News

An-My Lê, Charles Franklin Kellogg and Grace E. Ramsey Kellogg Professor in the Arts, interviewed the renowned photographer Dawoud Bey, her friend and peer, for Bomb magazine’s Oral History Project, which aims to document the stories of distinguished visual artists of the African Diaspora. In conversation with Lê, Bey discusses his experiences as an artist, photographer, and educator, and the journey that has now cemented him within a legacy and tradition of contemporary Black photographers in the United States. “I felt beholden to that piece of the history that I had been responding to,” Bey said. “I wanted to extend that and also apply that history to the Black subject in a way that elevated the Black subject in the photograph, in a way that cut through the stereotypical, more socially pathologically driven representations of African American subjects in photographs. I started out wanting to make work in opposition to those kinds of stereotypical pathology-driven photographs. But as I began working and immersing myself in the work, that receded to the point where my ambition was to make the most honest, clear-eyed, resonant representation of what was in front of me.”

Heeryoon Shin, assistant professor of art history and visual culture at Bard College, has been awarded an individual fellowship of $5,500 from the Asian Cultural Council in support of a new project in India. Shin’s research will focus on investigating the localized reception of blue-and-white ceramics in colonial India, and examine the innovative architectural reuse of Chinese, Dutch, and British ceramics in Indian interiors. Blue-and-white ceramics incorporated into palace interiors have been seen as derivative imitations of European practices of collecting and displaying ceramics, or have often been considered too foreign to be part of the narrative of India’s national art history. Shin’s project aims to reframe these historical spaces as sites of multilayered cultural exchanges facilitated by the creativity of Indian patrons and artists—and to ultimately contribute to the decolonization of global art history by emphasizing the Indian agency and initiative in ceramic practices and histories.

Bard College is pleased to announce that the Wihanble S’a Center for Indigenous AI, directed by Dr. Suzanne Kite, distinguished artist in residence and assistant professor of American and Indigenous Studies, has been designated as a Humanities Research Center on AI by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). This prestigious recognition will confer a $500,000 grant in support of the Center, and position Wihanble S’a at the forefront of innovative research that integrates Indigenous Knowledge systems with cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.

Beginning in Fall 2024, the Wihanble S’a Center will embark on groundbreaking research aimed at developing ethical AI frameworks deeply rooted in Indigenous methodologies. The Center’s mission is to explore and address the ethical, legal, and societal implications of AI through an Indigenous lens, ensuring that AI technologies reflect diverse perspectives and contribute positively to society.

“This award is a tremendous honor and a recognition of the importance of American Indian perspectives in the rapidly evolving fields of AI,” said Dr. Kite, who is an award-winning Oglála Lakȟóta artist and academic, and Bard MFA ’18 alum. “Our goal is to develop ethical methodologies for systems grounded in Indigenous knowledge, offering new guidelines and models through collaboration between Indigenous scholars and AI researchers, challenging the predominantly Western approach to AI. Wihanble S’a (WEE hah blay SAH) means dreamer in Lakota, and we are dreaming of an abundant future.”

The NEH designation will support the Center’s initiatives, including the establishment of a dedicated facility on Bard College’s Massena Campus. This facility will serve as a collaborative hub, bringing together scholars from across diverse academic disciplines—including computer science, cognitive and neuroscience, linguistics, ethics, and Indigenous Studies—to engage in interdisciplinary research and educational activities.

In addition to research, the Center will host public events, workshops, and an interdisciplinary Fellowship and Visiting Scholars program, all aimed at advancing the field of Indigenous-informed AI. The Center’s work will complement the recruitment and support of Indigenous students ongoing at Bard’s Center for Indigenous Studies, enhancing Bard College’s commitment to being a leader in Indigenous studies in the United States as well as complementing Dr. Kite’s work with the international Abundant Intelligences Indigenous AI research program. Wihanble S’a Center’s designation as an NEH Humanities Research Center on AI underscores Bard College’s dedication to fostering innovative, socially responsible research that bridges the humanities and technological advancements.

Bard College announces the creation of The Barbara Ess Fund for Artistic Expression in Photography. This fund is made possible through a generous endowment from the Schwartz Family to honor their sister, Barbara Ess, a beloved teacher, colleague, mentor, artist, friend, and much-loved family member. The Barbara Ess Fund for Artistic Expression in Photography is an annual award that will cover the cost of course-related materials for a limited number of Bard College photography students on financial aid.

