ON AND OFF CAMPUS: FACULTY RECOGNITION

Felicia Keesing (center), flanked by Fujio Mitarai, chairperson EXPO ’90 Foundation (left), and Kazuo Oike, chairperson of the International Prize Committee (right). Photo courtesy EXPO ’90 Foundation

David and Rosalie Rose Distinguished Professor of Science, Mathematics, and Computing Felicia Keesing has been awarded the 2022 International Cosmos Prize. Established by the Expo ’90 Foundation in Osaka, Japan, the prize recognizes scientists who study the relationship between nature and humankind through an integrated, holistic lens. Keesing was selected for her research on species conservation and the spread of pathogens, which suggests that areas with high levels of biodiversity provide more protection against zoonotic disease. The Foundation also commended Keesing on her dedication to accessibility and inclusion in the field, noting her efforts to advance science literacy among young adults through collaborations with Bard and other organizations. The prize includes a monetary award of 40 million yen (about $300,000).

Bard undergraduates working in the Keesing Lab conduct research on how ecological communities respond to changes in biological diversity, with a particular focus on how human risk of exposure to infectious diseases is affected by changes in the environment. Keesing has studied how the loss of large mammals affects the ecology of African savannas, and how changes in the diversity and composition of ecological communities influence the transmission of pathogens, particularly tick-borne diseases in the eastern United States. Students in the lab are also involved with a number of other projects, including studies of the invasive plant garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata), the nontarget effects of the fungal pathogen Metarhizium anisopliae, and the distribution of mammals in response to land use in Dutchess County, New York. “Over the years,” Keesing says, “my approach in the classroom has been transformed by my learning how to teach so that students practice doing rather than just listening.”

Two Bard professors secured National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grants for innovative projects that aim to preserve and expand access to scholarly resources. NEH awarded a $150,000 grant to Bard Graduate Center Associate Professor Aaron Glass in support of “The Distributed Text: An Annotated Digital Edition of Franz Boas’s Pioneering Ethnography,” a project he codirects with Judith Berman at the University of Victoria. Glass and his team will work to digitize anthropologist Boas’s landmark 1897 monograph on the Kwakwaka’wakw culture of the Pacific Northwest Coast, enhancing the original text with archival material from collections all over the world. Anne Hunnell Chen, assistant professor of art history and visual culture, received $350,000 for the International (Digital) Dura-Europos Archive, a collection of materials related to the archaeological site of DuraEuropos, Syria. Chen will collaborate with the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College and Bard College Berlin to create an extensive, multilingual archive that will help democratize scholarship related to this rare historical resource. NEH also honored Joseph Luzzi, Asher B. Edelman Professor of Literature, with a Public Scholar Award in the amount of $60,000 for his book project, Brunelleschi’s Children: How a Renaissance Orphanage Saved 400,000 Lives and Reinvented Childhood. The grant will support his research into the Hospital of the Innocents in Florence, Italy, an institution that offered revolutionary care and education to abandoned children for more than four centuries.

Professor of History and Asian Studies Robert Culp and Assistant Professor of Chinese Lu Kou have received Scholar Grants from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation in support of their scholarly humanities book projects. Culp’s book, Circuits of Meaning: Book Markets and Knowledge Production in Modern China, 1900-1965, will explore how changing systems of book distribution in modern China shaped reading communities and knowledge production. Ku will examine political communication strategies among rival states in War of Words: Courtly Exchange, Rhetoric, and Political Culture in Early Medieval China.

Charles Ranlett Flint Professor of Humanities Daniel Mendelsohn has won the 2022 Malaparte Prize, Italy’s highest honor for foreign writers. Mendelsohn was selected for his body of work in literary criticism, translation, and narrative nonfiction. In its citation, the Malaparte jury singled out the themes of exile, displacement, and memory in Mendelsohn’s three major memoirs, especially The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, an investigation into the deaths of six relatives who perished during the Holocaust in what is now Ukraine. He accepted the prize at an awards ceremony held on the island of Capri at the beginning of October.

Jenny Xie, assistant professor of written arts, is a 2023 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow in literature. Xie is the author of two poetry collections, Eye Level (Graywolf Press) and The Rupture Tense (Graywolf Press), both of which were National Book Award finalists. The fellowships are for early-career artists based in Minnesota and New York City, and come with a $50,000 award split over two years to support the creation of new work, advancement of artistic goals, and/or promotion of professional development. “I strive to create work that demonstrates the vital force unassimilated language can have, of the power and charge that can pulse through words when they behave differently, against rules and convention, and against forces that collude to render language more utilitarian, more homogenous, and free of nuance and rich complexity,” Xie writes.

Peter L’Official, associate professor of literature and director of the American and Indigenous Studies Program at Bard College, has won a Rabkin Prize of $50,000 for his work in visual art journalism. Candidates for the award are nominated by a group of 16 anonymous arts professionals, who are asked to identify “the essential visual art journalist working in your part of the country,” and final winners are selected by a jury. L’Official’s next book project will explore the intersections of literature, architecture, and Blackness in America.