Newsmakers

Cartoonist, graphic memoirist, and Simon's Rock alumna Alison Bechdel has been named a 2014 MacArthur fellow. The prestigious award carries a $625,000 stipend over five years.

Bard alumnus Lindsay Hill's first novel, Sea of Hooks, has won the PEN Center's top prize for fiction. Hill will give a reading of his work at Bard on September 22.

On Monday, September 22, author Lindsay Hill ’75, will read from his novel, Sea of Hooks, winner of the 2014 PEN Center USA Fiction Award, finalist for the Chautauqua Prize, and named one of the top 10 books of the year by Publisher’s Weekly and New York magazine. Kirkus Reviews calls Sea of Hooks “a remarkable and multifaceted novel—philosophical, poignant and puzzling,” while Publisher’s Weekly writes that “nearly every paragraph astonishes, every moment rich with magic and daring.”

LGBT family activist Gabriel Blau ’02 has put children's voices front and center in his dedicated advocacy for equal rights.

The Daily Freeman offers a collection of Bard College images from its archives. The photos are from the 1980s and 1990s, and include campus scenes and commencement shots.

Works by Israeli artist and Bard graduate Orit Raff MFA '03 "transcend national identities, challenge assumptions and transport viewers." 

As hobbyists and companies take to the sky with drones, Arthur Holland Michel writes that we need a more intelligent debate about how to regulate unmanned aircraft.

"There is no poetry without a politics," says Bard alumnus Andrew Durbin '12 in this interview about poetry, surveillance, and the Internet.

Conductor Marcelo Lehninger '07 led the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood last week, under less hectic circumstances than he did the first time, when James Levine resigned in 2011.

Bard College photography major turned couture model Louise Parker provides a unique look at quiet scenes backstage with her fellow models.

As seniors, Arthur Holland Michel ’13 and Dan Gettinger ’13 created the Center for the Study of the Drone, an interdisciplinary research and arts project based at Bard. Now the center is becoming a leader in the national conversation about the social, economic, ethical, and political implications of drone use.

Though Hamas's new drone program may not have an immediate impact on the conflict with Israel, drones could play a bigger role should Israel send ground troops into Gaza, according to Gettinger.

In the Bardian

By Dan Gettinger ’13 and Arthur Holland Michel ’13

As seniors, Arthur Holland Michel ’13 and Dan Gettinger ’13 created the Center for the Study of the Drone, an interdisciplinary research and arts project based at Bard. The idea was to bring together academics from a variety of disciplines to discuss, study, and learn about unmanned and autonomous systems technology and its implications for warfare, law enforcement, and other civilian applications. Their project has evolved to include seminars, lectures, debates, roundtable discussions at Bard and in New York City, a blog, and a weekly news roundup that Thomas Keenan, associate professor of comparative literature and director of Bard’s Human Rights Project, calls “one of the most authoritative sources anywhere for news about drones of all sorts.”

Gettinger’s interest in drones began in his sophomore year, when he took a seminar taught by Walter Russell Mead, James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and the Humanities. Gettinger was intrigued by Thucydides’s account of the Peloponnesian War and how choices in weapons platforms affected the strategies of the ancient city-states. His Senior Project explored drones and the changing nature of modern warfare. Holland Michel, a double major in historical studies and written arts, broached the idea of a center for studying drones to Gettinger. In fall 2012, the two assembled a faculty team and helped design a course on drones that met with overwhelming student response, and the center took flight.

At the time we first talked about creating the Center for the Study of the Drone, U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen were peaking. Al Jazeera and the New York Times were regularly running stories about these operations, which the CIA was refusing to acknowledge. Drones hadn’t become a media sensation yet, but a public debate on the issue had begun. Advocates claimed that drones were more precise, surgical, and humane than the alternatives, while human rights activists decried the loss of civilian life, the psychological trauma of living under drones, and the threat that drones pose to privacy. The debate seemed inarticulate, misinformed, and immobilized by its own narrowness. This, we soon figured out, was no accident. Nobody really understood the drone—nobody really even knew what a drone was.

Defining the word “drone” is an exceedingly complex challenge. In the public imagination, a drone is a weaponized, unmanned aircraft that watches, and engages, members of extremist organizations in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, and the Horn of Africa. But from a technological perspective, this definition is too narrow. An unmanned submarine is technically a drone, too. One of our goals was to help broaden the public definition of drones to include all kinds of unmanned vehicles, be they airborne, land borne, or aquatic. As we understand it, a drone is a machine that uses sensors to collect information about its environment, and then uses actuators to either manipulate its own location and orientation in that environment or manipulate the environment itself. Some drones require a human controller to be in the loop; others can respond to their environment autonomously, according to their programming. All drones, no matter their shape or size, are irresistible, fascinating, uncanny, and somewhat terrifying; we want to find out why, and how, the combination of appeal and fear influences the public conversation. This is becoming increasingly important, as drones are not just for foreign operations anymore.