After taking some time to process the loss, Barbara’s sisters, Janet and Ellen, have decided to honor Barbara by creating a special endowment fund at Bard College, The Barbara Ess Fund for Artistic Expression in Photography. This fund will allow students on financial aid to fully participate in photography classes. They believe Barbara would have loved that.

After joining the faculty at Bard in 1997 as a professor in the photography department, Barbara Ess committed herself to inspiring and encouraging her students to be the most interesting artists they could be. She shared her unique perspective and approach to photography and art in a way that connected with her students, demanding only that the work be honest, authentic, and thoughtful. Her students loved and respected her. Many of them have gone on to make impressive art and enjoy successful careers.

According to former student and Co-Chair in Photography at Bard MFA, Megan Plunkett, MFA ’17, “Barbara Ess was an artist of immense power and I continue to be amazed by all that she accomplished in her work. As a teacher, she was abuzz with ideas, energy, and experiments. She gave us the gift of being seen as artists, and the freedom to be ourselves in our studios. She changed so many of her student’s lives, mine very much included. It is my absolute pleasure to speak on behalf of the Barbara Ess Fund for Artistic Expression. In funding materials for photo students with financial need, Barbara’s frenetic, infectious joy for making will continue to thrive in new generations of Bard artists, something I know would bring her immense joy in return.”

To donate to the fund via Bard’s secure website, please click here. For other ways to give to the fund, please click here. Note all contributions are tax deductible to the fullest extent of the law. We encourage you to check with your employer to ask if your donation can be matched.

About Barbara Ess
Barbara Ess was born in 1944 in Brooklyn, NY. In 1969 she received her BA in Philosophy and English Literature from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI. Ess has been the subject of several solo exhibitions, including at The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY (1985); High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA (1992); and Moore College of Art, Philadelphia, PA (2003). She has also participated in many group exhibitions, including Currents, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA (1985); Postmodern Prints, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England, UK (1991); Bowery Tribute, The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY (2010); and Who You Staring At: Culture visuelle de la scène no wave des années 1970 et 1980, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (2023). Ess died in 2021 in Elizaville, NY.

Kelly Reichardt, S. William Senfeld Artist in Residence at Bard College, spoke with Bard alum Connor Williams ’18 for a profile in Interview Magazine. “Reichardt’s body of work is remarkable for its consistency in quality and creative vision,” Williams writes. “She simply hasn’t made a film that wasn’t great.” In conversation with Williams, Reichardt discusses what she’s learned from her first film jobs years ago, her long-lasting collaborative friendships, and introducing students to her understanding of the cultural and cinematic canon. “I just wouldn’t really be connected with that generation if I didn’t teach,” she said. “I like being around young people and being in the flow of that conversation.”

Bard College’s Division of the Arts is pleased to announce the appointment of Ivan Lopez Munuera as Assistant Professor of Architecture. His appointment will begin in the fall of the 2024–25 academic year. Ivan L. Munuera is a New York–based scholar, critic, and curator working at the intersection of culture, technology, politics, and bodily practices in the modern period and on the global stage. His research has been generously sponsored by Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies and Canadian Centre for Architecture. In 2020, Munuera was awarded the Harold W. Dodds Fellowship at Princeton University. This fellowship recognizes scholars displaying the highest academic excellence and professional promise. Munuera has presented his work at various conferences and academic forums, such as the Society of Architectural Historians, Association for Art History, European Architectural History Network, Cornell AAP, Columbia GSAPP, Princeton University, Cooper Union, Penn University, Sussex University, the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, Université de Montréal, Het Nieuwe Instituut, Manchester University, Politecnico di Milano, CIVA Brussels, Willem de Kooning Academy, UTS Sydney, University of Texas, University of Virginia, MICA, and ETSAM, among others. His work has been published in the Journal for Architectural Education (JAE), The Journal of Architecture (RIBA), Log, Perspecta, Thresholds, The Architect’s Newspaper, ARCH+, e-flux, Domus, and El País, among others. Munuera has curated several exhibitions and developed a series of projects that have been presented internationally at numerous venues including the 2023 and 2021 Venice Architecture Biennales.

