Bomb Magazine Interviews Artist and Filmmaker Tiffany Sia ’10 about Her New Book, On and Off-Screen Imaginaries
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,” says Sia.
Bomb Magazine Interviews Artist and Filmmaker Tiffany Sia ’10 about Her New Book, On and Off-Screen Imaginaries
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.
Under the guidance of Visiting Assistant Professor of Chinese Huiwen Li, five Bard College students, Timothy Weigand ’25, Lydia Lu ’26, Margo Ganton ’25, Jiyu Kwon ’26, and Yimeng Zhao ’26, were selected as finalists to exhibit their works of Chinese calligraphy in the National Chinese Expo of Student Works, an annual event organized by the American Academy of International Culture and Education (AAICE).
Bard Students Win Honors for Chinese Calligraphy Works in National Expo
Under the guidance of Visiting Assistant Professor of Chinese Huiwen Li, five Bard College students, Timothy Weigand ’25, Lydia Lu ’26, Margo Ganton ’25, Jiyu Kwon ’26, and Yimeng Zhao ’26, were selected as finalists to exhibit their works of Chinese calligraphy in the National Chinese Expo of Student Works. This annual event, organized by the American Academy of International Culture and Education (AAICE), aims to promote cultural understanding between the peoples of China and the United States and to help students become cultural ambassadors. The theme of this year’s expo was “The Joy of Chinese Language and Culture Learning.” The Bard College team was honored with a trophy, and professor Huiwen Li received a certificate of appreciation for their participation in the final exhibition.
“The Enlightenment philosopher Baruch Spinoza almost died for his ideals one day in 1672,” writes Ian Buruma, Paul W. Williams Professor of Human Rights and Journalism, in an opinion piece for the New York Times. In the United States in 2024, “in a time of book-banning, intellectual intolerance, religious bigotry, and populist demagoguery, [Spinoza’s] radical advocacy of freedom still seems fresh and urgent,” Buruma argues.
Ian Buruma for New York Times Opinion: “The 17th-Century Heretic We Could Really Use Now”
“The Enlightenment philosopher Baruch Spinoza almost died for his ideals one day in 1672,” writes Ian Buruma, Paul W. Williams Professor of Human Rights and Journalism, in an opinion piece for the New York Times. Buruma writes that, during Spinoza’s lifetime, his arguments for reason and intellectual liberty “were considered so inflammatory that his authorship had to be disguised.” Now, in the United States in 2024, “in a time of book-banning, intellectual intolerance, religious bigotry, and populist demagoguery, his radical advocacy of freedom still seems fresh and urgent,” Buruma argues.
Despite China’s status as a major world leader, few American students are returning to study abroad in China. Last semester, only about 700 US students were in China, compared to more than 11,000 prior to the pandemic. In opposition to this trend, Bard is expanding its engagement in China.
Malia Du Mont ’95, Bard’s Vice President for Strategy and Policy and the first person to earn a BA in Chinese from Bard, stated, “The US and China will play a major role in determining the future of the planet we share, so it is our responsibility as educators to create opportunities for young people from both countries to learn from each other. In the context of challenging political relations and the rise of artificial intelligence, we must strengthen our commitment to the humanities and nurture many forms of communication, including through music and the arts.”
Underscoring the College’s commitment, President Leon Botstein returned to China in June to spend two weeks in the cities of Xiamen and Ningbo, where he conducted concerts and met with high school and university students and administrators. President Botstein also attended a concert in Ningbo conducted by Oscar-winning composer and Dean of the Bard College Conservatory of Music Tan Dun.
In July, Bard College Conservatory of Music Director Frank Corliss taught for a week at the Shandong University of the Arts (SUA) in Jinan, concluding with a performance by the students and Corliss with members of the faculty and the director of SUA. The director of SUA, GQ Wang, is eager for continued visits by Bard Conservatory faculty and a trip by Graduate Vocal Arts Program Associate Director Kayo Iwama is planned for the coming academic year.
