Family + Alumni/ae Weekend Schedule

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Academic Classes

Biology 316, Animal Behavior
Bruce Robertson, associate professor of biology
Have you ever asked yourself, “Why did that animal do that?” We could seek answers on many levels, from proximal mechanisms (firing neurons and hormonal stimuli) through ultimate mechanisms (the evolutionary selective pressures that produce adaptive behaviors through natural selection). This course is primarily about the latter. We examine why organisms evolve various mating strategies, how organisms use signals, whether those signals contain honest information or whether we expect to see cheaters, and so on. We use lab and field experiments and evolutionary game theory, which provides the framework for understanding the evolution of animal behaviors.

Citizen Science
Mary Krembs, director, Citizen Science Program
Through the lens of the PCB contamination and cleanup in the Hudson River, the Citizen Science Program tackles urgent, present-day questions related to water contamination, and places these conversations within students’ daily lives and imagined futures. We consider how social, historical, and political factors are at work even when we think we are engaged in “objective” science. This year we explore the properties of water, as well as how these properties influence the contamination (and decontamination) of water. Using laboratory investigations and classroom discussions, the focus is on the creation, analysis, and interpretation of scientific evidence. 

Common Course 121, Black Aesthetic: Ralph Ellison
Nicholas Lewis, associate vice president for academic initiatives and associate dean 
Ralph Ellison is traditionally known and celebrated as a writer. However, Ellison’s earliest artistic interests resided in classical music, as both a composer and trumpet performer. Over the course of his life, Ellison engaged in serious, extended practice of sculpture, music, and photography. He cultivated relationships with such Black creative forces as sculptor Richmond Barthé, painter Romare Bearden, writer and social activist Langston Hughes, photographer Gordon Parks, and writer and critic Albert Murray. This course invites students to explore Ellison’s crafting of a Black aesthetic, and the worlds he constructed with other Black artists, intellectuals, and cultural producers. 

Dance 103A , Introduction to Contemporary African Dance
Souleymane Badolo, assistant professor of dance
Rooted in contemporary African Dance, using Badolo’s own movement style, this course explores movement over/under/inside and outside the tradition. The class begins with a warm-up that involves both physical and mental preparation. By listening to internal rhythms of the body and the beat of the music, dancers can discover their own musicality and their own movement language. Students will be exposed to the skills of improvisation starting with simple forms.

Economics 100, Principles of Economics
Youssef Ait Benasser, assistant professor of economics
This course is an introduction to the essential ideas of economic analysis. The microeconomics component develops the basic model of consumer and firm behavior, including demand and supply, in the context of an idealized competitive market, and examines how the real world deviates from this model—including monopoly and other forms of imperfect competition, minimum wages and other price controls, taxes, and government regulation. The macroeconomics component studies the aggregate behavior of modern economies—factors leading to economic growth, explanations of booms and recessions, unemployment, interest rates, inflation, and budget deficits or surpluses—and the government’s ability (or inability) to use monetary and fiscal policies to achieve goals such as full employment and price stability.

First-Year Seminar
Robert Cioffi, associate professor of classics
The current moment presents a historical juncture in which assumptions about government and public life, in the United States and beyond, are being challenged in renewed and disconcerting ways. Economic and political stability, once regarded as the dividend of the end of the Cold War, can no longer be taken for granted. Faith in democracy as a form of government, and in free speech, cosmopolitanism, and separation of religion and politics, are in decline. International challenges associated with climate change and global public health pressure a world system built upon independent nation-states. Against this backdrop, students worldwide are confronted with an urgent need to reexamine, articulate, and perhaps rejuvenate what it means to live in a shared society. Students read important works—from literature, philosophy, political theory, science, and the arts—that have shaped how people think about citizenship and civic membership across time and space. In the process, students develop the core skills needed to succeed at Bard, from engaging in active, critical reading and conversation to writing original, thought-provoking, and persuasive essays. 

Literature 233, The Age of Chance: Literature and Accident in the 19th Century
Daniel Williams, assistant professor of literature
In the 19th century, on railways and ships, in factories and mines, the speed of capitalism made accidents more common and forced the law to rethink how to handle injury and accidental death. The rise of statistics revolutionized the study of society and revealed the predictability of apparently unruly phenomena—from births to deaths, marriages to murders. Chance made its way into the sciences, especially in the random variations underpinning the theory of evolution by natural selection. It transformed ideas about the arts, notably in the new (and chance-marked) art of photography. And it gave a renewed emphasis to questions of risk, coincidence, and probability in literature, where topics like gambling and financial speculation were rife. What Keats called the “magic hand of chance” renegotiated basic questions about human life, action, and freedom. The ways these topics were addressed in 19th- and early-20th-century literature and culture also affect how they inflect our understanding of chance today. Authors may include Dickens, Tennyson, Darwin, Brontë, Poe, Melville, Hopkins, Maupassant, Dostoevsky, and Wharton.