“The first question they ask when you want to start making a film is: who is your target audience?” said Ephraim Asili MFA ’11, associate professor and director of film and electronic arts, in an interview with ArtReview. Touching on topics as broad as the history of the avant-garde and the three-act structure functioning as a “cage,” Asili was also asked what defines the “Asili method.” His answer was that it all came back to that question of audience and, for Asili, the desire to make movies that would please him as a viewer. “I want to make something to the best of my ability that is compelling to me, as compelling as I can make it for myself, and then I assume that it might be interesting to other people.”

Bard Architecture has selected Farah Alkhoury as its 2024–26 Architectural Fellow. Alkhoury, an Iraqi spatial designer and researcher, will join the College this fall for two academic years. Alkhoury’s work examines environmental violence and political entanglements as consequential to architecture and spatial thinking. Her work has been exhibited at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2023 and the Jewish Museum in New York. During her fellowship at Bard, Alkoury will work on the project: “Occupied Ecologies: Architecture of Toxic Proliferation”, which attends to the presence of military toxicity that remains embedded in the soil, water, and air long after wars end. This design research traces depleted uranium’s infrastructural, spatial, and material effects across three interconnected ecologies within Iraq, Puerto Rico, and the United States, engaging with activism that emerges against invisible forms of environmental violence. She will also have the opportunity to teach a total of three courses each academic year taught through the lens of her research. Alkhoury’s residency will culminate in a public presentation of her research work in the form of an exhibition, an event, or other form.  

Bard Architecture’s two-year fellowship is awarded biennially to an emerging architect, urban designer, landscape architect or other spatial practitioner whose creative work and research advances new cultures of design that address a larger public. The fellowship is intended to support those embarking on a career in research and design pedagogy and to provide a context in which to develop new modes of thought relevant to the urgencies of the present.

Bard alumna Tiffany Sia ’10 thinks and works across text and film. Her newest book, On and Off-Screen Imaginaries, is a collection of six essays that grapple with the complexities of post-colonial experience. The first three essays focus on new Hong Kong cinema and examine the national security policies, censorship, surveillance that followed Hong Kong’s mass protests in 2019 and 2020. The second half of the book “abruptly drifts toward other geographies, specifically the US, as I challenge how dominant Asian American aesthetics conceive of a falsely unified imaginary of Asia and its politics,” says Sia. She reimagines the work of Vietnamese American photographer An-My Lê in one essay and the work of Taiwanese filmmaker King Hu in another. “The essays trace a shift in my focus beyond Hong Kong––toward the ‘elsewhere’ sites of the Cold War, such as Vietnam, Taiwan, and even Lithuania and Turkey, in brief mention––and facile East-West tensions to illuminate a lattice of North-South tensions and their vexing histories and politics,” says Sia, who recently won the prestigious 2024 Art Baloise Prize, which carries an award of approximately $33,400.

Bard College will receive a $50,006 grant as part of New York State’s Higher Education Capital Matching Grant Program, which supports projects at colleges and universities across the state by providing construction and renovation of laboratory and research spaces, the purchase of instructional technologies and equipment, and other significant investments. The grant will support the purchase of pianos and equipment for Bard’s László Z. Bitó Conservatory building. The equipment will be available to Bard’s community of students, faculty, and staff, as well as to the greater Hudson Valley community that participates in the opportunities Bard provides for learning, enrichment, and enjoyment. “New York’s colleges and universities are second to none, offering students unparalleled opportunities to learn, explore, and prepare to launch their careers,” Governor Hochul said. “With this funding, my administration is reaffirming our commitment to providing our students—including those at our private, not-for-profit institutions—with a top-tier, New York education with the best possible resources and facilities that will help them succeed inside and outside of the classroom.”

Jazz pianist and Bard Distinguished Visiting Professor of Music Marcus Roberts was a featured artist in the dedication and gala concert held in the newly named Marian Anderson Hall in Philadelphia to honor the legacy of internationally renowned American contralto and civil rights icon Marian Anderson (1897–1993), who was the first Black singer to perform at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, reports NPR. Music and Artistic Director of the Philadelphia Orchestra Yannick Nézet-Séguin said, “To have exceptional artists like Queen Latifah, Angel Blue, Audra McDonald, Latonia Moore, and Marcus Roberts—themselves trailblazers in their fields—join us for this momentous occasion will make the evening even more special, as we continue to create a more representative art form. We hope that every person feels welcome in our music and in the concert hall, and that every performance in Marian Anderson Hall serves as a reminder of her legacy and as an inspiration.”

