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Bard College Senior Blanche Darr ’25 Wins Prestigious Watson Travel Fellowship

Bard College senior Blanche Darr ’25 has been awarded a prestigious Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, which provides for a year of travel and exploration outside the United States. Darr, an anthropology major and violinist in the Bard College Conservatory, will spend a year expanding her musical vocabulary for her Watson project, Reimagining Music-Making as a Way of Life.

Bard College Senior Blanche Darr ’25 Wins Prestigious Watson Travel Fellowship

Bard College senior Blanche Darr ’25 has been awarded a prestigious Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, which provides for a year of travel and exploration outside the United States. Continuing its tradition of expanding the vision and developing the potential of remarkable young leaders, the Watson Foundation selected Darr as one of 37 students in the 57th Class of Watson Fellows to receive this award for 2025-26. The Watson Fellowship offers college graduates of unusual promise a year of independent, purposeful exploration and travel in international settings to enhance their capacity for resourcefulness, imagination, openness, and leadership and to foster their humane and effective participation in the world community. Each Watson Fellow receives a grant of $40,000 for 12 months of travel and independent study. Over the past several years, 27 Bard seniors have received Watson Fellowships.

Blanche Darr ’25, an anthropology major and violinist in the Bard College Conservatory, will spend a year expanding her musical vocabulary for her Watson project, Reimagining Music-Making as a Way of Life. She will travel to Kenya, Indonesia, India, and Germany to examine barriers to music-making such as access, cost, and elitism, and, by joining international music education programs, explore ways to overcome them. “Learning to play music in a variety of settings and traditions will allow me to meet students with a wider ear for their musical vocabularies, experiences, and goals,” Darr writes in her proposal. “In the United States, music-making is something that is usually only for those with time, money, and some supposed talent. I wish to challenge this idea, looking at music-making around the world that is more participatory, improvisational, and connected to communities. I hope that this will provide me with a deeper understanding of the ways that people can make music integrated in daily life.”

A Watson Year provides fellows with an opportunity to test their aspirations and abilities through a personal project cultivated on an international scale. Watson Fellows have gone on to become leaders in their fields including CEOs of major corporations, college presidents, Emmy, Grammy and Oscar Award winners, Pulitzer Prize awardees, artists, diplomats, doctors, entrepreneurs, faculty, journalists, lawyers, politicians, researchers and inspiring influencers around the world. Following the year, they join a community of peers who provide a lifetime of support and inspiration. For more information about the Watson Fellowship, visit: https://watson.foundation.


Post Date: 03-20-2025

Art Newspaper Spoke with James Fuentes ’98 About His Gallery’s Move to Tribeca

“James Fuentes Gallery, long a forward-looking presence in the contemporary art scene on New York’s Lower East Side, is the latest space to decamp to Tribeca,” writes Jillian Billard for the Art Newspaper. The eponymous gallery of alumnus James Fuentes ’98, who will be awarded the Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters at this year’s Bard College Awards, has long championed “artists with practices outside the commercial conventions of the contemporary art market.”

Art Newspaper Spoke with James Fuentes ’98 About His Gallery’s Move to Tribeca

“James Fuentes Gallery, long a forward-looking presence in the contemporary art scene on New York’s Lower East Side, is the latest space to decamp to Tribeca,” writes Jillian Billard for the Art Newspaper. The eponymous gallery of alumnus James Fuentes ’98, who will be awarded the Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters at this year’s Bard College Awards, has long championed “artists with practices outside the commercial conventions of the contemporary art market.” This curatorial focus, Fuentes says, was first furnished at Bard. “I kind of picked up this idea of curating as a profession through osmosis, studying adjacent to the Bard Center for Curatorial Studies and spending time in the library founded by Marieluise Hessel,” Fuentes says. “The program planted a seed.”
Read More in the Art Newspaper

Post Date: 03-26-2024

Bard College Named a Top Producer of Fulbright Students for 2023–24

Bard College is proud to be included on the list of US colleges and universities that produced the most 2023–24 Fulbright students and scholars. Each year, the US Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs announces the top producing institutions for the Fulbright Program, the US government’s flagship international educational exchange program.

Bard College Named a Top Producer of Fulbright Students for 2023–24

Bard College is proud to be included on the list of U.S. colleges and universities that produced the most 2023–24 Fulbright students and scholars. Each year, the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs announces the top producing institutions for the Fulbright Program, the U.S. government’s flagship international educational exchange program. The Chronicle of Higher Education publishes the lists annually.
 
Seven graduates from Bard received Fulbright awards for academic year 2023–24. Getzamany “Many” Correa ’21, a Global and International Studies major, and Elias Ephron ’23, a joint major in Political Studies and Spanish Studies, will live in Spain as Fulbright English Teaching Assistants (ETAs). Biology major Macy Jenks ’23 will be an ETA in Taiwan. Eleanor Tappen ’23, a Spanish Studies major, will be an ETA in Mexico. Juliana Maitenaz ’22, who graduated with a BA in Global and International Studies and a BM in Classical Percussion Performance, was selected for an independent study–research Fulbright scholarship to Brazil. Bard Conservatory alumna Avery Morris ’18, who graduated with a BA in Mathematics and a BM in Violin Performance, won a Fulbright Study Research Award to Poland.  Evan Tims ’19, who was a joint major in Written Arts and Human Rights with a focus on anthropology at Bard, received a Fulbright-Nehru independent study–research scholarship to India. Additionally, Adela Foo ’18 won a Fulbright Study Research Award to Turkey through Yale University, where she is a PhD candidate in art history.

