (a system he had helped developed in the 70s together with Papadremos). 

The event took place in connection to the course Introduction to Comparative Politics led by Boris Vormann, and also featured Jonas Kunz and Hans Kern from B.I.R.D.S., as well as Dr. Andreas Schiel and Tom Wohlfarth from denkzentrum|demokratie. 

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

Faculty member Laura Scuriatti recently published the volume Mina Loy’s Critical Modernism with Florida University Press. 

From the book’s description:
This book provides a fresh assessment of the works of British-born poet and painter Mina Loy. Laura Scuriatti shows how Loy’s “eccentric” writing and art celebrate ideas and aesthetics central to the modernist movement while simultaneously critiquing them, resulting in a continually self-reflexive and detached stance that Scuriatti terms “critical modernism.”   
Offering new insights into Loy’s feminism and tracing the writer’s lifelong exploration of themes such as authorship, art, identity, genius, and cosmopolitanism, this volume prompts readers to rethink the place, value, and function of key modernist concepts through the critical spaces created by Loy’s texts. 

Read more about the book>>

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

On April 18, 2019 Professor of Politics Boris Vormann gave an interview to rbb's Inforadio on the expected release of a redacted version of the Mueller report. 

Bormann commented that he expects the content of the report to be controversial and also prone to interpretation. He pointed to previous declarations that may suggest the report should be read with a certain dose of skepticism. 

Vormann also noted that it is a common practice to redact passages in such reports, but that the Ministry of Justice's free hand in deciding what should be redacted constitutes a dilemma given the way the US institutional system is set up.

Listen to the interview here>> 

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

On April 12, the exhibition A German Legend. Emil Nolde and the Nazi Regime curated by Bard College Berlin's Professor of Art History Aya Soika opens at the Nationalgalerie, Hamburger Bahnhof.

The exhibitions looks at the Expressionist painter's role during the Third Reich and asks how Nolde’s ostracism and occupational ban fit with our knowledge that he was a Nazi Party member, and that he kept faith with the regime until the end of the war. To accompany the exhibition, a richly illustrated volume of essays and pictures (also in an English edition), as well as a separate volume with a timeline and more than 100 documents, will be published. The show is curated together with Bernhard Fulda and Christian Ring, and made possible by the Friends of the Nationalgalerie and supported by the Friede Springer Stiftung.

The exhibition Emil Nolde – A German Legend. The Artist and the Nazi Regime is based on the results of a multi-year academic research project which for the first time was able to analyse the extensive holdings of the Nolde estate in Seebüll, uncovering so much new material that the conventional Nolde narrative must be revised. Thus, for example, the exhibition will present the famous Unpainted Pictures – the small-format watercolours Nolde was reputed to have secretly painted at Seebüll during his occupational ban – in a completely new light, explaining them as part of a long-standing practice of self-stylisation. The importance of this self-stylisation – and how strongly it has influenced our view of Nolde – will be demonstrated to visitors through a reconstruction of the ‘painting gallery’ in Nolde’s studio house in Seebüll. This reconstruction will display the paintings and watercolours just as the ageing artist himself arranged them during the wartime winter of 1941/42. The exhibition will present over 100 originals, some of which have not previously been shown, with references to Nolde’s writings and in the historical context of their creation, in order to reveal the multi-layered relationships between paintings, the artist’s self-presentation, his ostracism, and development of his legend. What impact did the ‘Third Reich’ have on Emil Nolde's artistic work? To what extent do some of his works, such as his depictions of mythic sacrificial scenes or Nordic people, correspond with his sympathies for the regime? What effects did Nolde’s defamation and occupational ban have on his artistic practice and political outlook? And how did the myths about Nolde develop in the post-war period?

The exhibition will run through September 15.