From June 6–26, 2024, Julia Weist, visiting artist in residence at Bard College, will be a visual art resident at Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, New York. Weist will spend this time working on a photographic collage of images and data obtained through a private investigator license granted to the artist by the New York Department of State. Weist plans to exhibit this project at Moskowitz Bayse Gallery in Los Angeles, California, in September 2024. The Yaddo residency is offered annually to approximately 275 professional creative artists from all nations, individually or as collaborative teams, working in choreography, film, literature, musical composition, painting, performance art, photography, printmaking, sculpture, and video.

Born in Los Angeles, where he still works, Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio ’12 “finds beauty amid the ruin. His art engages serious social and political experience, but it succeeds by its refusal to be monolithic,” writes the Los Angeles Times. Aparicio’s current solo exhibition of recent works focuses on the various connections between Central America and Los Angeles—and posits multiple sites as a part of the same community and history as a crucial decolonizing strategy and one that problematizes the term “native.” In his cast rubber piece, “Who Do You Believe More, the Subversive or the Embassy? (W. Washington Blvd. and Hoover St., Los Angeles, CA),” specific use of materials that have a strong tie to pre-Hispanic cultures in Central America are key. The living ficus tree from which the work was cast is located at a major street intersection in the heart of the city’s El Salvadoran community. “Nature is scrutinized as an index of American culture. The landscape view subtly shifts. After seeing Aparicio’s show, you’re unlikely to look at our omnipresent ficus trees quite the same way again.” His show is on view at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA through June 16.

Soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon, visiting faculty in vocal arts at the Bard College Conservatory of Music, has been awarded a 2024 fellowship from the Borletti-Buitoni Trust (BBT) in support of her professional projects. The BBT Fellowship Program rewards musical excellence demonstrated by outstanding young musicians—for individuals and ensembles that have been selected from over 32 countries—with fellowships in 2024 being given to seven artists, including Fitz Gibbon. BBT winners are awarded between £20,000 and £30,000. There are no set criteria for how artists spend their budget. Winners are encouraged to be creative and to use their awards in a way that will help to establish and build their careers. Over the next three years, BBT’s fellowship funding will support Fitz Gibbon in the commissioning of new works, performances, and recordings. BBT also will provide advice, guidance, contacts, and public relations exposure. BBT artists join a supportive family that helps to advance their careers.

“I am overwhelmed with gratitude to have received one of the Borletti-Buitoni Trust’s 2024 Artist Fellowships. The nomination process asked me to dream about what I could accomplish with the kind of latitude that this funding and administrative support would represent, but I found the range of possibilities almost too tantalizing to imagine, as if I could permit myself only an oblique gaze at what might be,” wrote Fitz Gibbon upon receiving the fellowship.

Lucy Fitz Gibbon is noted for her “dazzling virtuoso singing” (Boston Globe) and believes that creating new works and recreating those lost in centuries past makes room for the diversity of voices integral to classical music’s future. Spotlighted as a Rising Star of Classical Music for 2024 in the February 20, 2024, edition of the British Broadcasting Corporation's (BBC) Music Magazine, Fitz Gibbon is one of 15 young classical musicians that the BBC has identified worldwide who are making a prominent stamp on the industry, whether with concert performances, opera roles, or dazzling new recordings.

Ross Exo Adams and Ivonne Santoyo-Orozco, assistant professors of architectural studies and codirectors of the Architecture Program at Bard College, were interviewed in Koozarch. In conversation with Valerio Franzone, they discussed contemporary architecture pedagogy and the challenges for the field, as well as the opportunities that open when architecture can be taught in a liberal arts context. “Architectural tools should be taught not only to produce new spaces but also to map systems and relationships, similar to Forensic Architecture, to reset the tools of architecture so that they can play roles in forms of advocacy, and broader forms of spatial justice,” said Exo Adams.