Literature 241, Sex, Lies, and the Renaissance
Joseph Luzzi, Asher B. Edelman Professor of Literature 
This course examines how the Renaissance changed the world we live in, since this period was one of cultural experimentation and radical change that was only understood hundreds of years after it occurred. Topics range from The Prince, Machiavelli's masterpiece on the relation between deceit and power, to new paradigms for gender and sexuality in writers and artists including Vittoria Colonna and Artemisia Gentileschi. Other topics include the birth of the modern “artist” through the work of Leonardo, Michelangelo, Botticelli, and their pioneering biographer Vasari, and the emergence of international institutions like the Medici banking empire and a highly political—and often sinister—papacy. Overall, we establish the Renaissance as much more than a moment in cultural history; it was and remains a mindset that continues to shape the way we make art and literature.

Music 326, History of Electronic Music
Sarah Hennies, visiting assistant professor of music
This course provides an overview of the musical, technological, and social conditions that contributed to the creation, development, and proliferation of electronic music in the 20th century, and traces the use of electronics in music through historical and contemporary tools and techniques. This includes early electronic and pre-electronic instruments, commercial synthesizer and drum machine, sampling, musique concrète, psychoacoustics, noise, and more. Students will have weekly reading, listening, and writing assignments and a substantial research paper and presentation. This course is required for electronic music majors; prior music experience is preferred but not required.

Philosophy 140, Introduction to Philosophy: Other Animals
Jay Elliott, associate professor of philosophy
We human beings have learned to think of ourselves as animals, and to think of our pets, laboratory subjects, wild animals, and those we slaughter for meat as “other animals.” Yet the lives of these other animals remain profoundly mysterious to us. Can we understand their thoughts, desires, and lives? What do we owe them by way of justice, love, or sympathy? How does the struggle for animal liberation intersect with questions of race, gender, class, and disability? How might our understanding of ourselves be transformed by the thought that we are animals, too? In this course, we approach these questions through various sources, including the philosophy of Peter Singer and Cora Diamond and the fiction of J. M. Coetzee and Margaret Atwood.

Religion 363, Hinduism, Hindutva, Hindu Nationalism
Nabanjan Maitra, assistant professor of the interdisciplinary study of religions 
This course explores the twinned genealogy of Hinduism and Hindu nationalism as two categories of modern India. We focus on these overlapping discourses as they emerge from colonial regimes of governance and knowledge production. In our explorations, we challenge the conventional view that Hinduism marks the domain of private, or communally circumscribed, religious practice whereas Hindu nationalism marks the attempt to wrench the religious from its private sphere into the public arena of political practice. Invoking the third or middle term, Hindutva, we examine how indigenous thinkers have theorized religious nationalism, grounding this concept in a deep history of difference and violence as a necessary precondition to nationhood.

Science 125, Photographic Processes
Simeen Sattar, professor of chemical physics
Topics covered in this course range from the chemistry of silver and nonsilver photographic processes to the physics of CCD cameras. Laboratory work emphasizes the chemical transformations involved in making gum dichromate prints, cyanotypes, blueprints, salted paper prints, and black-and-white silver emulsion prints.

 

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Academic Classes

Anthropology 232, Lost Recipes
Sucharita Kanjilal, assistant professor of anthropology
This course explores how food cultures and histories are shaped, contested, and preserved by examining recipes as cultural artefacts. What is a recipe, and how does it relate to place and territory, memory and archive? In the contemporary food media and restaurant industries, the showcasing of “lost recipes” is a lucrative practice that promises both cultural representation and culinary reclamation. We ask: How and why are some recipes thought to be “lost,” and by whom and in what form are they considered to be found? What happens when the preservation of culinary knowledges becomes unmoored from the questions of dispossession and land loss? Lost (and found) recipes, then, provide an entry point into questions of land and conquest, representational politics and cultural contestation. The course draws on scholarly and multimedia resources from anthropology, food history, anti-caste and Indigenous studies—and, taking a global and feminist perspective, we foreground Indigenous and Dalit efforts toward culinary revitalization.