More information>>

Media features in connection to Soika's research on Emil Nolde
Hängt sie auf, in Süddeutsche Zeitung (June 14, 2019)
Die angepassten Expressionisten, on SWR 2 (June 7, 2019)
Emil Nolde, der Nazi, in Süddeutsche Zeitung (April 11, 2019)
Le passé trouble d’Emil Nolde, une ombre au tableau in Le Monde (April 11, 2019)
Der entartete Nazi, RBB (April 10, 2019)
New Berlin exhibition exposes Emil Nolde’s Nazi ties in The Art Newspaper (April 10, 2019)
Stripping Away Lies to Expose a Painter’s Nazi Past in The New York Times (April 10, 2019)

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

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

On May 18, 2019 the students, faculty, staff, alumni/ae, and friends of Bard College Berlin will celebrate the conclusion of the academic year 2018-2019.  

The ceremony will be held at the Ballhaus Pankow, which has been the venue of the past two Commencements. The Ballhaus was built during the Belle Époque (1880) as a recreation & ball structure and is nowadays considered a historical monument. 

The 2019 Commencement speaker will be lawyer, civic leader, and human rights advocate Kimberly Marteau Emerson. From 2013 to 2017 she lived in Berlin with her husband, U.S. Ambassador to Germany John B. Emerson (ret.). Here, she worked both with the Embassy and independently to drive projects on multiple platforms, including the promotion of German immigration and integration efforts related to the 2015-2016 refugee “crisis" and addressing the issue of bringing women to the economic and political decision-making table. She now divides her time between Los Angeles and Berlin. She serves on the Board of Directors of Human Rights Watch, the Advisory Board of the USC Center on Public Diplomacy, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Pacific Council on International Policy. Kimberly holds degrees from UCLA (B.A.), UC Hastings College of the Law (J.D.) and l’Université de Droit d’Aix-Marseille (D.E.S.U.).

The ceremony will feature a musical introduction by BCB students.

Bard College Berlin’s eighth graduating BA cohort consists of 51 students from 29 countries, including Canada, China, Ecuador, France, Georgia, India, Israel, Kosovo, Malaysia, Nepal, Pakistan, Russia, Syria, Turkey, and the USA. 

The faculty and staff congratulate the Class of 2019 for their achievements! 

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

On April 14-15, 2019 faculty members Geoff Lehman and Michael Weinman will participate in a series of alumni-organized events in Chicago centered on their recent volume The Parthenon and Liberal Education (SUNY Press, 2018).

On April 14, Lehman and Weinman will participate in a reading followed by a discussion with David Shiner (The Shimer Great Books School at North Central College) at the Seminary Co-op Bookstore. 
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On April 15, the University of Chicago will host a day-long workshop bringing together philosophy scholars, art historians, classicists, and historians of science to discuss the questions raised by Lehman and Weinman in their volume. 
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The events are organized by BCB alumni and current PhD students at the University of Chicago Ena M. Gojak (BA 2012), David Kretz (BA 2016) and Xinyue Zhang (BA 2018) together with Pirachula Chulanon (PhD student, the University of Chicago). 

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

Faculty member David Hayes recently published an essay called “In praise of lameness: A response to William Deresiewicz’s Excellent Sheep” in the journal Arts and Humanities in Higher Education.
 

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

On March 14, 2019 Professor of Politics Boris Vormann gave a talk on “Governing Transactional Economies” at the international conference “Cities and International Law in the Urban Age,” organized by the Asser Institute (the Hague, Netherlands) in cooperation with Freie Universität Berlin. 

The aim of the conference was to examine “a wide range of practical developments and theoretical dimensions of the changing position and role of cities in international law and governance.”

Vormann’s talk was part of a panel on “Practice Areas: How Cities are Reshaping Legal Fields.”

More about the conference>>

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

A review of BCB German instructor Andreas Martin Widmann's novel Messias (Rowohlt, 2018) was recently published by Der Tagesspiegel. 

The reviewer considers Messias more “ambitious” and “polyphonic” than Widmann’s first novel Die Glücksparade (Rowohlt, 2012), and praises Widmann’s writing skills as well as his approach to the narrative.

Read the review here>>  

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

On February 22, faculty member Katalin Makkai participated in a panel representing the American Society for Aesthetics at the Annual Meeting of the American Philosophical Association (Central Division) in Denver, Colorado (USA). Her talk was entitled “Meaning and Mattering.”

