Students and Alumn/ae

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Lydia Herrick ’17

My experience at Bard rewarded me with so many gifts, but mostly, it opened my world. Between analyzing complex poetry and novels in my non-native language to immersing myself in other cultures, I consider myself very lucky to have received such a well-rounded education. 

After I graduated, I really thought I had a plan: go to graduate school, become a professor, adopt a cat, etc. However, I decided that I wanted to live abroad in a Spanish-speaking country for a year to strengthen my language skills. I moved to Madrid, Spain, to be an assistant English teacher and study Spanish in fall 2017, and I’ve been here ever since! I completely fell in love with teaching English (and I did happen to fall in love with a Spaniard, too!). I love teaching English as a foreign language, and I’ve discovered a passion as a high school teacher. In addition to teaching, I’ve been working as a translator, which my Senior Project (a translation and analysis of Alejandra Pizarnik’s poetry) has greatly helped inform. I’m currently getting my master’s to become a (nonassistant) teacher here, and I recently got Spanish residency. 

Needless to say, my plans changed—as do many postgraduation—but I couldn’t be happier. And I couldn’t be more grateful to the LAIS program at Bard for quite literally changing the course of my life. My Bard education marked me so profoundly, and I intend to spread its lessons as best I can.

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Melanie Mignucci ’16

Studying abroad in Santiago, Chile, my junior year allowed me to complete an independent study project—a work of fiction examining the impact of Pinochet’s dictatorship on the fabric of the city—that helped me prepare for eventually writing my senior project, of which Melanie Nicholson and Ben Hale were my advisers. When I returned, I used my (extremely Chilean-inflected) Spanish to work at La Voz, Hudson Valley’s Spanish language magazine begun as a Bard TLS project, where I reported stories, ran social media, and helped organize a bilingual spelling bee for elementary schoolers. 

My senior year, I served as part of the three-member editorial board of Sui Generis, Bard’s annual translation journal, under Patricia López-Gay’s excellent advisement. We were able to edit and print translations from every language taught at Bard, plus one from the Portuguese (my contribution). We also published an interview with Edith Grossman, translator of Don Quijote. This was one of the first publishing projects I helped manage from start to finish, and it gave me the bug to do so for my career. 

Now, covering health, wellness, identity, and more as an editor at a digital publication, I lean on the lessons I learned in Spanish and LAIS to create content that accounts for the many layers of colonization in the Americas, and the structural inequities that remain as a result. (Many thanks to Miles Rodríguez's and Nicole Caso’s incredible curricula on these subjects in particular!) My abilities as an editor are also enriched by my knowledge of Spanish literature, as well as having collaborated with my professors and peers in the department. I’ve been able to edit two bilingual packages, in English and in Spanish, at Elite Daily and Bustle, about Latinx identity and wellness. On top of these special projects, I’m proud to bring my perspective as a Latina—with a deep background in the social and historical contexts of Latin America—to the stories I assign and edit daily. 

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Shalini Adnani ’11

At first, I traveled around the Southern Cone and finally I found myself back in my hometown: Santiago, Chile. My main goal in Santiago was to reintegrate myself with the country in a way I had never done before. This involved being very active in student, artistic, and cultural movements. Eventually, I found a job as a writer/editor at an English Learning Publishing Company, Richmond Publishing, which was working toward making Chile, and the rest of Latin America, more bilingual. This project entailed writing and adapting math, science, history, and English textbooks in English, some geared toward bilingual private schools and others, mainly the English textbook,  aimed at public low-income schools. During this project I learned a lot about pedagogy and how to concede personal ideals with government requirements. I experienced, firsthand, how education truly forms the way a child views the world and essentially took decisions to expose Chilean students to a globalized, nondiscriminatory, and tolerant world. There were, of course, frustrating moments when government regulations and requirements seemed like a restriction and tended to be overly nationalistic.

After over a year of working on this project, I decided to go back to the arts and dedicate myself to theater, film, and writing. Thus, I am currently working on a play with a theater company, La Criatura, which has very political undertones. I have also worked on various short movies. My time here has shown me that Chile, and other postdictator countries, are finally moving away from the trauma of their past and exploring other things through their art. Art still continues to be a form of political disobedience and expression but has also evolved into more contemporary and relatable to our postdictatorial and unemployed generation.

I eventually plan to go to graduate school but as new projects and opportunity for self-discovery arise, I keep proponing it. Life after Bard has truly been a motley crew of emotions and career choices—from complete uncertainty to complete professional stability and to vocational explorations—it is a roller-coaster ride, but one I cannot imagine otherwise.