Biology 145, Environmental Microbiology
Robert Todd, assistant professor of biology
In this introductory course, students examine microbes in their native habitats while covering such basic biological concepts as DNA, RNA, and protein production, cellular replication, metabolism, respiration, and microbial genetics. Topics specific to microbial life include ecological life cycles and microbial habitats, microbiomes, the microbial role in food production, antibiotic resistance, biofilms, and quorum sensing. Students read primary literature and case studies, and have opportunities for in-class presentations on primary papers. During the inquiry-based laboratory, students culture environmental microbes and learn techniques for identification and characterization of novel environmental isolates.

Citizen Science
Mary Krembs, director, Citizen Science Program
Through the lens of the PCB contamination and cleanup in the Hudson River, the Citizen Science Program tackles urgent, present-day questions related to water contamination, and places these conversations within students’ daily lives and imagined futures. We consider how social, historical, and political factors are at work even when we think we are engaged in “objective” science. This year we explore the properties of water, as well as how these properties influence the contamination (and decontamination) of water. Using laboratory investigations and classroom discussions, the focus is on the creation, analysis, and interpretation of scientific evidence. 

Classics 363, The Romans and the Natural World
Lauren Curtis, associate professor of classics
As modern humans grapple with their relationship with nature, this course asks how people in the Roman Empire—whose language, Latin, has given English speakers much of our vocabulary for nature and the natural—understood their relationship with the environment. Rome’s vast imperial infrastructure transformed—and in some cases, ravaged—Europe, North Africa, and the Levant on a scale never before seen (mining, water diversion, road building). At the same time, Romans cultivated natural beauty in poetry (Virgil, Horace), gardens (villas in Pompeii), and the visual arts (paintings for the Roman empress Livia, zoological mosaics from Algeria). This course is for students interested in the relationship between environmental history and the arts, and the debates that arise when a society expands the possibilities for human agency.

Common Course 111, Science of Human Connection 
Michael Sadowski, associate dean of the College; associate professor, Master of Arts in Teaching Program
Elena Kim, visiting associate professor of psychology
Seth Halvorson, visiting associate professor of philosophy 
This course introduces students to theories of relational connection as a foundation of human development, drawing on psychology, sociology, primatology, neuroscience, and other fields. Readings are drawn from texts such as Frans de Waal’s The Age of Empathy (primatology), Matthew Lieberman’s Social (neuroscience), and Carol Gilligan’s In a Human Voice (psychology). We examine the cultural forces that disrupt connection and relationships, and the ways this disconnection manifests across cultures. Patriarchy, racism, homophobia and transphobia, interpersonal conflict, war, and other issues will be examined as manifestations of cultural breaks in relationship. Finally, how do we reconnect as human beings in cultures that drive us to create divisions and alienate us from one another? Perspectives from psychology, education, the arts, and other fields will be considered as students examine ways to cultivate individual and societal resilience to the forces that breed separation and division.

Computer Science 113, Introduction to Computing: Robotics
Theresa Law, assistant professor of computer science
This course introduces students to ideas that are fundamental to robotics and to computing in general. Teams of students design and build shoebox-sized robots, with guidance from the instructor. These rather minimalist robots will be mobile and have multiple sensors. The student teams will use a simple programming language to program their robots to carry out easy tasks, and will move to a more robust programming language and more complex tasks by the end of the semester.

Economics 248, History of Financial Crises
Emanuele Citera, assistant professor of economics
This course provides a historical and institutional account of the development and evolution of finance. In particular, it focuses on the evolution of financial theories and instruments, and analyzes the major crises that have occurred worldwide. The course is divided into three main parts. The first part covers early episodes of financial crises and speculative bubbles, from the 17th-century “Tulip Mania” until the late 19th century. The second part focuses on the Great Depression and its aftermath up to the 1970s. The third part deals with post–World War II financial capitalism, centering on currency and banking crises, stock market crashes, and critical episodes of the 21st century (the Great Recession and eurozone crisis).

First-Year Seminar
Kathryn Tabb, assistant professor of philosophy
The current moment presents a historical juncture in which assumptions about government and public life, in the United States and beyond, are being challenged in renewed and disconcerting ways. Economic and political stability, once regarded as the dividend of the end of the Cold War, can no longer be taken for granted. Faith in democracy as a form of government, and in free speech, cosmopolitanism, and separation of religion and politics, are in decline. International challenges associated with climate change and global public health pressure a world system built upon independent nation-states. Against this backdrop, students worldwide are confronted with an urgent need to reexamine, articulate, and perhaps rejuvenate what it means to live in a shared society. Students read important works—from literature, philosophy, political theory, science, and the arts—that have shaped how people think about citizenship and civic membership across time and space. In the process, students develop the core skills needed to succeed at Bard, from engaging in active, critical reading and conversation to writing original, thought-provoking, and persuasive essays. 