In 2015, the Federal Aviation Administration plans to create licensing procedures and air traffic rules for unmanned aerial vehicles in United States airspace. Unmanned technology is set to become an enormous industry, with some insider optimists predicting that the sector could be worth up to $400 billion in the next few years. More realistic estimates range between $13 billion and $85 billion. Whatever the dollar figure, demand for drones is expected to be extremely high. A farmer who previously operated a $3 million helicopter to survey his crops for $6,000 an hour will be able to run a $20,000 multirotor drone for a few hundred dollars per day (agriculture is expected to account for 80 percent of domestic acquisitions). Police departments will turn to unmanned aerial vehicles as a cheap and effective alternative to manned helicopters. NASA and NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) already fly military hand-me-down drones to survey animal migratory patterns and weather changes. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection bureau maintains a fleet of drones, which it lends to police departments, the FBI, and U.S. Department of Justice agencies.

The unmanned vehicle industry is growing despite the fact that the use of drones by law enforcement agencies is controversial. In this era of pervasive surveillance, the idea of government agencies acquiring yet another highly capable surveillance platform to monitor the domestic population is unpopular. Fears of an era of unbounded aerial surveillance have prompted state and local legislatures across the nation to pass bills that curtail aerial surveillance by both private citizens and government organizations. But drone technology, like the Internet, has developed far more quickly than the policies that are meant to regulate it. Driven by the promise of high profits, the industry is developing ever more sophisticated drones, from solar-powered drones that can remain airborne for up to five years to drones the size of insects. Each new drone is accompanied by a set of new ethical questions and policy challenges.

When Amazon announced in December that the company was developing a system for drones to deliver packages under five pounds to Amazon customers in 30 minutes, the prospect of large-scale domestic drone use departed from the realm of hobbyists and futurists and entered mainstream society. By putting its weight behind the controversial idea of domestic drones, Amazon thrust the drone debate into high gear, and highlighted the need for an informed policy response. Crucially, the Amazon announcement put pressure on the FAA to develop a domestic drone integration plan—an extremely complex task. The announcement mattered because it will require society to develop a framework for understanding the implications of unmanned technology beyond the current limited scope of the drone debate. What remains to be seen is whether Amazon’s drone delivery system will actually work in time for the prospective 2015 launch date. Critics note a long list of safety concerns. For example, many believe that Amazon drones can’t possibly work in crowded urban environments. Nevertheless, Amazon’s backing could help the technology and regulatory communities resolve lingering safety and privacy concerns. The question seems to be “when will this happen?”
rather than “will this ever happen?”

This past fall, Keith O’Hara, assistant professor of computer science, taught (De-)Coding the Drone. The four-credit class, which we designed with Professor O’Hara, combines hands-on training in unmanned systems programming with a humanities-based reading list and guest speakers from philosophy, the arts, history, and political science. The fall also saw a formal debate on drones (“Resolved: Drones Do More Good Than Harm”) with Bard students, cadets from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and faculty from both institutions.

In a bid to help the public organize the mass of information and media buzz surrounding this subject, we created the Weekly Roundup, a short, accessible list of the latest news, analysis, commentary, art, and tech from the drone world. Each week, the roundup goes out to an expanding community of interested citizens, researchers, pilots, artists, journalists, and writers. The blog features news analysis, portfolios, and interviews, while the website is a platform for historical, cultural, and aesthetic perspectives on current events. The interviews on the website attempt to bring unheard voices into the conversation about drones. In late fall, for example, we interviewed Natalie Jeremijenko, an artist and engineer who uses unmanned technology to create environmental solutions, and is considered a leading voice on the intersection of art, environmentalism, and technology. In 1997 she created the first-ever piece of “drone art,” flying a small, camera-equipped drone over large tech campuses in Silicon Valley.

The center’s efforts have been praised by a number of influential people and organizations. When Dan wrote about how the German Pirate Party (a socially liberal party favoring Internet freedom and political transparency, among other issues) flew a drone toward German Chancellor Angela Merkel at a campaign rally, the story was distributed widely among the Pirate Party and its supporters. Our work has been quoted by Bloomberg News, and featured in Slate, USA Today, Wired, Artforum, and elsewhere. In January and February, we cosponsored two panel discussions at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. We are also providing research for the filmmaker Carl Colby’s forthcoming feature documentary on domestic weaponized drone use.