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Stephanie Urugutia ’11

In the fall of 2012 I began to work at Immigrant Women and Children Project at the City Bar Justice Center (IWC). The project offers free legal assistance to immigrant survivors of violent crimes, including domestic violence, sexual assault, child abuse and human trafficking. Under special immigration visas we are able to help obtain employment authorization and permanent residency for these folks. Working with IWC clients has taught me a great deal about the realities of life in general.

Although I’ve worked only in legal services, I don’t think law school is right for me. I came to this conclusion for many reasons, many of which emerged while I was at Bard. I will continue to pursue immigrant rights but in a different capacity. I am not sure how yet, but I’m hoping grad school will give me some ideas.

Life after Bard has not only been about work. In the past year I traveled throughout Europe with friends, and more recently I visited Argentina. My family has also expanded to include a beautiful baby niece, Isabella. I hope the learning, growing, and loving continues.

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Riva Lencer ’10

I also studied abroad my junior year in Oaxaca, Mexico, on SIT’s “Grassroots Development and Social Change.” Each day we were visited by a different NGO leader who explained the various issues facing Oaxaca, including women’s rights, indigenous rights, environmental issues, farming and other economical issues, and many others.  We also visited many organizations, from helping to maintain a greenhouse in a mountain town outside of Oaxaca to visiting the Zapatista communities in Chiapas. Here, I learned the importance of cultural relevance, and empowering people and children through their own culture, as opposed to imposing our own, Western values.

From this experience, as well as others, I was inspired to write my Senior Project on the racial achievement gap. That project, “Anti-Racist Education: How Culturally Relevant Pedagogy Can Help Close the Racial Achievement Gap,” discussed how race, class, and cultural background affect how students succeed in school. One main case study I used was a bilingual Latino school that incorporated their students’ home culture (mostly Mexican as well as other Latino backgrounds) into the school environment, fostering a deep student connection to school and learning.

In the fall I will be attending Bank Street College to get a master’s in Childhood General Education, grades 1–6. There, I will be able to explore different forms of education and how to improve the success of students of color, starting at an early age. As I gain more and more experience in the classroom, I hope to participate in creating multicultural curricula, social policy, or alternative schools.

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Zak Powers ’10

During the summer after college, I took time out to revise my translation several times and submit it to several publishers. I was even presented with the opportunity to translate an essay for Christie’s of London on the Argentine cubist Emilio Pettoruti. In October of 2010, I attended the American Literary Translators Association annual conference in Philadelphia. There, I had the chance to connect with my peers in translation and expose myself to the work and ideas of myriad translators working in hundreds of languages. This conference is a really great resource to any literary-minded students looking to explore the worlds of literature that are out there.

These days I work as a preschool teacher in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, giving Spanish lessons to children ages 3 to 5 from various different economic and cultural backgrounds. In my lessons I incorporate music and play, seeking to approach language learning from a number of angles. The kids have been great students and, from what their parents tell me, great teachers, too. Their enthusiasm is very inspiring.

I also teach an afterschool science program and I am currently applying for environmental education internships with the Student Conservation Association. These internships tend to last about six months. After that I plan on applying to graduate school for education, to focus on developing Spanish and science curricula for younger children.

The Bard LAIS Program gave me the great opportunity to step outside of myself—and the United States—the many faces of Latin America. This multidisciplinary program prepared me for the complexities I encountered in my travels. I am very grateful for the perspective that my peers and professors have granted me and I seek everyday to utilize that same multidisciplinary strategy in my own teaching.

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Flora Pereira ’09

My first adventure was working as a production assistant at the first annual Back2Black Festival, a series of musical performances, conferences, and art shows showcasing the strong African presence in Brazil’s social, cultural, and national identity. I had the incredible opportunity of meeting some of Rio’s greatest musicians, contemporary artists, and scholars. The adventures continued when I was hired by a Rio-based publishing company to transcribe the conferences that took place, which will soon be published in multiple languages.

Fascinated by Rio’s dynamic world of cultural event production, I went on to work at the Rio International Film Festival. My curiosity for contemporary Brazilian cinema was sparked, and I went on to take a wonderful course on the subject at Rio's Museum of Modern Art....

Amidst all of this cultural wealth, however, massive historical, political, and social inequalities exist within Rio de Janeiro’s reality. The city is divided into what we call asfalto (asphalt) and favela (shantytown)—two worlds that couldn’t be physically closer together and socio-economically farther apart.

What was striking to me was the politics of representation surrounding the favelas. It seemed these communities were constantly being represented in mainstream media by the same recurring images of violence, poverty and drugs. These are all, indeed, very real problems that must be confronted and dealt with. However, the discourse that predominated excluded the voices of the people who actually lived in these communities. Needless to say, a very one-sided story was being told about the everyday life and culture of the favelas.

