Bard College Professor Daniel Mendelsohn Wins Italy’s Prestigious 2022 Malaparte Prize
Charles Ranlett Flint Professor of Humanities at Bard College Daniel Mendelsohn has won the 2022 Malaparte Prize, Italy’s highest honor for foreign writers and one of the country’s most prestigious literary awards. Mendelsohn won the prize for his body of work in literary criticism, translation, and narrative nonfiction. He will receive the prize at an awards ceremony held on the island of Capri at the beginning of October.
Bard College Professor Daniel Mendelsohn Wins Italy’s Prestigious 2022 Malaparte Prize
“It is thrilling and somewhat daunting to be in the company of such writers as Susan Sontag and Saul Bellow as a recipient of this prize,” Mendelsohn said, on learning of the prize. “And, as a person who has devoted his life to the study of European civilization, I am particularly moved to have my work so warmly appreciated in Italy, a country whose culture I, as a classics scholar, particularly revere.”
In its citation, the Malaparte jury singled out the themes of exile, displacement, and memory in Mendelsohn’s three major memoirs, especially The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, an investigation into the deaths of six relatives who perished during the Holocaust in what is now Ukraine. “The choice of Mendelsohn may seem like a tribute to current events and to Ukraine,” says Gabriella Buontempo of the 2022 Malaparte Prize decision. “In truth, at the time we decided it, the Russian aggression did not start. But when literature is really well addressed, almost naturally its themes turn out to be current.”
Named for Curzio Malaparte, an Italian journalist and short story writer who died in 1957, the Malaparte Prize has been awarded to Saul Bellow, Susan Sontag, Nadine Gordimer, Donna Tartt, and Vaclav Havel, among others. The jury of this year’s award included: Leonardo Colombati, Giordano Bruno Guerri, Giuseppe Merlino, Silvio Perrella, Emanuele Trevi and Marina Valensise.
Daniel Mendelsohn, Charles Ranlett Flint Professor of Humanities, is an internationally bestselling author, critic, essayist, and translator. Born in New York City in 1960, he received degrees in Classics from the University of Virginia (MA) and Princeton (PhD). Aside from The Lost, which won the National Books Critics Circle Award and the National Jewish Book Award in the United States and the Prix Médicis in France, Mendelsohn’s books include: An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic (2017), named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, Newsday, Library Journal, The Christian Science Monitor, and Kirkus; The Elusive Embrace (1999), a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year; three collections of essays; a scholarly study of Greek tragedy, Gender and the City in Euripides’ Political Plays (2002), and a two-volume translation of the poetry of C. P. Cavafy (2009), which included the first English translation of the poet’s “Unfinished Poems.” His tenth and most recent book, Three Rings: A Tale of Exile, Narrative, and Fate, was published in September 2020, and he has just completed a translation of Homer’s Odyssey, to be published by University of Chicago Press in 2024.