Initiatives to expand the center’s programs include concepts for tech literacy programs at Bard’s partner institutions, including the Bard High School Early Colleges, and development of an online archive for research about drones. We are confident that, through this collective enterprise, the public will be better equipped to face the social, economic, ethical, and political challenges that lie ahead.

Read the spring 2014 issue of the Bardian:

Bard alumna Gia Coppola '09 talks about making her first film, working with actor and author James Franco, and how professor Stephen Shore helped her get started.

In the Bardian

By William Stavru '87

During the past year, Gia Coppola ’09, somewhat reluctantly, has become a regular on the film festival circuit, with her feature film directorial and writing debut, Palo Alto, being screened—and lauded—at such prestigious venues as the Telluride, Venice, Toronto, and Tribeca film festivals. Coppola says, “Film festivals are scary to me, but if the cast and crew are with me, then they can be fun. We’re able to celebrate the work.” Based on the eponymous collection of stories by James Franco (Scribner’s, 2010), who also stars in the film, Palo Alto details the troubled lives of a group of high school students in Palo Alto, California, exploring the teenagers’ characters and how their exploits and relationships become searches for meaning.

Coppola, who admits that her own high school years were neither fun nor productive, says she felt a kinship to the characters and was drawn to the dialogue and sense of teen malaise conveyed in the book. “In 2010, I met James Franco and we started talking about photography and about his book. I read it and thought the language and mood were spot on for the world he was creating, so we decided to turn it into a film,” she says.

In the book, myriad characters wander in and out of interlinked stories, so Coppola had a challenge in adapting the collection. “I had to combine characters and focus on the meatier stories, letting others go. James gave me some good advice along the way,” she says. “One of my biggest surprises in writing the screenplay—aside from discovering how lonely and draining writing can be—is that the film goes through several filtrations until it becomes something very different than what you’ve started with. Over time, the script almost starts to tell you what it needs to be.”

Coppola and her small crew started filming on Halloween 2012 in Woodland Hills and other neighborhoods of the San Fernando Valley north of Los Angeles. She says, “The shoot was low-budget and very familial; the boys [the crew] lived in my mom’s house and I often cooked dinner for them.” They wrapped in 30 days.

With the surname Coppola, one can expect that Gia is genetically predisposed to a life behind a camera lens. She is matter of fact when discussing her large, dynastic Hollywood family. Sticking to a short list of who’s who: Her grandfather is director/writer/wine producer/hotelier Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather films, Apocalypse Now); her aunt is director/writer Sofia Coppola (Lost in Translation, The Virgin Suicides); her cousins are accomplished actors Nicholas Cage and Jason Schwartzman. She appreciates the many talents of each, especially her aunt and grandfather. “I love my grandfather’s work—I just rewatched The Conversation—and Sofia’s films,” she says.

Although she was determined to maintain a healthy distance from her family in order to find her own voice as a writer and a filmmaker, she did seek guidance regarding the business aspects of filmmaking. “My grandpa gave me some advice in dealing with industry executives and the money people—it’s incredibly hard to find financing, and even harder to figure out distribution. Sofia, as a young, soft-spoken woman director, had dealt with the same issues I was facing. Even though I know I have great people to turn to, I didn’t want my family’s ideas to infiltrate my work too much or rely too heavily on those connections.”

Coppola maintains that, regardless of the amount of help, nothing could have equipped her for directing her first project. “There’s no way you can be prepared for your first film; you just feel like a teenager going through very teenage insecurity,” she says. “My grandpa likes to say that directing is all about problem solving and that you need to learn to love anxiety. That’s true.”

Postproduction brought the young filmmaker other important teachable moments. Coppola says, “I learned the most in the editing room. When you’re shooting, you work from a script and let the film take its course. But I didn’t fully understand how important editing is and how it can dramatically change the look and tone of the film.”

One thing Coppola did understand before directing her film is how to use a camera, which she learned as a photography major at Bard. She chose the College in order to study with Stephen Shore, Susan Weber Professor in the Arts and director of Bard’s Photography Program. “I was a fan of Stephen’s work, so I studied photography,” she says, adding that she also enjoyed working with Gregory Moynahan and Robert Culp, both associate professors of history, who taught “an interesting class on revolutions.” Shore agreed to advise Coppola; her Senior Project was an exhibition of street and diaristic photography. “I liked the idea that Bard was close to New York City, but I could have a rural college experience,” she says. “I also liked that Bard is a liberal arts college but one that has a very creative environment.”