Knowing there was a whole other side of the story that wasn’t being told, and frustrated by the lack of avenues available to hear them, I decided to look for myself. I was interested in discovering what the residents of favelas were doing within their own communities to tackle the social problems they faced and improve their own realities from within.

I spent the next six months interviewing neighborhood leaders, artists, and grassroots organizers who were mobilizing their own communities to create better futures for those around them. In Rocinha, for example, I interviewed the women who collectively ran a community day-care center and support group for low-income single mothers. In Vigário Geral, I filmed the ventures of a local artist transforming the streets of his neighborhood into an empowering mosaic narrative. In Pereira da Silva, I met a youth art collective that uses art as a tool to keep kids out of gangs. I transcribed and edited these interviews, with ongoing involvement of the interviewees, and began to compile a book called De Onde Eu Sou (“Where I’m From” in Portuguese). 

I will soon have the pleasure of seeing this collaboratively produced book of biographies published in Portuguese through a Rio-based publishing company. I am currently editing the footage and putting together a blog for the project. My dream is to also have the book published in English, illustrated by a youth art collective. I want to keep these collaborative ties alive and evolving, and hope that people all over the world will have an opportunity to read about the transformative art, social work, and grassroots organizing that is taking place within Rio’s favelas.

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Jon Leslie ’08

Toward the end of the first semester, a classmate informed me that grant money had been made available with the express intent of creating an afterschool program for elementary school ESL students in Rhinebeck, most of whom came from the same Central American countries as the migrant workers, and that TLS was seeking a second-year student with a certain amount of experience and interest in the subject to run the operation. After applying and then being chosen for the job, I wrestled with the steep learning curve presented by the various aspects of such a program, from training and managing twenty plus tutors, to the assisting with the fundraising required to keep the program viable. As the momentum behind the project grew, we began to provide translation services for the parents and attempt generally to foster greater communication between the immigrants and the greater community.

As I continued this work, I became acquainted enough with a few of the students so that they began to share their immigration stories, which were, even granting a child’s tendency to embellish, clearly based on a very harrowing reality. Curious about life in the region from which they came, about why it is that one might be led to take the risks required by immigration into an often times unwelcoming country, I eventually felt compelled to acquire firsthand experience.

During the summer following my sophomore year, I traveled throughout Guatemala on a Human Rights Delegation. On my trip, I met with a variety of NGOs, all working in different capacities to reconstruct a sense of justice, which had been so eviscerated, as unfortunately in several other Latin American countries, by a massive indiscriminate killing that goes to this day officially unacknowledged. The gang violence that so ravages the country today appeared to me as to many others, wrongly or rightly, quite clearly to be a transmuted form of the same political violence. I came to the conclusion, for the first time, that this horrendous state was the cause of the poverty ostensibly driving most northward emigration, and not the other way around. Many organizations, with whose organizers I met, worked quite heroically and in great danger merely to stem the chaotic tide of violence by means of spreading awareness artistically, legally, or politically. Another organization, with whom I worked for a month or so, the Chico Mendez Project (located, perhaps not coincidentally, in what was reported to be the sole pueblito in the whole of the country that managed to fend off the National Army throughout the civil war), dedicated itself to the opposite project of imagining a political future, organizing an environmental school for local Mayan youth that helped them to work in their communities while gaining experience toward advanced education. My stay with the organization instilled in me a great deal of hope, as I was able to picture very easily what a healthier future Guatemala (and a fortiori, Latin America or North America more generally) might look like. sites.google.com/site/chicomendesproject/

After returning to Bard, I continued my work with the TLS program, took many insightful classes in the LAIS Program, and wrote about my experiences, when possible, in campus periodicals, such as La Voz and the Free Press. After graduating, I took a job in the summer helping to run a voter registration drive throughout the State of Florida, concentrating on Hispanic as well as African American registration, continuing through the election to work as a field organizer on behalf of the Democratic Party in several other swing states. After the 2008 election, I helped run fundraising offices with the Progressive Voter Network to pass progressive and environmental legislation in Tampa, Philadelphia, and New York, and have since worked in the field of legal advocacy in the ACLU’s Philadelphia office and, currently, for a private firm in Boston. Understanding nourished by the LAIS Program has been a keen source of motivation for many aspects of this work.

