Division of Languages and Literature

Recent News

• Bard College Clemente Course Now Accepting Applicants for Its First Curriculum Taught in Spanish 
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  Bard College Clemente Course Now Accepting Applicants for Its First Curriculum Taught in Spanish 

  

  John Burns, associate professor of Spanish. Photo by Karl Rabe
  

  Beginning February 3, Bard College is offering its first Spanish-speaking Clemente Course, a free college-level introduction to the humanities. Focusing on Spanish and Latin American literature, this class, conducted entirely in Spanish, invites students to explore the power of the written word and the joy of reading. Students attend at no cost, with tuition and books provided, and those who successfully complete the semester-long course will earn 3 college credits from Bard College transferable to any higher educational institution upon completion. 
  
  This class will run every Tuesday from February 3 through May 26, from 6–8 pm, at 7 Grand Street, Kingston, NY, 12401. John Burns, associate professor of Spanish at Bard College, will be leading the course. Burns is an educator, poet, translator, and the author, among other works, of Contemporary Hispanic Poets: Cultural Production in the Global, Digital Age (Cambria Press, 2015). Applicants should write to professor Burns ([email protected]) to express their interest.
  
  The Clemente Course in the Humanities provides a transformative educational experience for adults facing economic hardship and adverse circumstances. The free humanities courses empower students to further their education and careers, become effective advocates for themselves and their families, and engage actively in the cultural and political lives of their communities.
  
  Post Date: 01-13-2026
  
• Author Adam Shatz Awarded Grace Dudley Prize for Arts Writing
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  Author Adam Shatz Awarded Grace Dudley Prize for Arts Writing

  

  Adam Shatz, visiting professor of the humanities.
  

  Adam Shatz, visiting professor of the humanities at Bard College, has been awarded the 2026 Grace Dudley Prize for Arts Writing bestowed by the Robert B. Silvers Foundation, in recognition of outstanding achievement in critical writing on the fine and performing arts or on cultural history. Shatz is also the US editor of the London Review of Books and a contributor to the New York Times magazine, the New York Review of Books, the New Yorker, and other publications. The Robert B. Silvers Foundation is an organization that aims to support writers working in the fields of long-form literary and arts criticism, intellectual essays, political analysis, and social reportage. 
  

  Learn more
  

  
  Post Date: 01-13-2026
  
• Joseph Luzzi’s The Innocents of Florence Featured in the New Yorker and the Guardian
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  Joseph Luzzi’s The Innocents of Florence Featured in the New Yorker and the Guardian

  

  L–R: Joseph Luzzi, professor of comparative literature at Bard; The Innocents of Florence.
  

  The newest book by Joseph Luzzi, professor of comparative literature at Bard College, has been included in a roundup list of “The Best Books of 2025” by the New Yorker and was reviewed in the Guardian. In The Innocents of Florence, Luzzi details the formation of what came to be known as the Innocenti in 15th-century Florence, the first orphanage in Europe devoted exclusively to abandoned children and would go on to care for nearly 400,000 children throughout its duration. The institution, while groundbreaking, carried a tragic and complex history that would ultimately shape education and childcare for centuries to come. “Luzzi’s slender and compelling book, with its accounts of forced pregnancy, family separation, and child labor, feels surprisingly and unsettlingly of the moment,” the New Yorker writes. 
  
  The Literature Program at Bard challenges national, cultural, and disciplinary boundaries that have often dictated the terms by which we understand the meaning and value of the written word, and has a long-standing commitment to fostering the work of writers and thinkers who expand the parameters of public discourse. 
  

  Read the New Yorker's Best Books of 2025
  

  Read the Guardian's Review
  

  
  Post Date: 12-16-2025
  
• The Innocents of Florence by Professor Joseph Luzzi Reviewed in the New Yorker
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  The Innocents of Florence by Professor Joseph Luzzi Reviewed in the New Yorker

  

  L–R: Joseph Luzzi, professor of comparative literature at Bard; The Innocents of Florence.
  