After graduation she tried bartending (“I liked making gin martinis, served cold, cold, cold!”) and booked work as a fashion photographer. “I was just trying to find work that inspired me. Then I shot behind the scenes on the set of Twixt, my grandfather’s film that came out in 2011. That’s where I learned a lot about how a movie is made.”

Variety said Palo Alto “brings a fresh humanity” to the topic of disaffected modern youth: “Coppola’s adaptation balances the tired sensationalism of kids behaving badly with a welcome dose of sympathy. . . . Coppola cycles through a wide range of emotions, from humor to horror, as these not-quite-kids, not-quite-adults pick fights, deface public property and seek easy gratification . . . [Palo Alto] boasts a clear and confident voice of its own, and it will be exciting to see where the young Coppola goes from here.”

With her first feature film complete, Coppola is enjoying having more down time, which she spends reading books (she was in the middle of John O’Hara’s Appointment in Samarra at the time of this interview) and considering future projects. “I’m not sure what I will do next,” she says. “I have some original ideas, but I don’t know if they will go anywhere. A dream project would be to adapt a story by Raymond Chandler. It would be fun to modernize an old mystery the way [director Robert] Altman did with The Long Goodbye.”

Palo Alto is set for wide release in June, following a limited release in Los Angeles and New York.

Read the spring 2014 issue of the Bardian:

Lia Soorenian ’14 talks about her Davis Project in the village of Litchk in Armenia, where she is promoting sustainable beekeeping as an alternative to the local mining industry.

Four covers from Bard's La Voz magazine will be displayed in the exhibition “Vive La Guelaguetza: An Encounter with Oaxaca” at the Mid-Hudson Heritage Center in Poughkeepsie, New York, through July 19. The exhibition commemorates La Guelaguetza, a world-famous cultural festival from Oaxaca, Mexico, which for the last five years has been celebrated locally at Waryas Park in Poughkeepsie. The festival, which attracts thousands of spectators, will take place on August 3 this year. The La Voz covers on display feature the town's past La Guelaguetza celebrations, and are on view alongside paintings, photography, and traditional costumes from the state of Oaxaca. Bard College students Mariel Fiori '05 and Emily Schmall '05 founded La Voz in 2004 as a Trustee Leader Scholar (TLS) project, aiming to serve the Latino community of the Hudson Valley with a free Spanish-language magazine. Fiori is still editor at La Voz, and the award-winning publication now has an estimated 20,000 readers in the area. La Voz will mark its 10th anniversary with a celebratory evening at the Spiegeltent at Bard's Fisher Center on August 12.

Jay Nelson blurs the lines between art and architecture with his remarkable and functional creations, including refurbished boats and campers as well as one-of-a-kind tree houses.

Bard alumni Joel Clark '05, Tavit Geudelekian '05, Andrew Kopas '08, and Mark Perloff '08 are part of King Post Studios, which last year launched a board game based on Herman Melville's Moby Dick, and is now working on a new game for the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf.

The Bard Prison Initiative has been offering college in prison since 1999, providing a life-changing, cost-effective model for other programs nationwide.

In the wake of an attack on a Pakistani student studying in India, Bard alumnus Saim Saeed discusses the importance of academic exchange programs between the two nations.

Bard alumnus Chris Claremont '72 revitalized the X-Men comic book series, creating some of its most iconic characters ... with a little help from studying political theory at Bard.

Bard alumnae Kate Belin '04, MAT '05 and Beth Goldberg MAT '06 have been named New York State Master Teachers by Governor Andrew M. Cuomo. Belin and Goldberg are among 215 STEM educators from across the state chosen to expand the first cohort of New York State Master Teachers. They join the 104 Master Teachers announced in October 2013—which included Colleen Bucci MAT '08—bringing the total number of Master Teachers in New York to 319. Master Teachers receive a $60,000 stipend over four years, serve as mentors, and participate in professional development sessions.

What do you get when you cross the hit show Breaking Bad with Percy Bysshe Shelley's sonnet "Ozymandias"? An opera like no other. Playing in New York City on May 19.

Until recently Bard alumnus Dan Cline was teaching English language classes to young people in Haisyn, Ukraine, working on community projects, and even ending up in the local press for his efforts. That changed over the winter as political unrest in the country grew into a revolution and the Peace Corps evacuated all its volunteers from the country.

Composer, pianist, and singer Akie Bermiss performs live in studio, interspersed with interview segments with host Sahr Ngaujah.

