Catalogue

 

Structure of the First Year

All first-year students participate in a common curriculum—the Language and Thinking Program (L&T), First-Year Seminar (FYSEM), Citizen Science—and take elective courses.

The Language and Thinking Program: L&T is attended by all first-year Bard students during the last three weeks of August. Students read extensively, work on a variety of writing and other projects, and meet throughout the day in small groups and in one-on-one conferences with faculty. The work aims to cultivate habits of thoughtful reading and discussion, clear articulation, accurate self-critique, and productive collaboration. Students who do not complete the program satisfactorily are asked to take one year’s academic leave.

First-Year Seminar—The Commons: After much pandemic-induced social isolation and as pressing global and national challenges, from climate change to racial justice, demand collective action, we are confronted anew by the perennial problem of how to live together—how to build a life in common and in harmony with the natural and built world in which we live. This incarnation of First-Year Seminar takes up these questions through an exploration of “the Commons.” Students read important works from across history—drawn from literature, philosophy, political theory, science, and the arts—that have shaped how people think about the commons across time and space. The course thinks through what this shared repository of knowledge and thought can offer to our own lives and our own time. In the process, students develop the core skills needed to succeed at Bard, from how to engage in active, critical reading and conversation, to how to write strong and thought-provoking essays. In the fall semester, the focus is on the commons as a way of organizing society and political life, with readings that include the Therigatha (the first poetry of early Buddhist nuns), Euripides’s Bacchae, the Gospel of Matthew, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’s Communist Manifesto, Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, and John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government. The spring semester addresses the commons as a mode of human relation to the natural world, science, and the built environment, with readings that include Genesis, Chiri Yukie’s translations of Ainu folklore, Ibn Tufayl’s Hayy ibn Yaqzan, Plato’s Meno, Max Weber’s “Science as a Vocation,” Margaret Cavendish’s This Blazing World, Jane Jacob’s The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, and James Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son. 

Citizen Science: The Citizen Science program provides students with opportunities to develop their personal science literacy through hands-on, real-world coursework and projects. Questions asked include: What does it mean to be scientifically literate? What is the role of citizens when it comes to weighing in on important scientific issues? How can citizens find the scientific information they need to meet the challenges they face in their lives and respond to the scientific issues of their day? What are the skills needed to interpret scientific claims, and how can we be sure that the conduct, analysis, and interpretation of science are not unduly influenced by political or other potentially distorting factors.

Inspired by stories from places like Flint, Michigan, and Newburgh, New York, Citizen Science tackles urgent questions related to water. Students explore the properties of water, as well as how these properties influence the contamination (and decontamination) of drinking water. They also consider the extent to which problems of contamination are not purely scientific in nature, investigating social, historical, and political factors at work even when we think we are engaged in “objective” science. Students participate in Citizen Science during January intersession of their first year. Successful completion of the program is a requirement for graduation.

First-Year Advising:  All students are assigned an academic adviser, with whom they meet at strategic points during each semester. The advising system is intended to help students begin the process of selecting a program in which to major, meet the requirements of that program, prepare for professional study or other activities outside of or after college, and satisfy other interests.

First-Year Electives: Elective courses allow students to explore fields in which they are interested and experiment with unfamiliar areas of study. Students select three electives in each semester of the first year (the fourth course is First-Year Seminar).
 

Program and Concentration Approach to Study

 

Moderation

Moderation is undertaken in the second semester of the sophomore year. Through this process students make the transition from the Lower College to the Upper College and establish their major in a program. (Transfer students entering with the equivalent of two full years of credit are expected to moderate during the first semester of residence, and in no case later than the second.) Students prepare two Moderation papers, the first assessing their curriculum, performance, and experience in the first two years, and the second identifying their goals and proposed study plan for the final two years. All students also submit a sample of work they have done in the program—for example, a long paper written for a course. The work is reviewed by a board of three faculty members, who evaluate the student’s past performance, commitment, and preparedness in the field; make suggestions for the transition from the Lower to the Upper College; and approve, deny, or defer promotion of the student to the Upper College.  
 

Distribution Requirements

The distribution requirements at Bard are a formal statement of the College’s desire to achieve an equilibrium between breadth and depth, between communication across disciplinary boundaries and rigor within a mode of thought. In order to introduce the student to a variety of intellectual and artistic experiences and to foster encounters with faculty members trained in a broad range of disciplines, each student is required to take one course in each of the 10 categories listed below. Difference and Justice is the only category that can pair with another distribution requirement, making it possible for the 10 requirements to be fulfilled by completing nine courses. For example, some courses fulfill both the Historical Analysis and Difference and Justice requirements. So too, students have the option of fulfilling two distribution requirements with one Common Course. High school Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses may not be used to satisfy the requirements. Non-native speakers of English are exempted from the Foreign Languages and Literatures requirement.