Post Date: 09-19-2022
Interview: Bard Professor Daniel Mendelsohn Discusses His Most Recent Book on Between the Covers, Tin House’s Literary Podcast
Charles Ranlett Flint Professor of Humanities Daniel Mendelsohn talks with David Naimon, host of Tin House’s Between the Covers podcast, about Mendelsohn’s book Three Rings: A Tale of Exile, Narrative, and Fate, which weaves together the stories of three exiled writers Erich Auerbach, François Fénelon, and W. G. Sebald. “As we all know, just to make an obvious point, we’re living in a world in which the power of narratives—true, false, deliberately false, accidentally false—is something of vital importance in our lives and that is our existential struggle now,” says Mendelsohn.Interview: Bard Professor Daniel Mendelsohn Discusses His Most Recent Book on Between the Covers, Tin House’s Literary Podcast
Post Date: 08-02-2022
Interview: New York Times South Asia Correspondent Emily Schmall ’05 Talks About Sri Lanka’s Uprising
Emily Schmall ’05, who reports on Sri Lanka for the New York Times, discusses the country’s recent civil uprising and presidential resignation. “After about 24 hours, a gleefulness overtook the place, and some people swam in the president’s pool. They had done it: They had forced this extremely powerful president–who was accused of war crimes, who was feared–to leave his own home and even the country. But they did it peacefully, without taking up arms,” said Schmall.Interview: New York Times South Asia Correspondent Emily Schmall ’05 Talks About Sri Lanka’s Uprising
Post Date: 07-26-2022
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What Is the Cost of Inclusion? Dina Ramadan Reviews Baseera Khan’s I Am an Archive for Art Papers
What Is the Cost of Inclusion? Dina Ramadan Reviews Baseera Khan’s I Am an Archive for Art Papers
As museums and exhibition spaces make efforts to showcase more diverse artwork and perspectives, in her review of Baseera Khan’s I Am an Archive for Art Papers, Dina Ramadan, assistant professor of Arabic, considers the cost for the artist. Noting Khan’s usage of collage and texture, Ramadan calls the exhibition “energetic and ambitious,” with many pieces serving as “a deliberate reflection on capitalist economies of extraction and imperialist trade routes that continually ravage the Middle East and South Asia.” Larger questions arise when it comes to representation and its relation to the labor of artists of color, however. In attempting to to reeducate its audience to “the fundamentals of Islam,” the exhibition “encourag[es] an anthropological approach to the work,” Ramadan writes. “Ultimately, I Am an Archive raises urgent questions about the kind of ‘educational’ labor art institutions expect artists of color to perform in return for their inclusion.”
Post Date: 04-19-2022
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Five Bard College Students Win Fulbright Awards
Five Bard College Students Win Fulbright Awards
Five Bard College students have won Fulbright Awards for individually designed research projects, graduate study, and English teaching assistantships. During their grants, Fulbrighters meet, work, live with and learn from the people of the host country, sharing daily experiences. The program facilitates cultural exchange through direct interaction on an individual basis in the classroom, field, home, and in routine tasks, allowing the grantee to gain an appreciation of others’ viewpoints and beliefs, the way they do things, and the way they think. Bard College is a Fulbright top producing institution.
Mercer Greenwald ’22, a German Studies major from Williamstown, MA, has won a Fulbright Research and Teaching Assistantship Award in Austria for the 2022–23 academic year. As a Combined Research and Teaching Fulbright Scholar, Greenwald will spend the year immersed in the cultural life of the city of Vienna, where she will teach English and write an independent research project on the topic of “concomitant being” in the work of Austrian writer and thinker Ingeborg Bachmann (1926-1973) and the Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector (1920–1977). Greenwald will begin doctoral study in Germanic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University in the fall of 2023.
Maya Frieden ’22 (they/them), an art history and visual culture major, has won a Fulbright Study/Research Award to support graduate study in the Netherlands for the 2022–23 academic year. Frieden will spend the year in the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam’s Master’s program, Art & Culture: Design Cultures. “I have often questioned the sustainability of the current pace at which the design industry is progressing. Embedded within every designed element--from object design to urban design--are intentions that can be sensed, even subtly, by those encountering them, and they frequently symbolize and materialize exclusionary or prohibitive ideologies,” says Frieden. “The Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam’s Master’s program, Art & Culture: Design Cultures, understands the significance of historical, sociological and environmental research within the field of design, training students with the skills to interpret, discuss and interact with the discipline, so that we will be equipped to contribute in quickening the pace. By studying in this Master’s program, I will develop additional strategies for noticing the presence or absence of sensitivity within design, while also improving my capabilities for communicating such analyses, and working with those in positions that influence how our world is designed.”
Paola Luchsinger ’20, a Spanish major from Hastings-on-Hudson, NY, has won a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship Award in Greece for the 2022–23 academic year. She will spend the year in Athens teaching English elementary through secondary students at Athens College–Hellenic American Educational Foundation. “As an English Teaching Assistant in Greece, I hope to gain an idea of Greek perceptions of American culture while also representing a positive image of the United States. I have chosen Greece as my destination because a year in Greece will give me the opportunity to become fluent in Greek through immersion and improve my knowledge of modern Greek society,” says Luchsinger.