“As an institution, Bard College is proud and honored to be included in the list of Top Producing Fulbright Institutions for 2023-2024,” said Molly J. Freitas, Ph.D., associate dean of studies and Fulbright advisor at Bard. “We believe that Fulbright's mission to promote and facilitate cross-cultural exchange and understanding through teaching and research is in perfect alignment with Bard's own institutional identity and goals. We wish to extend our congratulations to our newest Fulbright awardees and reiterate our gratitude to the faculty, staff, and community members who have supported these students during the Fulbright application process and throughout their time as Bard students.”

“Fulbright’s Top Producing Institutions represent the diversity of America’s higher education community. Dedicated administrators support students and scholars at these institutions to fulfill their potential and rise to address tomorrow’s global challenges. We congratulate them, and all the Fulbrighters who are making an impact the world over,” said Lee Satterfield, Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs.

Fulbright is a program of the U.S. Department of State, with funding provided by the U.S. Government. Participating governments and host institutions, corporations, and foundations around the world also provide direct and indirect support to the program. 

Fulbright alumni work to make a positive impact on their communities, sectors, and the world and have included 41 heads of state or government, 62 Nobel Laureates, 89 Pulitzer Prize winners, 80 MacArthur Fellows, and countless leaders and changemakers who build mutual understanding between the people of the United State and the people of other countries.  
 
Read more

Post Date: 02-13-2024

Anthropology Events

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2025

Tuesday, April 15, 2025
a talk by Faye Ginsberg and Rayna Rapp
Campus Center, Multipurpose Room  8:30 am – 9:50 am EDT/GMT-4
Our book, Disability Worlds, chronicles our immersion in NYC’s wide-ranging disability worlds as parents, activists, anthropologists, and disability studies scholars. Disability consciousness, we show, emerges in everyday politics, practices, and frictions, from genetic testing to the reimagining of kinship, and the perils of what some call “the disability cliff”, while highlighting the remarkable world-changing creativity of neurodiversity activists and disabled artists. In today’s talk, we will focus on a chapter entitled, “Living Otherwise” that tracks the histories and everyday practices of disability arts activists. We explored projects created by people with diverse bodyminds across a dizzying array of genres, producing new culturalimaginaries centered on disability experiences and aesthetics, reframing the very concept of artistry itself. The disability art world ranges from community theater and poetry readings in neighborhood libraries todisability arts boot camps at cultural institutions such as the Whitney Museum and the Gibney Performing Arts Center, dance at Lincoln Center, The Shed, the High Line, Broadway performances, and more.  Our research preceded and coincided with the pandemic when many activities shifted online, creating unexpected challenges and opportunities in the disability arts world. Overall, we show how participation inthe arts offers new opportunities, resources, and models for “living otherwise.”

Faye Ginsburg is David Kriser Professor of Anthropology at New York University. She is cofounder of the NYU Center for Disability Studies and the Center for Media, Culture & History.  She is author of Contested Lives: The Abortion Debate in an American Community, coauthor of Disability Worlds (2024) and co-editor of How to be Disabled in a Pandemic (2025), along with other books.

Rayna Rapp is Professor Emerita in the Department of Anthropology at New York University, and the author of Testing Women, Testing the Fetus: The Social Impact of Amniocentesis in America, coauthor of Disability Worlds, and co-editor of How to be Disabled in a Pandemic (2025), along with other books. 

Wednesday, April 9, 2025
 
Promoting Legal Protections to Uphold the Ban on FGM in The Gambia (Hilina Degefa) and Training and Supporting Local Human Rights Defenders in Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Trinidad and Tobago (Marian Da Silva)

Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  5:00 pm – 6:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
Please join us for an evening with Hilina Berhanu Degefa and Marian Alejandra Da Silva Parra, our 2024–25 Lester Fellows in Human Rights. Degefa, an expert on women’s rights from Ethiopia, will discuss her work to combat proposals to legalize female genital mutilation in the Gambia. Da Silva Parra, a human rights lawyer from Venezuela, will discuss her project to train and support local human rights defenders in Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Trinidad and Tobago. The fellowships honor the memory and legacy of Anthony Lester QC (Lord Lester of Herne Hill), one of Britain’s most distinguished human rights lawyers.


Tuesday, April 8, 2025
  Memory-Studies Talk Series: Elise Giuliano
Olin Humanities, Room 303  12:30 pm – 2:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
This talk discusses Dr Giuliano's current research about discourse among ethnic minority populations in Russia’s regions and how to think about the subjectivity and identity of ethnic minorities in multi-ethnic states. Following the end of communist rule in eastern Europe in 1989, most of the new nation-states dedicated themselves to reconstructing a history that viewed Soviet domination following WWII as a departure from their nation’s natural democratic path. Leaders in the post-Soviet states that emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 took a more differentiated approach, especially with regard to the recent Soviet past. In Ukraine, especially since Russia’s invasion in 2022, public memory about Soviet history has become more urgent and politicized. This talk will consider what varied interpretations of critical historical episodes mean for the attempt to define a coherent nation-state and discuss how citizens’ lived experiences and personal family histories interact with attempts by political authorities to define a common public memory.


Download: Giuliano.pdf

Tuesday, April 1, 2025
Tarak Barkawi, Johns Hopkins University
RKC 103  5:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
The big consequences for the West of losing "small wars" (like Algeria, Vietnam, or Afghanistan) are due to the constitutive role of "the Orient" in Western identities. This talk will discuss how these identities are committed, in diverse ways, to notions of Western vitality, strength and dominance over non-European peoples. There is no more obvious sign of Western weakness and "Oriental" strength than defeat in war or failure to obtain victory. Unsurprisingly then, such setbacks become sites of political and cultural disruption and production at all levels of Western society.


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