• Practicing Arts (PA): The Practicing Arts requirement emphasizes making or performing as an educational process. Courses develop students’ creative and imaginative faculties by focusing on a set of artistic skills or working methods. Fields of study include dance, theater, music performance and composition, film production, creative writing, and the visual arts. Students learn through experiential practices in order to cultivate the self as a primary agent of expression, cultural reflection, and creativity.
• Analysis of Art (AA): The Analysis of Art requirement teaches students to interpret both the form and content of creative works, including visual and performing arts. The requirement further aims to help students understand how works of visual art, music, film, theater, and dance shape, or are shaped by, social, political, and historical circumstances and contexts.
• Meaning, Being, and Value (MBV): This distribution area addresses how humans conceptualize the nature of knowledge and belief, construct systems of value, and interpret the nature of what is real. Such courses may also focus on questions pertaining to the human moral condition, human society and culture, and humanity’s place in the cosmos, or on the ways in which civilizations have dealt with those questions. All MBV courses pay special attention to analysis and interpretation of texts and practices, and seek to cultivate skills of argument development and the open-minded consideration of counterargument.
• Historical Analysis (HA): course focused on analysis of change over time in society or the distinctiveness of a past era, using written or physical evidence. The course should alert students to the differences and similarities between contemporary experience and past modes of life, and suggest that present categories of experience are shaped historically and can be analyzed by imaginatively investigating past institutions, texts, and worldviews.
• Social Analysis (SA): Courses in this area approach the study of people and society at a variety of levels of analysis ranging from the individual to large social institutions and structures. Consideration is given to how people relate to and are shaped by social structures, divisions, and groups, such as politics, economics, family, and culture, as well as their past experiences and immediate situations. The goal of this requirement is to understand one’s own or others’ place within a wider social world, and thus these courses are central to discussions about citizenship, ethics, and the possibilities and limits of social change. 
• Laboratory Science (LS): In courses satisfying the LS requirement, students actively participate in data collection and analysis using technology and methodology appropriate to the particular field of study. Students develop analytical, modeling, and quantitative skills in the process of comparing theory and data, as well as an understanding of statistical and other uncertainties in the process of constructing and interpreting scientific evidence.
• Mathematics and Computing (MC): Courses satisfying this requirement challenge students to model and reason about the world logically and quantitatively, explicitly grappling with ambiguity and precision. Students learn and practice discipline-specific techniques and, in doing so, represent and communicate ideas through mathematical arguments, computer programs, or data analysis.
• Foreign Languages and Literatures (FL): The study of another language involves not just the process of internalizing new linguistic forms but also paying attention to the various cultural manifestations of that language. The goal of this requirement is to gain a critical appreciation of non-Anglophone languages and to question the assumption of an underlying uniformity across cultures and literary traditions. To satisfy this requirement, students may take any course in a foreign language (including American Sign Language), in a foreign literature, or in the theory and practice of translation.
• Literary Analysis in English (LA): What distinguishes poetry, fiction, or drama from other kinds of discourse? These courses investigate the relationship between form and content, inviting students to explore not only the “what” or “why” of literary representation but also the “how.” The goal is to engage critically the multiple ways in which language shapes thought and makes meaning by considering the cultural, historical, and formal dimensions of literary texts.
• Difference and Justice (DJ): Courses fulfilling this requirement have a primary focus on the study of difference in the context of larger social dynamics such as globalization, nationalism 26 Learning at Bard and social justice. They address differences that may include but are not limited to ability/disability, age, body size, citizenship status, class, color, ethnicity, gender, gender expression, geography, nationality, political affiliation, religion, race, sexual orientation, or socioeconomic background, and engage critically with issues of difference, diversity, inequality, and inclusivity.

Senior Project

The Senior Project is an original, individual, focused project growing out of the student’s cumulative academic experiences. Students have great flexibility in choosing the form of their project. For example, a social studies project might be a research project, close textual analysis, report of findings from fieldwork, or photographic essay, while a science project might be a report on original experiments, an analysis of published research findings, or a contribution to theory. Preparation for the Senior Project begins in the junior year. Students consult with advisers and pursue coursework, tutorials, and seminars directed toward selecting a topic, choosing the form of the project, and becoming competent in the analytical and research methods required by the topic and form. Students in some programs design a Major Conference during their junior year, which may take the form of a seminar, tutorial, studio work, or field or laboratory work. One course each semester of the student’s final year is devoted to completing the Senior Project. The student submits the completed project to a board of three professors, who conduct a Senior Project review.  Written projects are filed in the library’s archives; select papers are available online at digitalcommons.bard.edu.
 

Academic Courses

Undergraduate courses are described in this catalogue under the four divisional headings and the interdivisional programs and concentrations heading. Courses that are required by, recommended for, or related to another program are cross-listed in the course descriptions. For example, Literature 279, Japanese Folklore, is cross-listed as a course in Asian Studies. Courses numbered 100 through 199 are primarily, though not exclusively, for first-year students; 200-level courses are primarily for Lower College students; and 300- and 400-level courses are designed for Upper College students. Every semester, approximately 675 courses are offered as seminars, studio courses, tutorials, Senior Projects, and independent studies. The average class size is 15 in the Lower College and 11 in the Upper College.

Most courses in the Lower College meet twice weekly for 80 minutes each session, although instructors may vary the length and frequency of meetings according to their estimation of a class’s needs. Many seminars in the Upper College meet once a week for two hours and 20 minutes. Laboratory courses usually meet three times a week (two seminars or lectures and a laboratory session). Introductory language courses customarily have four one-hour sessions each week, intensive language courses have five two-hour sessions, and immersion language courses have five three-hour sessions each week. Most tutorials meet once a week for one hour.

All courses carry 4 credits unless otherwise noted. There are several 2-credit seminars and intensive language courses carry 8 credits. Common Courses (see page 267) give students the opportunity to fulfill two distribution requirements with one 4-credit class. A normal course load is 16 credits each semester. To register for more than 18 credits, a student must be certified by the registrar’s office as having had a 3.6 average or higher in the preceding semester and cumulatively. Exceptions must be approved by the dean of studies.
 

Attendance Policy

Attendance at all scheduled classes is expected. Each member of the faculty is free to set individual policies in the course syllabus, including expectations and requirements about attendance, participation, and any required extra classes or events. Bard College does not regularly offer distance education or online classes.