Following the week in Jinan, Frank Corliss traveled to Changsha where he joined Bard Conservatory Dean Tan Dun and four percussion students of the Conservatory (Maddy Dethof, Jonathan Collazo BM/BA ’19, APS ’24, Estaban Ganem MM ’24; Arnav Shirodkar BM/BA ’24) for concerts with Tan Dun and the Changsha Symphony Orchestra. Tan Dun led the students and Frank Corliss in two of his pieces for voice, piano, and percussion ensemble, and in his recent arrangement of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring for two pianos and percussion. The students, with the Changsha Symphony, also gave the premiere of a piece by Tan Dun “Noa Concerto” for four percussionists and orchestra. The students played on specially made replicas of ancient bronze bells recently discovered in Changsha. The week of concerts also included a performance featuring the Bard String Quartet: Bard Director of Asian Recruitment and Institutional Relations Shawn Moore BM/BA ’11, Fangxi Liu BM/BA ’16, Lin Wang BM/BA ’12, and Zhang Hui APS ’17. There was also a panel discussion at the Changsha Symphony on Education and Music with Tan Dun, Frank Corliss, and Changsha Symphony President Wang Zhi.
Bard Baltimore students visit Temple of Heaven in Beijing. Photo by Chelsea Nakabayashi
At a time when language instruction is being cut in many American high schools and institutions of higher education, Chinese language is offered throughout the Bard Early College network. This summer, student cohorts from both Bard High School Early College Baltimore (Bard Baltimore) and Bard High School Early College DC (Bard DC) traveled separately to China. From July 21 to August 5, Bard Baltimore students visited Baltimore's sister city of Xiamen, Maryland’s sister province of Anhui, and China’s capital Beijing as part of the Baltimore-Xiamen Sister City Committee 2024 Youth Ambassadors Program. Their two-week study tour included living and interacting with Chinese peers from local schools in Xiamen, cultural immersion experiences, and meetings with local leaders. They had the opportunity to visit cultural sites including Gulangyu Island (a UNESCO World Heritage site), Lingling Zoo (a local zoo where they saw two twin brother pandas), and Xiamen’s first mangrove-themed ecological coastal wetland park Xiatanwei. Their trip also included travel to the famous Yellow Mountains of Anhui Province and China’s capital Beijing, where they visited the Great Wall, Summer Palace, Temple of Heaven, as well as the US Embassy to attend a panel discussion on the career path of a diplomat.
Bard Baltimore students visit the Great Wall of China. Photo by Chelsea Nakabayashi
Bard DC Chinese language students had the opportunity to visit China this summer too. They spent two weeks at Yunnan Normal University in the city of Kunming, taking language classes and enjoying local food, tea, traditional dance, and other cultural experiences such as a visit to the hot springs. Interacting with local Chinese students was a key part of the program for both the Bard Baltimore and Bard DC student groups.
As part of the Chinese language program at the Bard College main campus, Bard undergraduate students from Annandale also went to China this summer, for an eight-week intensive at Qingdao University, which has hosted Bard’s summer immersion courses for over a decade. In addition to taking language classes, participants studied Kung Fu and painting, lived with a host family for one week, and conducted cultural tours in Beijing, Tai’an, and Qingdao.
Five Bard Language Students Accepted to the National Collegiate Chinese Honor Society
Five Bard Chinese language students have been accepted to the National Collegiate Chinese Honor Society in 2024. Aliya Lindroth ’26, Clemente Esponilla ’26, Noa Doucette ’24, Sushila Sahay ’25, and Timothy Weigand ’25 were recommended for entry by Huiwen Li, visiting assistant professor of Chinese at Bard College and a member of the Chinese Language Teachers Association, USA (CLTA-USA). The National Collegiate Chinese Honor Society was founded to recognize the outstanding academic achievement of college students in learning Chinese as a second language, and aims to encourage continuous learning in the language, literature, and culture. It is sponsored by CLTA-USA, an organization founded in 1962 and dedicated to the study of Chinese language, culture, and pedagogy, which supports the establishment and maintenance of quality Chinese programs, K-16 articulation, teacher education and professional development, and is committed to providing leadership, scholarship, and service to its members and beyond.
Professor Soonyoung Lee Speaks with Forbes about the Growing Interest in Korean Language Study
Forbes magazine reports that the number of students enrolled in Korean language classes at US colleges and universities grew from 8,449 students in 2009 to 20,000 in 2021. The motivating force behind this shift is The Hallyu, or Korean Wave, in which global popularity of South Korean pop culture and entertainment has surged, as evidenced in the appeal of K-Pop music, Korean TV shows like Squid Game, and films like Parasite in America. Soonyoung Lee, visiting assistant professor of Korean literature, language, and culture at Bard College, has noticed the demographic in her Korean film and language classes changing away from a majority of Asian and Asian American students. “The enthusiasm for Korean pop culture has transcended ethnic boundaries, drawing in a diverse cohort of students. They are not just seeking to learn a language; they are immersing themselves in a cultural phenomenon that resonates with them on multiple levels,” said Lee.
