Newsmakers

After the Writers Guild of America voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike, Adam Conover ’04 spoke with Alison Stewart on WNYC’s All of It about what comes next and what is at stake for writers in the current set of negotiations. One of the primary reasons for the strike authorization vote, Conover said, was the discrepancy in residuals between work produced for traditional television and work produced for streaming. Contrary to traditional screenwriting, where writers are paid each time a work is rerun or rescreened, streaming media pays a flat rate to writers, which has “made it almost impossible for writers to put a career together and afford to live and work in Los Angeles or New York, where most of us have to live in order to do our work,” Conover said. Asked about potential lessons from the 2007 writers’ strike, Conover said, “The biggest lesson is when you fight, you win. [...] If we hadn't gone on strike that year, no streaming show would be a union show.”

In an opinion piece for the Guardian, Bard Written Arts alumna and journalist Moira Donegan ’12 cautions that we should not be fooled by the highest court’s decision to allow the abortion drug mifepristone to remain available—temporarily staying a Texas federal judge’s ruling to reverse the drug’s FDA approval and pull it from US markets—while the case goes through an appeals process. Donegan deduces “sharp intra-Republican disagreement over how to handle the unexpectedly virulent political fallout from the Dobbs decision” among the right-wing Supreme Court justices who jointly ruled to overturn abortion access as a federal right. She asserts the ideologues want to “hit the gas” while the institutionalists want to “pump the brakes,” but that doesn’t change where they are all headed. “Do not let the mifepristone ruling fool you about where this extremist court is going,” she writes. 

While the nation waited for the Supreme Court to issue its order on mifepristone, the past week served as a stark realization of “just how far the Overton window has shifted, and just how low the standards for women’s health and freedom have sunk, in the months since Dobbs.” She notes that “developments that could only have been fairly understood as grave insults to women’s dignity were instead pitched as mercies or signs of moderation.”

Dale Beran ’04, Bard alumnus and lecturer at Morgan State University, appeared for an interview on CNN, where he spoke about the online radicalization of young men and discussed how certain online communities form, such as the spaces on Discord and other platforms where highly classified US documents were first leaked by Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old air national guardsman. “The larger set of Discords that these leaks appeared in, and finally 4chan, all sort of share a culture of dropped-out, idle young men,” says Beran. “So you have a lot of young men radicalizing, or being more extreme than they would because they’re spending all their time dropped-out, online… They end up getting a very distorted picture of reality.” Beran, author of It Came from Something Awful: How a Toxic Troll Army Accidentally Memed Donald Trump into Office, is a writer and artist whose work has been published in McSweeney’s, Quartz, the Huffington Post, the Daily Dot, the Nib, and the Baltimore City Paper.

The latest issue of the Bardian informs the Bard community of news from the College and Bard alumni/ae. The Spring 2023 Bardian features articles by alumni/ae and faculty, class notes, alumni/ae profiles, obituaries, and the honor roll of donors. 

Top Stories 
Maya Lin—Dancing about Architecture
Sonita Alizada '23
Gilman Winners Go Far
Mneesha Gellman '03
A Place to Rethink
Trustee Leader Scholar Program at 25

If you would like to receive the Bardian, please email [email protected]. If you have an idea for an article please let us know. We hope you enjoy your college magazine.

On Sunday, April 30, the film Miúcha, The Voice of Bossa Nova will have its first public premiere at Bard College. Produced by alumnus Mostafiz ShahMohammed ’97, the film will be screened in Bard’s Jim Ottaway Jr. Film Center at 4 pm, with a reception to follow until 6:30 pm. The event is cosponsored by the Office of the President, the Latin American Students Organization, and the Office of Alumni/ae Affairs. This event is free and open to the public with limited space. RSVP to reserve: https://bardian.bard.edu/register/miucha-premiere. 
 
This groundbreaking documentary, which received global recognition at Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), and Rio Film Festival, explores the illustrious life of Brazilian singer Heloísa Maria Buarque de Hollanda, known by her artistic name Miúcha, and captures the story of her unique talent. 

Miúcha was often overshadowed by the male musicians in her life: she was the mother of Grammy-nominated musician Bebel Gilberto, former spouse of João Gilberto—known as the father of bossa nova—and sister of the legendary Chico Buarque. Miúcha, The Voice of Bossa Nova serves as a much-needed correction to this perspective, highlighting her life and her extraordinary contributions to the bossa nova musical genre. “Miúcha’s vibrant spirit couldn’t be held back, even as she struggled to find her own voice in a man’s world,” said Marta Sanchez, the film’s producer, CEO of FILMZ LLC, and executive director of Pragda, a leading distributor for the newest Latin American, Spanish, and Latinx cinema. “She earned unprecedented success, becoming a symbol of female resilience and a musical legend forever.”

