The Bard College Berlin Student Blog
Once, she positioned herself in her usual armchair next to the window, where her duvet retained its usual cocoon shape. She sat watching the empty street, the fence, the garden plot, the stump, the fossil. She went down the pink porch in her thin cotton socks to see the fossil.
Hopes and dreams trapped in objects: waiting to be unleashed, or ready to be discarded? Easier just to keep it all, stuff it in dresser drawers and cupboards, hide it under a duvet at the back of the linen closet, until one day, through some trick of fate, it ceases to be invisible again …
My father moved to Itacoatiara, a small town neighboring Manaus, capital of the state of Amazonas, in 1987 and for five months the Amazon Rainforest was his home. As we read about the most recent fires in the region, now three decades later, my dad paints me a picture of a completely different Amazônia.
Professor Vormann’s balanced and insightful answers to questions like ‘what is political science’, ‘is there truth in this inquiry’, ‘is inequality bad’, and others, sheds light on these most basic but essential questions while also clarifying why they are important — why he cares for this subject matter and why we should, too.
“Impasse 1: ‘…whether the elements have being potentially, or in some other way…’”
What?
Prepare to engage in the story of a small, motley crew of BCB students – with little to their names but enthusiasm and sometimes-precarious ideas – organising the next Liberal Education Student Conference, through a series of impasses.
It was a brisk but sunny day in the spring semester of 2016, in a Forms of Love seminar on the Symposium taught by Geoff Lehman, when my approach to my studies shifted entirely. The Republic, I admit, to my enduring shame, did little to convince me of its worthiness of study, but Beauty — ah!
Especially when fighting from the margins, it is imperative to be seen. And especially when having a platform — no matter its size — it is imperative for writers to bring those issues out from the margins and offer public support. That is what writing means to me.
It’s no secret that Bard College Berlin has an astonishingly small student body — small enough that I could look around one afternoon in the cafeteria and recognize all but a few faces. But how many of us truly know the people behind them? I sat down one day with the Associate Dean Kerry Bystrom to hear her story.
We meet early in the morning. I roll in on my bike with breakfast for Danny. He looks sleepy but greets me with a warm smile, and I know we are both exhausted but excited. We unroll some canvases, tape them onto the Ikea painting frames belonging to the café, and hang them up.