Bard College Awarded Funding for a Visiting Assistant Professor Position in Korean Studies
Bard College is pleased to announce that it has received funding from the Korea Foundation to support the hire of Soonyoung Lee as a visiting assistant professor in Korean Studies for the 2023–24 academic year. This hire is the first step toward building a Korean Program at Bard. The hire is part of a broader effort to expand the Asian Studies Program—including the Asian Diasporic Initiative, begun in 2021, and Bard’s first-ever Korea Week in April 2022.
“We are beyond delighted to receive the support of the Korea Foundation to begin offering Korean language and literature courses at Bard for the first time,” said Nathan Shockey, associate professor of Japanese, who worked together with Heeryoon Shin, assistant professor of art history and visual culture, to bring Korean courses to Bard. “This grant gives us the opportunity to meet the long-standing student interest in and demand for Korean Studies, and we are excited to continue growing Korean at Bard as part of our expansion of the Asian Studies program.”
Soonyoung Lee joins Bard from the University of California, Riverside, where she received her PhD in Comparative Literature and Foreign Languages in 2023. Professor Lee’s areas of research and teaching interests include contemporary Korean literature and film, Korean popular culture, East Asian film, Cold War studies, trans-Asian cultural studies, critical race theories, and postcolonial studies. She will teach courses on Korean literature, cultural history, and introductory courses to Korean language, including an online network course with Bard High School Early Colleges and the Open Society University Network (OSUN).
The Korea Foundation is a nonprofit public diplomacy organization established in 1991 to promote awareness and understanding of Korea, and to enhance goodwill and friendships throughout the international community. To date, the Korea Foundation has established 156 professorships in 99 universities across 18 countries.
Ian Buruma for Bloomberg: “Was Trump or Brexit the Bigger Mistake?”
Polling shows the British people and Americans are coalescing around the idea that Brexit and Trump were, respectively, mistakes for each country. When it comes to long-lasting impact, however, in Ian Buruma’s view, it’s no contest which is worse. “While Brexit and the election of Trump caused severe shocks to both Britain and the US, it looks like the damage of Brexit will be worse and last longer,” writes Buruma, Paul W. Williams Professor of Human Rights and Journalism, for Bloomberg. Poor leadership is, in the long run, easier to recover from than a disastrous referendum, he writes, as the latter “cannot be easily undone.” For the United States, “as long as [Trump] does not return for another term in 2024, much of the damage he did can probably be undone.” With Brexit, no matter the change in leadership, “most people in Britain will be worse off and the country will continue to lag behind its neighbors for the foreseeable future.”
Five Bard College Students Win Prestigious Gilman International Scholarships to Study Abroad
Five Bard College students have been awarded highly competitive Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarships by the U.S. Department of State. 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. The recipients of this cycle’s Gilman scholarships are American undergraduate students attending 452 U.S. colleges and represent 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. These Gilman Scholars will study or intern in 81 countries through October 2023.
Written Arts major Havvah Keller ’24, from Montpelier, Vermont, has been awarded a $4,000 Gilman scholarship to study in Valparaíso, Chile, on CEA’s Spanish Language and Latin American Studies program at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, for spring 2023. “Receiving this scholarship means that I will be able to fulfill my dream of studying Spanish in total immersion, living with a local family in an art-filled, exuberant city, and studying Latin American and Chilean poetry and literature, as well as many other subjects such as Latin American history, Indigenous dances and arts of the Mapuche people, and making international friends of all backgrounds. I am eternally grateful to Gilman for helping me plant the seeds which will open many incredible doors for me in my life this spring, and beyond,” said Keller.
Philosophy and German Studies joint major Bella Bergen ’24, from Broomfield, Colorado, has been awarded a $5,000 Gilman-DAAD scholarship to study at Bard College Berlin for spring 2023. “The Gilman Scholarship allows me to pursue studying abroad in Berlin, Germany. I have never left the country despite a deep desire to do so, and the Gilman Scholarship helps me finally accomplish this goal. As a joint major in Philosophy and German Studies, my studies and language proficiency will both benefit greatly from my time in Germany. Ich freue mich auf Berlin,” said Bergen.
Art History and Visual Culture major Elsa Joiner ’24, from Dunwoody, Georgia, has been awarded a $5,000 Gilman-DAAD scholarship to study at Bard College Berlin for spring 2023. “The Gilman scholarship will enable me to study the subject of my dreams, sound art, in the city of my greatest fantasies, Berlin, Germany. With the scholarship, I plan to explore the role of sound in identity formation and develop my skills as a deep listener, eventually returning to America with the strongest ears in the world and, perhaps, the sharpest mind,” said Joiner.