Makkai was also invited to lead a discussion, together with Richard Eldridge and Michael Fischer, following a screening of Preston Sturges’ film "The Lady Eve" (1941) at the Sie Film Center on February 23. The screening and discussion, under the heading of “Exploring Stanley Cavell on Film,” were open to the public. Co-sponsored by the American Society for Aesthetics and the Denver Project for Humanistic Inquiry (D-phi) at MSU Denver, the discussion drew the largest audience to date to such events.

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

The volume Contours of the Illiberal State. Governing Circulation in the Smart Economy, co-edited by Professor of Politics Boris Vormann with Christian Lammert (FU Berlin), was recently published with campus. 

The book discusses the relation between government intervention and globalization, and how this can influence democracy. The contributions provide a historical comparative perspective of the sustained, central role of the US state in the smart economy. 

Read more>>

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

For the second time, the German Studies Program at Bard College Berlin received a DAAD STIBET I.

Similar to last year, the STIBET funding will be used to support the advanced seminar “The German Public Sphere” (in German) that brings together students with guest speakers and faculty to discuss the key themes of migration, populism, artificial intelligence, and gender equity, and to visit German media outlets.

Recent guest seminar leaders included Johanna Luyssen from the Libération on current Franco-German relationships, Sebastian Kenn on projects of the European Democracy Lab and Alexander Sängerlaub from Stiftung Neue Verantwortung on media and fake news; together with Caroline Kent from Tactical Technology Collective, students discussed the organization’s work at the intersection of technology, human rights and civil liberties, and hosted a Glassroom Experience exhibition on campus.

Bard College Berlin will also use the funds to continue last year’s conference series on the topic of antisemitism in cooperation with the Centre Marc Bloch. And through the financial support of STIBET I, supervised student tutors will assist students to advance their German language skills in individual meetings, tailored to their needs and questions.

The DAAD's STIBET initiative is a combined scholarship and support program offered to universities using funding from the Federal Foreign Office. STIBET’s overarching objective is to make a contribution towards improving the academic success rate of foreign students.

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

On March 9-14, 2019, Bard College Berlin will be represented by students and staff at the Bard Network Debate Conference, organized by the Bard Debate Union at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. 

The aim of the conference is to engage the participants “in conversation about the state of their debate programs, their strategic plans for the future of their programs, and best practices for competitive debating, public debates, and debate outreach projects.”

The conference will feature workshops on best practices for running campus debate societies, staging and executing public debates, public speaking, research methods, as well as a number of full adjudicated practice debates and a concluding public debate entitled “Is nationalism always dangerous?”. 

The BCB students selected for the Debate Conference are Jillian Igoe (BA ’22), who was the director of the debate team at her high school and participated in a range of debate events, and Shreya Shukla (BA ’22), who held leadership positions in her high school and is keen to examine how civic discourse can foster cross-cultural understanding. 

More information>>

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

Between March 15 and March 22, 2019, Bard College Berlin students and representatives will join other members from the Bard International Network for the 6th annual Get Engaged: Student Action and Youth Leadership Conference at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. 

The Get Engaged Conference “is an effective forum to strengthen the Bard network/intercampus collaborations among students, faculty, and administrators, and acts as an inspiration to participants whose aspiration is focused on addressing complicated social issues.”

The 2019 edition will include workshops on public speaking, active listening, securing project funding, student leadership, and networking. The welcome address will be delivered by Chrys Margaritidis (CEU’s Dean of Students).

The students representing BCB at the 2019 Get Engaged Conference are Adeeb Hadi (BA ’21) with the documentary film project Homesick, Between Death and Death, Maria Jose Sarmiento-Bose with Clowning Workshops, Danny Dubner (BA ’21) with the Emancipe Initiative, Elena Müller (BA ’21) with the community project BCB Sparrows, and Mohamad Othman (BA ’21) with the role-playing workshop In Somebody Else’s Shoes. 

