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Bard College Broadens Summer Engagement in China

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.
 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 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.

Post Date: 08-13-2024

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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.

Post Date: 02-20-2024

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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.

Post Date: 02-02-2024

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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.

Post Date: 12-12-2023

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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.

Post Date: 08-23-2023

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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.”

Post Date: 12-20-2022