Alumni/ae

Alumna Maria Khan (BA 2015, Pakistan) worked this fall semester with Bard College Berlin students to stage Assembly Women by Aristophanes. 

A great theater enthusiast, Maria has produced several plays on campus during her studies as well as after graduating. She is enrolled in a PhD at Cambridge University and is currently conducting field work in Berlin, examining how an arts education can help teenagers from migrant backgrounds understand their identity.  

Assembly Women by Aristophanes is a play about Athenian women taking over the government and politics from men, and forcing men to attend to household chores. One of the most hilarious comedies by Aristophanes, the play is a critique of feminism as well as a fresh look at the idea of feminism.

"We had an amazing cast and crew for this play, and I can say that in my last ten years I have had the most fun doing this performance - perhaps due to the extremely comical nature of the play. As always, being reunited with BCB students reminds me of my magical years on campus," said Maria about her work on the play.  

Assembly Women will be performed on campus on December 15 & 16, from 7:00pm, in the arts building The Factory. 

BCB alumni David Kretz (BA 2016) and Jacob van de Beeten (AY 2013), and BCB student Margarethe Hattingh (BA 2019) contributed to the recently published volume What is Liberal Education and what could it be? (LESC, 2017). Book description: The volume gathers seventeen student perspectives on contemporary European liberal education. Researchers and journalists who cover liberal education will hopefully find students' insider perspectives valuable for their work. The accounts also offer inspiration and caveats to administrators, faculty, and sponsors currently engaged in liberal education initiatives or considering to do so in the future. Last but not least, this is a book for students of the liberal arts. Prospective students will get a better idea of what to expect, current ones may find that others share some of their joys and struggles, and former ones can reflect on a formative phase in their lives. David Kretz was one of the volume's editors (alongside Jakob Tonda Dirksen and Daniel Kontowski); Jacob van de Beeten and Margarethe Hattingh both contributed essays on "From Books to Buzzwords," and, respectively, "Measuring up: Reflections on A Liberal Education (So Far)." More information and e-book>>

Faculty members Ewa Atanassow and Geoff Lehman, and alumnus David Kretz (BA 2016) have contributed essays to the recently published volume Back to the Core: Rethinking Core Texts in Liberal Arts & Sciences Education in Europe, edited by Emma Cohen de Lara (Amsterdam University College) and Hanke Drop (University of Applied Sciences Utrecht), and published by Vernon Press. Based on a selection of papers presented at a conference in September 2015 in Amsterdam, the volume brings together faculty, university leaders, and students from both sides of the Atlantic to reflect on the recent developments in Europe with regard to higher education in the liberal arts and sciences. In the aftermath of the Bologna process, Europe is currently witnessing a proliferation of liberal arts and sciences colleges and broad bachelor degrees, and the contributors discuss the way in which the liberal arts tradition takes shape or should take shape in European institutions, focusing on teaching methods, core texts, and personal experiences with various curricula. The essay authored by Atanassow and Kretz, titled "Thinkeries Ancient and Modern: Aristophanes and Democracy's Challenges for Liberal Arts Education," revisits Aristophanes' The Clouds and its democratic context to argue that the play is equally critical of Socratic education as it is of democracy's narrowly utilitarian approach to learning. The tension between these two critical directions, the authors contend, is at the heart of the play. Atanassow and Kretz move on to discuss that Aristophanes' challenge merits to be taken seriously by defenders of liberal education today. Looking at how Bard College Berlin responded to that challenge, they conclude that, if it is to be useful for modern democracy, liberal education needs to address the heterogeneity of values, and that a core-text based curriculum is uniquely fit to do so. Geoff Lehman's contribution, "Bruegel's Via Crucis: (Visual) Experience and the Problem of Interpretation," is published in a section which addresses how specific core texts promote the goals of liberal arts and sciences education. Starting from a close reading of the Via Crucis, Lehman argues that sustained engagement with a single work of art over the course of one or several class sessions in a seminar, or even as the basis for an entire course, poses similar challenges and has a similar pedagogical value as the close reading of texts. The multiple vantage points depicted in the Via Crucis not only relate to one other in a measurable, geometric way, they also indicate a diverse but coordinated range of bodily experiences, of states of attention and of interpretive horizons. Lehman suggests that through this perspectival structure of diverse but commensurable viewpoints, the painting articulates an interpretive problem and simultaneously encourages a type of engagement that are both highly relevant for the values of a liberal arts education. Link to the book

http://www.publicseminar.org/2017/01/how-a-conservative-rural-country-defeated-a-far-right-presidential-candidate/#.WIDVW2QrIy4

On Saturday, August 27, Deutsche Welle will organize its German/Arabic talkshow Shababtalk in the Foreign Office in Berlin. The show is entitled 'Ein Jahr danach: schaffen wir das noch?" and will be moderated by Jaafar Abdul Karim. Co-produced by BCB alumna Aya Ibrahim, this edition of Shababtalk invites refugees, politicians, volunteers and the public, to engage in a conversation on the situation of refugees in Germany, one year after the opening of the borders. The recordings will start at 1pm, the doors open at 11am. For confirmation, please send an email at kommunikation.berlin@dw.com. More information here.