More information>>

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

Human Rights faculty and Associate Dean Kerry Bystrom and Migration Studies faculty Agata Lisiak contributed papers to a special issue of EuropeNow on Forced Migration, Displacement, and the Liberal Arts. The issue focuses on the work of the Consortium on Forced Migration, Displacement and Education, which was founded in April 2016 and comprises of Vassar, Bard Annandale, Bard College Berlin, Bennington, and Sarah Lawrence Colleges. The Consortium is supported with an Andrew W. Mellon Grant and its aim is to understand and address the global movement of people from the higher education perspective. 

Bystrom’s paper, “Imagining Planetary Refuge,” looks at two contemporary novels to map “the literal and metaphorical walls that divide our current political landscape" and calls for educators to rethink the meaning of the classroom and professional engagement so as to enable newer generations of students to become engaged in the act of shaping more ethical migration regimes by "inventing the world for themselves.”

Lisiak’s paper, “At Home in the City? The Persistence of the Ethnic Lens in Everyday Urban Encounters,” examines the ethnicized and gendered meanings and practices of belonging produced and encountered by migrant women in German and British cities, and argues that "the persistence of the ethnic lens in migrants’ understanding of their experiences tends to obscure other important power dynamics at play.”

More about the EuropeNow special feature>>

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

Dr. Hanan Toukan will be joining the Bard College Berlin faculty to lead its curricular development in the area of Middle Eastern Studies beginning in Fall 2019. 
 
Professor Toukan earned a PhD in Politics and International Studies from the School of Oriental and Asian Studies at the University of London with a thesis that won the Middle Eastern Studies Association Malcolm H. Kerr Dissertation Award for the best PhD in Social Studies in 2012. This work is now forthcoming as the book A Global Political: Art, Diplomacy and Dissent in the Arab World. She was Visiting Assistant Professor at Brown University and most recently Visiting Professor at University of Bamberg, in addition to having held fellowships here in Berlin at EUME and the FU. She currently holds an Alexander von Humboldt research fellowship related to her second book project on visual cultures and politics of refugee camps and migration.
 
Professor Toukan will be teaching Comparative Politics of the Middle East and Origins of Political Economy in Fall 2019. The position is funded through the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant, which was awarded to the Consortium on Forced Migration, Displacement and Education, of which Bard College Berlin is a member. 

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

For the third time in a row, Bard College Berlin has been awarded the Welcome grant, which supports the Campus Conversations, a weekly get-together organized by students for students (with and without a background of forced migration), faculty, neighbors, and anyone else who is interested. The purpose is to engage in German conversation and to discuss modes of life and living in Germany.

For the first time, Bard College Berlin additionally received an Integra grant, to organize workshops and seminars that aim to provide students with skills and tools that will help them to enter the public and professional world in Germany. 

The Welcome and Integra grants are two important financial initiatives developed by DAAD (the German Academic Exchange Service) to encourage and support the inclusion of students with a background of forced migration in the German educational landscape.

Meta: Subject(s): Bard College Berlin |

On March 15, 2019 BCB faculty member Michael Weinman will offer a seminar with the title "The Antinomies of Liberal Political Theology: Three Arendtian Aporias” in the series "The Power, Agency and Authority Seminar" hosted by The Hannah Arendt Working Group on Critical Theories of Modernity at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture (Charlottesville, USA).

Weinman's discussant will be Charles Mathewes (Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture). 

The Hannah Arendt Working Group seeks a renewal of social and political thought through a connection of the present moment of crisis to the long arc of scholarship, wisdom, and intellectual tradition—a commitment to “thinking in dark times.”

Flyer with further info>>

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

On March 4, faculty member Ewa Atanassow will be the respondent to a talk entitled “How Does Scholarship Persuade?” held by Geoffrey Harpham (Duke University, Durham; President Emeritus of the National Humanities Center) at the Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna. The talk will focus on a certain type of narrative which underlies authority in a scholarly argument. 

Atanassow is currently spending six months at the Institute for Human Sciences as a Józef Tischner Visiting Fellow, working on a research project for a book on liberal democracy and Tocqueville. 