Bard alumni/ae Sean Colonna '12, Thomas "Parker" Hatley '13, and Molly McFadden MFA '12 have been awarded 2014–2015 Fulbright Scholarships. Colonna and McFadden will be working in Germany, Colonna teaching English and McFadden investigating current movements in the field of art and disabilities. Hatley has been selected for an English Teaching Assistant Award to Mexico.

Skin Horse Theater, founded by five Bard graduates, has won two Big Easy Awards for their newest work, Nocturnes: Best Original Work (Devised) and Best Lighting Design.

Hazel Gurland-Pooler's The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. has won a 2013 Peabody Award, which recognizes exceptional storytelling in electronic media.

Bard alumni Ben Richter and Stefan Weisman are among the winners of Wild Rumpus Music's 2013–2014 Commissioning Project for emerging composers. Their work will be featured in an upcoming season of Wild Rumpus Music performances.

"We've managed to make Bard a place that includes incarcerated people not as subjects of some kind of charity, but as students who are judged with the same courtesy and generosity, and with the same level of expectations and rigor as other students on campus."

Bard graduate and current Bard Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) student Joy Sebesta ’13 organized the presentation of the National Museum of Mathematics traveling exhibition, Math Midway 2 Go, at the Marlboro Elementary School in Ulster County on March 5. This traveling version of the museum’s hands-on math exhibits offered students in grades 3 to 5 an opportunity to enjoy math, engage their minds, and de-stress before the upcoming state tests.

A track from the record Thunder Lay Down in the Heart by composer Christopher Tignor ’98 features a new recording of poet and Bard professor emeritus John Ashbery.

Contemporaneous, a new music ensemble featuring Bard alumni/ae and students, is in residence at the University of New Orleans, where they will play free concerts that include works by acclaimed composer Yotam Haber.

Kate Hartman ’03—founder and director of The Social Body Lab in Toronto—is creating wearable technology that increases the visibility of cyclists, runners, and walkers.

Andrew Gori '04 and Ambre Kelly's SPRING/BREAK has been offering an inclusive, accessible alternative to the traditional art fair for three years, with solid attendance, positive reviews, and strong sales.

Soprano Julia Bullock has won the first prize of the Walter W. Naumburg Foundation’s international vocal competition. Ms. Bullock’s prize includes a $15,000 cash award, two New York concerts, and an unspecified number of concerts elsewhere in the United States.

Daniel Gordon has been selected by Amsterdam’s Foam photography museum as the 2014 winner of its Paul Huf Award, which is given annually to a photographer under the age of 35. The award carries a €20,000 ($27,800) prize and an exhibition at the museum.

Bard Works is a career-oriented professional development program for juniors and seniors at Bard College that prepares them for work after graduation. Bard Works provides participants with the tools, strategies, and networking opportunities to hone their job search skills and lay a foundation for success in the workplace. Working with alumni/ae, parents, and mentors, participants explore how to convert their Bard experience in the liberal arts to a job after college.

Yishay Garbasz spent March 2013 touring the abandoned towns around the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan. Ritual and Reality, exhibited at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts in New York City, is the result.

Bard MFA faculty and alumna Amy Sillman will be featured in the Whitney Biennial for the second time this year, and her acclaimed survey Amy Sillman: One Lump or Two will come to CCS Bard.

Bard alumni/ae Adrian Grenier and Gaby Hoffmann star in a new film about how a group of old friends comes together in the wake of an apocalyptic cyber attack.

Bard alumnus Braden Lamb '03 and fellow artist (and his wife) Shelli Paroline talk about their work as creators of the popular Adventure Time comic book series that accompanies the hit TV show.

Angela Onwuachi-Willig argues that President Obama should invite Max Kenner to tonight's State of the Union address in order to show his commitment to education for all.

Ian Berry M.A. '98 directs Skidmore College’s Tang Museum, which he has transformed into an interdisciplinary teaching laboratory that stands out among peer institutions.

Maude Standish was recognized in the marketing and advertising category. She is a cofounder of Tarot, a Millenial trend insight company, director of strategy at Mistress Social, and writes for Vice, the Huffington Post and Agency Spy. She will be speaking at SXSW this year.

Third-generation filmmaker Gia Coppola is making a name for herself with her forthcoming film Palo Alto. She both directed the film and adapted the script from James Franco's short story collection.

Bard College's Office of Development and Alumni/ae Affairs has been honored with awards from the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education.

Saving Mr. Banks, the new film about Disney's Mary Poppins, includes Richard Sherman and Robert Sherman (both class of '49) as characters. In this interview, Richard tells the story behind the new movie.