Art History and Visual Culture and Film Studies joint major Sasha Alcocer ’24, from New York, New York, has been awarded a $5,000 Gilman-DAAD scholarship to study at Bard College Berlin for spring 2023. “As a first-generation American, I am incredibly honored and humbled by the support from the Gilman scholarship to pursue this unique opportunity to learn from and connect with like-minded international students and Berlin-based creatives. Having grown up in New York City, I’ve always been interested in artistic communities and cultural history, therefore Berlin could not be a better place to be immersed in for my studies abroad,” said Alcocer.
Asian Studies and GIS joint major Kelany De La Cruz ’24, from Bronx, New York, has been awarded a $5,000 Gilman scholarship, in addition to a $5,000 Fund for Education Abroad (FEA) scholarship and a $5,000 Freeman ASIA scholarship, to study in Taipei, Taiwan, on the CET Taiwan program for spring 2023. “To me these scholarships mean encouragement to follow my academic and professional dreams because I would not have been able to study abroad without them,” said De La Cruz.
Since the program’s establishment in 2001, over 1,350 U.S. institutions have sent more than 36,000 Gilman Scholars of diverse backgrounds to 155 countries around the globe. The program has successfully broadened U.S. participation in study abroad, while emphasizing countries and regions where fewer Americans traditionally study.
As Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said, “People-to-people exchanges bring our world closer together and convey the best of America to the world, especially to its young people.”
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 U.S. 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
Please join us weekly. Stay for as long as you like. Kline, College Room5:00 pm – 6:00 pm EST/GMT-5 Language tables are held at Kline and entail about an hour of casual discussion during meal times, where students interested in a language get to know each other and practice colloquial conversations. They are held by the tutor of the language, and although sometimes professors join the table, it is a very low-stakes and fun setting to immerse yourself in a language, its culture and the foreign language community at Bard.
5:00 pm – 6:00 pm EST/GMT-5 Kline, College Room
11/26
Tuesday
Tuesday, November 26, 2024
Chinese Table
Please join us weekly. Stay for as long as you like. Kline, College Room6:00 pm – 7:00 pm EST/GMT-5 Language tables are held at Kline and entail about an hour of casual discussion during meal times, where students interested in a language get to know each other and practice colloquial conversations. They are held by the tutor of the language, and although sometimes professors join the table, it is a very low-stakes and fun setting to immerse yourself in a language, its culture and the foreign language community at Bard.
Olin Language Center, Room 21010:00 am – 11:00 am EST/GMT-5 Tutoring session for those who are studying Japanese language at the 300 level.
Friday, December 15, 2023
Olin Language Center, Room 21010:00 am – 11:00 am EST/GMT-5 Tutoring session for those who are studying Japanese language at the 300 level.
Friday, December 8, 2023
Olin Language Center, Room 21010:00 am – 11:00 am EST/GMT-5 Tutoring session for those who are studying Japanese language at the 300 level.
Friday, December 1, 2023
Olin Language Center, Room 21010:00 am – 11:00 am EST/GMT-5 Tutoring session for those who are studying Japanese language at the 300 level.
Friday, November 24, 2023
Olin Language Center, Room 21010:00 am – 11:00 am EST/GMT-5 Tutoring session for those who are studying Japanese language at the 300 level.
Friday, November 17, 2023
Olin Language Center, Room 21010:00 am – 11:00 am EST/GMT-5 Tutoring session for those who are studying Japanese language at the 300 level.
Friday, November 10, 2023
Olin Language Center, Room 21010:00 am – 11:00 am EST/GMT-5 Tutoring session for those who are studying Japanese language at the 300 level.
Friday, November 3, 2023
Olin Language Center, Room 21010:00 am – 11:00 am EDT/GMT-4 Tutoring session for those who are studying Japanese language at the 300 level.
Friday, October 27, 2023
Olin Language Center, Room 21010:00 am – 11:00 am EDT/GMT-4 Tutoring session for those who are studying Japanese language at the 300 level.