Literature 223, Bad Behavior
Francine Prose, distinguished writer in residence
In this class we will study novels and stories in which characters behave “badly”—eccentrically or in ways that we might consider extreme. We look at social norms and conventions, moral decisions, questions of politeness, race and gender, the influence of history, spoken and unspoken (and evolving) rules, and the influence of conscience and culture. Among the texts we’ll read are: Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights; Thomas Bernhard, Woodcutters; Ivan Turgenev, First Love; Anton Chekhov, In the Ravine; James Baldwin, “Sonny’s Blues”; Tatyana Tolstaya, “Heavenly Flame”; Jane Bowles, Two Serious Ladies; James Alan McPherson, “Gold Coast”; Roberto Bolaño, Last Evenings on Earth.

Literature 2175, Medieval Ireland
Karen Sullivan, Irma Brandeis Professor of Romance Literature and Culture
Ireland is said to have saved civilization at a time when the rest of Europe entered its darkest period. During the pre-Christian era, Ireland developed the most extensive of all Celtic mythologies. After conversion in the fifth century, it developed a distinctive Celtic Christianity, whose monks traveled widely, founding monasteries. This history was recalled in the 19th and 20th centuries by the nationalist movement that fought for Irish independence and by the Celtic Revival, which looked to it for a model of an Irish identity upon which to base the new state. The course will consider what, if anything, is “Irish” and how the medieval past defined and continues to define the present. We will read works from the Historical Cycle (The Frenzy of Sweeney), Mythological Cycle (The Dream of Oengus), Ulster Cycle (Bricriu’s Feast), and Fenian Cycle (Tales of the Elders of Ireland), as well as Christian writings (lives of St. Patrick and St. Bridget) and poetry and prose of W. B. Yeats and Lady Gregory.

Music 154, Music and the Spirit
Sean Colonna '12, Associate Director of Language and Thinking and Visiting Assistant Professor in the Humanities
While modern culture is often characterized as secular, many of us may have felt music’s influence on what we might loosely refer to as “the spirit.” The meaning of this term has varied tremendously with the tides of history, as has its relationship to musical experience. This course is animated by the following question: How have humans conceptualized the nature and importance of the spirit, and in what ways has music been understood to be a vehicle for spiritual experience and communication with immaterial or other-than-human forms of consciousness? We will explore this question by studying music that emerges from or speaks to spiritual experiences of various kinds. Students will be introduced to a range of genres, including Medieval chants, Romantic-era symphonies and operas, and various syncretic styles from twentieth and twenty-first century composers. We will also read texts that shed light both on the historical context for the pieces of music under consideration as well as different facets (psychological, philosophical, cultural) of spiritual experience. Our final unit will extend our exploration beyond the West to study the role of music in Brazilian ayahuasca ceremonies. Assignments include several short written analyses in addition to a final research essay. This course is designed for non-majors, and the ability to read music is not required.

Physics, Demystifying Quantum
Paul Cadden-Zimansky, associate professor of physics
The year 2025 marks 100 years since the formulation of quantum mechanics, an anniversary that prompted the United Nations to officially proclaim next year The International Year of Quantum Science and Technology. At the same moment, governments and corporations are spending billions of dollars to develop "quantum computers," Hollywood screenwriters are invoking the workings of "the quantum realm" to fill sci-fi plot holes, and the press and YouTube creators are regularly describing quantum as "weird," "spooky," "strange," and "impossible to understand." With politics, money, and hype swirling around the topic, the average person is left to wonder what all this fuss is about and if they'll ever have hope of comprehending any of it. In this course, intended for non-science majors, we'll begin at the beginning -- historically and conceptually -- to figure out what is so interesting and important about quantum science and technology. Along the way, we'll aim to separate science fact from science fiction, genuine philosophical questions raised by quantum mechanics from incoherent sophistry, and future possibilities from unfounded hype. By the end of the course, students will come to see that the quantum realm isn't a fictional place. It's the world they've been living in all along.

Psychology 141, Introduction to Psychological Science
Sarah Dunphy-Lelii, associate professor of psychology
How does the mind create the reality we perceive? How do experiences shape the brain, and how do processes in the brain influence thought, emotion and behavior? This course investigates these and similar questions by studying the science of the human mind and behavior. The course covers topics such as memory, perception, development, psychopathology, personality, and social behavior. A focus is on the biological, cognitive, and social/cultural roots that give rise to human experience. Additionally, the course will consider how behavior differs among people and across situations.