Read more about the event>> 

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

On February 1 2019, Professor of Literature and Dean of Bard College Berlin Catherine Toal delivered the keynote speech at the two-day event "Brigid in Berlin," organized by the Irish Embassy Berlin, in partnership with the Internationales Literaturfestival Berlin. The event celebrated contemporary Irish women writers. 

Toal's keynote, "Women Writing Irish Literature," was published in full by The Irish Times. You can read it here>>

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

In the fourth round of the Philipp Schwartz Initiative, Bard College Berlin received a 24-month grant to be awarded to the Turkish scholar at risk Dr. Aysuda Kölemen.
 
Aysuda Kölemen is a political scientist whose current research focuses on populism and democratic backsliding in Turkey. She examines the structural and psychological factors that contribute to the populist surge in Turkey from a comparative perspective. 

In 2015, Aysuda Kölemen became a signatory of the Petition for Peace, which was signed by over 2000 academics from Turkey. The petition called for an end to the armed conflict in Turkey. Subsequently she lost her job as an assistant professor at Istanbul Kemerburgaz University (currently Altınbaş University) and was sued by the Turkish government for signing the petition. She moved to Germany in 2017. Her trial continues.

Aysuda Kölemen received her PHD in political science from the University of Georgia, Athens in 2010.

The Philipp Schwartz Initiative
The Philipp Schwartz Initiative was launched by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation together with the German Federal Foreign Office. It enables universities, universities of applied science, and independent research institutions to grant threatened researchers fellowships for research stays in Germany. The initiative has been made possible through generous support from the Federal Foreign Office, the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the Gerda Henkel Foundation, the Klaus Tschira Foundation, the Robert Bosch Stiftung, the Stifterverband, and the Stiftung Mercator.

Scholars at Risk
Bard College Berlin is a founding member of the German chapter of the "Scholars at Risk," together with 19 other German academic teaching and research institutions. Kerry Bystrom, Associate Dean of Bard College Berlin and Professor of Human Rights & English Literature, is a member of the German SAR's Steering Group. 

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

On February 6, 2019 Professor of Politics Boris Vormann gave several interviews to German and international media on Trump's second State of the Union address. 

In an interview for Tagesschau, Vormann commented that, while Trump's speech brought little novelty, it demonstrated how much he has consolidated his power within the Republican party. 

For Radio Eins / RBB, Vormann highlighted that Trump's speech shows his readiness to reach a compromise with the Democrats.

Vormann provided a close analysis of Trump's speech together with Obama campaign veteran Julius Van de Laar for Deutsche Welle's "The Day with Brent Goff." You can watch the full analysis here (source: dw.com).

Vormann also provided a commentary for the German-language Deutsche Welle (source: dw.com), in which he noted that Trump's speech was reconciliatory and highly rhetorical, but that it also stood in contrast with his policies and agenda in the past two years.

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

On January 31, 2019 a performance/demonstration directed by BCB arts instructor Julia Hart and involving 60 Greenpeace climate protesters (among which 5 BCB students) was staged in front of the German Chancellery to demand the acceleration of Germany’s coal exit. The performance was scheduled to happen at the same time with the handing over of the Coal Commission's final report to Angela Merkel. 

The demonstrators urged to “wake up,” as “coal destroys our planet, put an end to it!”

Watch a video here>>

Read more here>>

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

On January 22, 2019 Professor of Politics Boris Vormann gave a talk on “The Crisis of Democracy: A Transatlantic Take” at the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg. 

On January 24, 2019, Vormann gave a talk on Trump’s first two years as president at the Deutsch-Amerikanisches Zentrum/James-F.-Byrnes-Institut (DAZ) in Stuttgart. Entitled “Ist der „Sumpf” trockengelegt? Präs. Trumps Agenda zur Halbzeit” ["Is the ’swamp’ drained? Trump’s agenda at halftime"], the talk examined the outcome of Trump’s campaign promises, his priorities for the second half of his term, as well as the general outlook of liberal democracy in this context. 

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