  A new book by Joseph Luzzi, professor of comparative literature at Bard College, has been reviewed in the New Yorker. The Innocents of Florence chronicles the formation of what came to be known as the Innocenti in 15th-century Florence, which was the first orphanage in Europe devoted exclusively to abandoned children and would go on to care for nearly 400,000 young lives over the next five centuries. Luzzi examines the tragic and complex history of the groundbreaking humanitarian institution, that ultimately—in recognizing poor and abandoned children as worthy of nurture—would shape education and childcare for generations to come. Harrowing accounts of “sexual violence, family separation, child abuse, and mass death” are examined alongside the “historic Tuscan superbloom of human creativity and innovation,” writes Jessica Winter for the New Yorker.  It also, Winter notes, contains distressing echoes of the present: “Since the Dobbs decision abolished the constitutional right to abortion, in 2022, at least ten states have passed new or expanded ‘safe haven’ laws for relinquishing infants, and hundreds of temperature-controlled ‘baby boxes’ have cropped up in Indiana, Kentucky, and elsewhere—the contemporary equivalent of the Innocenti’s holy-water font.” 
  
  The Literature Program at Bard challenges national, cultural, and disciplinary boundaries that have often dictated the terms by which we understand the meaning and value of the written word, and has a long-standing commitment to fostering the work of writers and thinkers who expand the parameters of public discourse.
  

  Read the Full Review
  

  
  Post Date: 11-11-2025
  
• Francine Prose Reviews a 19th Century Novella That Merges Creationism and Evolution for the New York Review of Books
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  Francine Prose Reviews a 19th Century Novella That Merges Creationism and Evolution for the New York Review of Books

  

  Distinguished Writer in Residence Francine Prose. Photo by Chris Kayden
  

  “Eça de Queirós is hardly the first writer to ask whether we would be better off without the blessing and curse of our complex consciousness,” writes Distinguished Writer in Residence Francine Prose of Adam and Eve in Paradise, a 19th-century novella in which, among other things, Adam fights a dinosaur and Eve is praised for eating the forbidden fruit. Prose, reading the novella over the course of one afternoon (and then again the next day), found herself moved by it. “Despite the book’s short length, there’s room for startling plot turns, inspired details, violent drama, and a thoughtful consideration of what it means to be human,” she writes in the New York Review of Books. As Prose found herself delighted, in 2025, by the novella’s humor and humanity, she felt a sense of gratitude to Eça de Queirós. “What pure pleasure it is, in these dark times,” she writes, “to read a bright fantasy about Adam and Eve and evolution, about the necessity of loving the poisonous roots, the scattered nebulae, and even one another without any expectation of being loved in return.”
  
  Prose has taught in the Literature Program since 2005, which challenges cultural and disciplinary boundaries that have often dictated the terms by which we understand the meaning of the written word. She is also affiliated faculty in the Written Arts Program at Bard, which encourages students to experiment with their own writing in a context sensitive to intellectual, historical, and social realities.
  

  Read the review in the New York Review of Books
  

  
  Post Date: 11-05-2025
  
• The Naming Song by Jedediah Berry ’99 Wins Massachusetts Book Award for Fiction
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  The Naming Song by Jedediah Berry ’99 Wins Massachusetts Book Award for Fiction

  

  Jedediah Berry ’99. Photo by Tristan Morgan Chambers
  

  The Naming Song, the newest novel by author and Bard alumnus Jedediah Berry ’99, was awarded the 2025 Massachusetts Book Award for fiction. The Massachusetts Book Awards recognize works by current Commonwealth residents in multiple categories. “I was so pleased to see my book included among a list of so many extraordinary writers’ works who I admire,” Berry said to the Daily Hampshire Gazette. “Winning it was just an astonishing thing. I felt incredibly grateful.”
  
  The Naming Song, also a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, is a fabulist novel that takes place after an apocalyptic event makes names disappear. The novel’s protagonist works for “the Names Committee” as a courier, delivering names to their proper places. “I came to love these characters and the strange journey that they’re on in the book,” Berry said. “Living with that for so long and knowing that it’s finally out of the world is kind of a strange experience. It’s like finally introducing people to these old friends.”
  

  Read the Full Article
  

  
  Post Date: 10-07-2025