The Wilma Theater in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which is led by three co-artistic directors including Bard Theater and Performance alumna Morgan Green ’12, will receive the 2024 Regional Theatre Tony Award. This honor recognizes a regional theater company that has displayed a continuous level of artistic achievement contributing to the growth of theater nationally and is accompanied by a grant of $25,000. The Wilma Theater was named this year’s recipient based on the recommendation by the American Theatre Critics Association. Green’s recent directing credits include premieres of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Fat Ham by James Ijames (digital, The Wilma Theater) and School Pictures by Milo Cramer ’12  (The Wilma Theater, Playwrights Horizons), who also majored in theater at Bard. In 2019, Green directed the Theater and Performance Program’s production of Promenade at the Fisher Center. This summer, Green and Cramer will return to Bard to present their performance of School Pictures in the Spiegeltent for SummerScape on July 20.

Further reading:
School Pictures, A One-Person Show by Milo Cramer ’12, Featured on This American Life
https://www.bard.edu/news/milo-cramer-12-school-pictures-this-american-life-2024-02-13

Fat Ham, a Black, Queer Take on Hamlet Directed by Morgan Green ’12, Is a New York Times Critic’s Pick
https://www.bard.edu/news/fat-ham-a-black-queer-take-on-hamlet-directed-by-morgan-green-12-is-a-new-york-times-critics-pick-2021-05-04

Tanya Marcuse, associate professor of photography at Bard College, has received an American-Scandinavian Foundation Fellowship for 2024–25. The fellowship, for $5,000, will support her creative arts project Tree of Yggdrasil: Photographing Fragility and Growth, which will focus on Iceland’s vividly contrasting landscapes of treeless expanses and small forest enclaves. In the summer of 2024, she will visit Iceland to create large-scale color photographs foregrounding its extensive afforestation efforts, in affiliation with the Icelandic Forestry Association, one of the oldest environmental organizations in the country. Her project aims to capture the ethereal light on individual trees and barren vistas, symbolizing the balance between life and emptiness, and drawing parallels to Norse mythology’s Yggdrasil tree as a cosmic center, suggesting that every tree, however mundane, can or might be that center. 

Bard College student Madilyn Herring ’26 has been awarded both a highly competitive Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship by the US Department of State and a Freeman Award for Study in Asia (Freeman-ASIA) to study abroad. Herring ’26, a studio arts and written arts double major from Lebanon, New Hampshire, has been awarded a $3,500 Gilman scholarship and a $5,000 Freeman-ASIA scholarship to study at Kyoto Seika University, Japan, for spring 2025. Kyoto Seika University is a longtime tuition exchange partner institution with Bard.

“I'm extremely grateful to be a recipient of the Gilman Scholarship and the Freeman-ASIA Scholarship. They make it possible for me to pursue my goals and dreams in a way that perfectly combines all of my interests in art, writing, and Asian studies. Being able to study abroad seemed like a dream out of reach but being able to have the financial support to do so means so much to me,” says Herring.

This year’s cohort of Gilman scholars will study or intern in more than 90 countries and represents more than 500 US colleges and universities. Gilman Scholars receive up to $5,000, or up to $8,000 if also a recipient of the Gilman Critical Need Language Award, to apply toward their study abroad or internship program costs. Since the program’s inception in 2001, more than 41,000 Gilman Scholars from all US states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and other US territories have studied or interned in more than 160 countries around the globe. The Department of State awarded approximately 2,100 Gilman scholarships in the spring 2024 application cycle.

The late Congressman Gilman, for whom the scholarship is named, served in the House of Representatives for 30 years and chaired the House Foreign Relations Committee. When honored with the Secretary of State’s Distinguished Service Medal in 2002, he said, “Living and learning in a vastly different environment of another nation not only exposes our students to alternate views but adds an enriching social and cultural experience. It also provides our students with the opportunity to return home with a deeper understanding of their place in the world, encouraging them to be a contributor, rather than a spectator in the international community.”