With a stunning display of never-seen-before archival footage, photos, animation, and audio recordings, the film is an intimate exploration of the artist’s life and career as she embraced her talent as a performer and songwriter and emerged as the true voice of bossa nova.

“It is a rare and exciting opportunity to make a film with such a strong connection to Bard,” said ShahMohammed. Produced, directed, and edited by Bardians, including recent alumni/ae Hakima Alem ’21, Emanuel Castro ’22, Stela Gatti ’21, and Julie Reed ’22, the documentary is an important step towards reviving Miúcha’s musical legacy and introducing a new audience to her original work. “Building on Bard’s exceptional focus on critical thinking and creativity, we want this film to inspire the next generation of artists and activists to become the voices of change, addressing the most pressing issues of equity.”
 

New York capital region’s public media network WMHT recently featured the Bard Prison Initiative (BPI) in its new video series, Work in Progress, which shares stories of people navigating a rapidly changing economy and how they respond to the evolving needs and conditions of work. This episode, “How College in Prison is Changing Lives,” explores the transformative power of education in prison programs. BPI Upstate Reentry Coordinator Shawn Young ’19, Director of Special Projects at the Center for Community Alternatives in Brooklyn Tammar Cancer ’17, BPI Director of Reentry Jed B. Tucker, and BPI alumnus Gordon Davis ’13 are interviewed about the impact BPI’s work has had on them personally as well as the long-term outcomes of receiving a liberal arts education in prison. 

Fashion designer and Bard alumnus Brandon Blackwood ’13 was one of 10 new members inducted into the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) this year. Thom Browne, chairman of the CFDA, said, “Our newest members represent everything America has to offer . . . diversity . . . creativity . . . and true individual talent.” Blackwood's eponymous accessories brand first made its mark in the fashion world with a tote embellished with the words: “End Systemic Racism.” Now, Blackwood’s fashion label has expanded to include statement shoes, outerwear, and soon swimwear. 

In a recent designer profile published in Harper’s Bazaar, Blackwood says, “These last two years for me have been really about finding the brand’s aesthetic and really beginning to mold itself. We built the foundation in the last few years, but—I know it sounds corny—we’re trying to really find our voice.”

Tschabalala Self ’12, visiting artist in residence in Studio Arts, is the subject of her first solo European museum exhibition Tschabalala Self: Inside Out, on view at Kunstmuseum St. Gallen in Switzerland through June 18. Curated by Gianni Jetzer, the show centers the Black body, especially the female Black body, through the conceptual and compositional lens of the artist in what Self has termed as a “pantheon of invented characters.” Featuring the show in its weekly spotlight, Artnet News writes: “Though clearly deeply rooted in the tradition of painting, the compound of materials and techniques within Self’s two-dimensional compositions defy easy categorization . . . The figures are singular and specific, yet they are far from traditional portraiture.”

The London run of Bard Fisher Center’s reorchestrated revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! has won two 2023 Olivier Awards. Director Daniel Fish’s Tony Award–winning production of Oklahoma!, which premiered at Bard SummerScape in 2015, won the Olivier Award for Best Musical Revival, and Arthur Darvill won Best Actor in a Musical for his leading role as Curly McLain. Considered the United Kingdom’s most prestigious stage honors, the Laurence Olivier Awards are presented annually by the Society of London Theatre to recognize excellence in professional theater in London. This year’s award ceremony and celebration took place on April 2 at London’s Royal Albert Hall. 

The widely acclaimed production of Oklahoma!, directed by Daniel Fish, originated as a Bard College undergraduate Theater Program production in 2007. The Fisher Center produced it professionally in SummerScape 2015, and it subsequently transferred to St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn and on to Broadway, where it won a Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical in 2019. In 2022, the production moved to the Young Vic in London and is currently playing in London’s West End at the Wyndham’s Theatre. Patrick Vaill ’07 reprises his role as Jud Fry—which he played in Bard’s initial student performance and in the SummerScape, off-Broadway, and Broadway productions—in the London staging.

For further reading:
In the Smithsonian Magazine’s recent article, “Behind ‘Oklahoma!’ Lies the Remarkable Story of a Gay Cherokee Playwright,” Patrick Vaill ’07 discusses the complexity and vulnerability of the character Jud Fry, a role he has played on and off for the past 16 years.