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Mariana Giusti ’07

Not long after graduating, I had the opportunity to move to Nicaragua and work as the program coordinator for the Foundation for Sustainable Development. As coordinator, I worked with local nongovernmental institutions (NGOs), providing them with workshops on grant writing, project management, sustainable development, and fundraising. I also coordinated internships by foreigners with these NGOs, whom I prepared in the process of cultural immersion and project development. The experience was beyond rewarding for multiple reasons. Above all, it began to quench my thirst for real life experiences in Latin America. It also provided me with a rich cultural experience—Nicaragua is a country with a vibrant history, full of energy, gossip, and celebrations.

Every day, I interacted with war heroes, Sandinista fanatics, and fierce critics of the Daniel Ortega government alike. In Nicaragua, every citizen has actually played an important role in history making. For example, I worked closely with one woman who had been shot during her days as a guerrilla warrior. She is now the head of a women’s rights organization and opposes the Sandinista government she defended with rifle in hand a few decades before. I also lived with a family who had provided shelter and medical attention to Sandinista guerrillas during the revolutionary period.

There were also those rare experiences … dancing next to Gioconda Belli on one occassion; conversing with Sergio Ramirez on a street corner; witnessing a poetry reading by Ernesto Cardenal; and eating fried fish with the President of the Supreme Court. The words of these Nicaraguan writers and the stories of revolution I had studied for years gained context and became part of my daily life. It was like taking a leap into the books and stories I had devoured as an undergraduate. And it surpassed all my expectations.

When my contract ended, I was ready to head elsewhere and explore new things. So, I moved to Peru and Bolivia to do research on indigenous movements and politics through a Fulbright fellowship. I spent nine months traveling the Andean region. My project looked at the Bolivian case, in which social movements had attained access to power and drastic social reforms, and tried to draw lessons from this experience for indigenous movements in Peru.

Field research was a world of its own. I observed major protests, spoke frequently with social leaders and brilliant academics, watched soap operas, and commented the newspapers with regular citizens. Throughout the experience, not a day went by in which I was not forced to question my opinions and explore new perspectives.… It was stimulating, challenging, humbling, and immensely educational. These days, I am in the process of figuring out what I can translate this research into.

I am now about to start my PhD at Cornell University. I expect it to be another Bard-like experience of defining interests, improving skills, and building excitement. Graduate school seems like the right step to take now—it will increase my research skills and help me ground all these ideas and major experiences. And, like Bard has done these past few years, it will also hopefully create new opportunities and open doors for me in the coming years.

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Braden Marks ’06

My translation of Jefazo was published by Palgrave Macmillan in New York in 2010. The biography, by Martin Sivak, offers an insider’s look at the Bolivian president, based on the time the journalist and president spent together in 2006–7. I’m very grateful to my Senior Project adviser, Ronald Briggs, who caught wind of the opportunity and put me in touch with the editors.

I’ve been in San Francisco since 2009 and have continued to write and translate. I am currently pursuing an MFA in creative writing at San Francisco State University. My most recent play, Faith, Played by Lourdes, will be produced as a part of the San Francisco State Fall Fringe Festival in 2011. The play includes bilingual elements, including a Spanish-speaking central character.

One of my other full-length plays, The Latch, received a reading at the Bluxome Point artists collective in San Francisco this past spring. The play explores the familial inheritance of trauma in the American domestic sphere immediately following the Vietnam War in 1975, as well as in 2003. An East Coast reading will take place in August in affiliation with the Lesser America Theater Company at the Theater for the New City in Manhattan.

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By Emily Schmall ’05

I blame it all on Bard.

Studying Spanish at Bard began my love affair with Latin America. Within the LAIS concentration, I studied literature of the Spanish conquest of the Americas; spent a month researching a subway train library program in Mexico City; learned about hip Central American revolutionary poets; took Omar Encarnación’s storied course on the US relationship with Latin America; almost gouged my eyes out reading Rayuela.

After a short stint as a responsible adult, I left Bloomberg News in late 2009 and embarked on a freelance career that took me across Central America, to post-earthquake Haiti, to West Africa, and finally to Buenos Aires.

On the SAT exam, West Africa would be the pattern disruptor, but it was very much in line with what I learned at Bard as a Spanish major.

My adviser, Melanie Nicholson, taught a course on pedagogy of teaching language that involved teaching English lessons to local Spanish speakers. That course inspired my Trustee Leadership Scholar project, La Voz, the Spanish-language magazine that continues today under the immensely talented and capable editor and Bard grad Mariel Fiori. In Liberia, I was the country director of an NGO called New Narratives that equips, pays, and mentors fellows—female professional journalists—through a collaborative work program.

In Miami, I am the bureau chief of the NYC-based publication The Real Deal, a real estate trade, so the Queen of Versailles is part of my beat. I am also involved in a start-up I look forward to announcing soon that will also, unquestionably, be Bard’s fault.