Thursday, October 26, 2023
Sylvia Houghteling, Associate Professor, Department of History of Art, Bryn Mawr College
Campus Center, Weis Cinema6:00 pm – 7:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 This interdisciplinary talk brings together poetry, crafted textiles, and their representations in painting, to examine how vivid but quickly-fading dyestuffs manifested both the intensity of emotions but also the liberation of seasonal change in eighteenth-century South Asia. Documents from the period, including a rare dye recipe book, records of the agricultural production of dyestuffs, and account books from a royal dyeing workshop, suggest the widespread use and importance of certain labile, unfixed dyes – safflower, turmeric, and saffron –during weddings and festivals, particularly the springtime celebrations of Holi and the summer onset of the monsoon. While the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries coincided with the increasing European mercantile encroachment into the trade in South Asian cloth, the objects and dye materials I will discuss evaded European economic control. This more localized, historical examination traces how the particular ecology and unique dye materials of a region helped shape the seasonal landscape of eighteenth-century South Asia.
Sylvia Houghteling specializes in early modern visual and material culture with a focus on the history of textiles, South Asian art and architecture, and the material legacies and ruptures of European colonialism. Her first book, The Art of Cloth in Mughal India (Princeton University Press, 2022), which won the 2023 Charles Rufus Morey Book Award from the College Art Association, examined the textiles crafted and collected across the Mughal Empire in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, showing how woven objects helped to shape the social, political, religious, and aesthetic life of early modern South Asia. Houghteling’s ongoing research is concerned with questions of temporality and the unique material histories of the Indian Ocean trade.
Wednesday, May 3, 2023
Ketaki Pant '06, Assistant Professor of History, University of Southern California Hegeman 1063:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 Despite their centrality to Mauritius’s plantation economy, merchants from Gujarat (western India) remain in the shadows of histories of slavery and indentured labor migration on the island. This talk takes stock of these erased histories by retelling the story of one plantation, Bel Ombre, which was variously owned by French planters and Gujarati merchants in the nineteenth century. Moving between the space of Bel Ombre today, records in the Mauritius National Archives, and old ports in Gujarat, I analyze the archival processes through which Gujarati mercantile intimacies were recorded and obscured. I argue that the archival segregation of records about plantation property ownership and indentured labor was central to the erasure of Gujarati merchants from histories of racial capitalism on the island. I show that the colonial state enacted gendered violence on indentured women whose sexuality was policed and pathologized while Gujarati merchants were able to marry across racial lines through sanctioned property and marriage arrangements. These silences were amplified by Indian anticolonial nationalists who arrived on Mauritius in the twentieth century to take up the cause of Indian indentured workers but who, ironically, papered over racial capitalism in favor of a pan-Indian identity. In old ports in Gujarat, merchant families built and maintained houses (havelis) which were scrubbed clean of these messy intimacies across the ocean. Reaching across the ocean from Gujarat to Mauritius and back, this talk suggests that these are haunted houses and histories.
Ketaki Pant is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Southern California. Her research focuses on South Asia and the Indian Ocean arena from the late eighteenth century to the present day. Her current projects examine interlinked histories of racial capitalism, gendered belonging, minoritization, and displacement centered on Gujarat. Recent publications include an article in South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies and a chapter in the Routledge Handbook of Asian Transnationalism.
Wednesday, March 29, 2023
Dr. Noriko Kanahara '04, Waseda University-Tokyo Olin 1025:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 This talk explores how in the 1920s through the early 1940s, Japanese state officials determined whether or not to accept Turkic Muslim refugees from the former Russian Empire. Though at most 1000 in number, the refugees left a significant impact not only on how Japanese state officials understood Islam and the power of Muslim networks in global politics, but also on how these officials formed national consciousness in contradistinction to them. Analysis of the journals of the Japanese intelligence police reveals that although the police considered the refugees' religion as an important marker, the refugees’ political interests were most significant in determining whether or not to accept them in Japan. This talk demonstrates that religion and ideology, particularly Islam and Communism, impacted how the refugees established transnational relationships and how Japanese state officials demarcated the nation during the interwar and wartime periods following the Russian Revolution and throughout the Second World War. More specifically, religious and ideological ties—precisely because they were considered powerful tools of transnational mobilization—served as grounds for the Japanese state’s ambivalent reception of refugees.
Bio: Noriko Kanahara graduated from Bard College in 2004 with a BA in Anthropology. She has a PhD in History from the University of Chicago, an M.Phil. in Migration Studies from Oxford University, and an MA in Area Studies from Tokyo University. She has held postdoctoral research fellowships at Tohoku University and Waseda University in Japan. She is currently a research fellow at the Ryusaku Tsunoda Center of Japanese Culture at Waseda University.
This event has received generous support from the Anthropology, Asian Studies, and Global & International Studies programs.