The Gilman Program is sponsored by the US Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) and is supported in its implementation by the Institute of International Education (IIE). To learn more, visit: gilmanscholarship.org

The Freeman-ASIA program is designed to support US-based undergraduates with demonstrated financial need who are planning to study abroad in East or Southeast Asia. The program’s goal is to increase the number of US citizens and permanent residents with first-hand exposure to and understanding of Asia and its peoples and cultures. Award recipients are required to share their experiences with their home campuses or communities to encourage study abroad by others and fulfill the program’s goal of increasing understanding of Asia in the United States. From its inception in 2001, Freeman-ASIA has made study abroad in East and Southeast Asia possible for over 5,000 US undergraduates from more than 600 institutions. To learn more, visit: iie.org/programs/freeman-asia/

Alumna Lexi Parra ’18 contributed photography and video to an NPR article about Girl Scout Troop 6000, a New York City–based troop composed of the daughters of asylum seekers. Parra’s photos and videos accompany the story of Troop 6000, whose members take part in traditional scouting activities, as well as supporting each other through the traumas associated with migrancy. “This is probably the only sense of stability they have right now,” Giselle Burgess, founder and senior director of Troop 6000, told NPR. The mission of Troop 6000 aligns with the broader mission of the Girl Scouts, said Meredith Mascara, CEO of Girl Scouts of Greater New York. “They will be the ones running the city,” Mascara said. “I’m proud that Girl Scouts are part of that.”

Two Bard College graduates have won 2024–25 Fulbright Awards for individually designed research projects 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 Fulbright 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.

Sara Varde de Nieves ’22, who was a joint major in film and electronic arts and in human rights at Bard, has been selected for a Fulbright Study/Research Award to Chile for the 2024–25 academic year. Their project, “Regresando al Hogar/Returning Home,” aims to preserve the legacy of Villa San Luis, a large-scale public housing complex built in Las Condes, Santiago, Chile from 1971 to 1972. Through a multi-format documentary comprising interviews with former residents and project planners, archival documents, and footage of the current buildings, Varde de Nieves seeks to capture the collective memory of Villa San Luis’s original residents and planners. In executing this project, Varde de Nieves aims to expand the label of “heritage conservation” to include buildings and infrastructure that are not considered culturally significant as classic historical monuments and to make connections among narrative, memory, ephemera, and the historical archive. “I’m very excited to conduct in-person research on Villa San Luis, an innovative project that strove for class integration and high-quality construction. During my time abroad, I hope to foster long-lasting relationships and get acquainted with Chile's fascinating topography,” says Varde de Nieves.

While at Bard, Varde de Nieves worked as an English language tutor in Red Hook as well as at La Voz, the Hudson Valley Spanish language magazine. Their Senior Project, “Re-igniting the Clit Club,” a documentary about a queer party in the Meatpacking district during the 1990s, won multiple awards at Bard.

Jonathan Asiedu ’24, a written arts major, has been selected for an English Teaching Assistantship (ETA) Fulbright to Spain. His teaching placement will be in the Canary Islands. While in Spain, Asiedu plans to hold weekly poetry workshops in local cultural centers, communities, and schools. He hopes to invite the community to bring in their work or poems that speak to them, to share poets and writers and the ways they speak to us. “Studying poetry, learning pedagogical practices to inform my future as an educator, and mentorship opportunities throughout my college career have shaped both my perception of education and the work that needs to be done to improve students’ experiences within the educational system,” he says.

At Bard, Asiedu serves as a lead peer counselor through Residence Life, an Equity and Inclusion Mentor with the Office of Equity and Inclusion, admission tour guide, and works as a campus photographer. Moreover, this past year, he gained TESOL certification and has served as an English language tutor, as well as a writing tutor at the Eastern Correctional Facility through the Bard Prison Initiative. Asiedu, who is from the South Bronx, decided early on that he wanted to speak Spanish and has taken the Spanish Language Intensive at Bard, which includes four weeks of study in Oaxaca, Mexico. After the completion of his Fulbright ETA, he plans to pursue a master degree in education with a specialization in literature from Bard’s Master of Arts in Teaching program.

Three Bard students have also been named alternates for Fulbright Awards. Bard Conservatory student Nita Vemuri ’24, who is majoring in piano performance and economics, is an alternate for a Fulbright Study/Research Award to Hungary. Film and electronic arts graduate Elizabeth Sullivan ’23 is an alternate for a Fulbright Study/Research Award to Germany. Mathematics major Skye Rothstein ’24 is an alternate for a Fulbright Study/Research Award to Germany.

Fulbright is a program of the US Department of State, with funding provided by the US 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.