Lance Sum ’21 (BHSEC Manhattan ’19), an anthropology major from Brooklyn, NY, won a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship Award in Taiwan for the 2022–23 academic year. He intended to teach English and participate in intensive outdoor adventures, explore large influential cultural institutions in the major cities of Taiwan, host peer review writing and poetry sessions, and educate his Taiwanese community members about his experience in growing up in New York City. “I think Taiwan could offer me a more magnified perspective of a community who has preserved their own culture through much political and colonial pressure, an experience that would help me develop my cultural understanding for others,” says Sum.
Jordan Donohue ’22, a historical studies major, won a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship Award in Brazil for the 2022–23 academic year. She will spend in the year teaching English and deepening her knowledge around music and farming. Continuing her past work with Indigenous groups internationally, she plans to engage with and learn from the Indigenous populations of Brazil. Additionally, Jordan has studied Portuguese for seven years and will utilize her time as a Fulbright scholar to advance her fluency and prepare for further academic research on the language and culture of Brazil.
The Fulbright U.S. Student Program expands perspectives through academic and professional advancement and cross-cultural dialogue. Fulbright creates connections in a complex and changing world. In partnership with more than 140 countries worldwide, the Fulbright U.S. Student Program offers unparalleled opportunities in all academic disciplines to passionate and accomplished graduating college seniors, graduate students, and young professionals from all backgrounds. Program participants pursue graduate study, conduct research, or teach English abroad. us.fulbrightonline.org.
Post Date: 04-19-2022
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Two Bard College Students Win Critical Language Scholarships for Foreign Language Study Abroad
Two Bard College Students Win Critical Language Scholarships for Foreign Language Study Abroad
Adelina Colaku ’18 and Evan Tims ’19 have both won US State Department Critical Language Scholarships for study abroad this summer.
Post Date: 04-25-2018
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Violence and Creativity: Bard Writer in Residence Wyatt Mason on Pierre Michon
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Bard College Alumna Charlotte Mandell ’90 Named Finalist For Prestigious Man Booker International Prize
Bard College Alumna Charlotte Mandell ’90 Named Finalist For Prestigious Man Booker International Prize
Bard College alumna Charlotte Mandell ’90 has been named one of six finalists for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize, which celebrates the finest works of translated fiction from around the world.
Post Date: 06-14-2017
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Bard College Students Win Prestigious Fulbright, Watson, and Davis Awards
FLCL Events
- 11/30Wednesday6:00 pm – 7:30 pm EST/GMT-5 Hegeman 204A
Wednesday, November 30, 2022
Talking Herodotus: Celebration of Carolyn Dewald's Herodotus Book 1
Carolyn Dewald (Bard) with James Romm (Bard) and Rachel Friedman (Vassar)
Hegeman 204A 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm EST/GMT-5
There are few authors more central to Greek history than Herodotus, whose nine books of Histories (literally, Investigations) set out not only to describe the conflict between Greece and the Persian empire but also to discover its origins. And there are few scholars whose work has been more central to our understanding of Herodotus than Carolyn Dewald, whose commentary on Book 1 of the Histories (co-authored with Rosaria Munson) has just been published. Professor Dewald has been working on this commentary since she arrived at Bard (2003-4) and is delighted to have finally finished it. She still finds him (aka the "Father of History") amazing and will be equally delighted to discuss how remarkable Herodotus is with all of you who have time to come and take part in the conversation. Professor Dewald will be joined by James Romm of Bard’s Classical Studies Program and Rachel Friedman of Vassar. - 12/01Thursday12:30 pm – 1:30 pm EST/GMT-5 Kline, College Room
- 12/07Wednesday12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5 Kline, College Room
- 12/07Wednesday6:00 pm – 7:00 pm EST/GMT-5 Kline, College Room
- 12/07Wednesday6:00 pm – 7:30 pm EST/GMT-5 Kline Commons