Information for Students

×

Welcome, Class of 2023

The most important thing that you should do in preparation for August is to read and think (and maybe write a little…) about the travels of two writers: Charles Darwin and James Baldwin. Darwin and Baldwin each give vivid accounts of their distinctive journeys. You will find that they both make startling discoveries about knowledge, life, and the difference that history makes to our sense of belonging to a larger world. 

I invite you to read each text slowly, stopping to underline sentences and write down questions in the margins or in a notebook. I also hope that you will slow down to re-read out loud those passages that seem strange, moving, or otherwise exceptional to you. Try to read in a spirit of experimentation and leisure: let yourself pause over words, imagery, arguments, and ideas. Give yourself the time and space to reflect on what you’re reading as you go along. 

You might, for example, stop for a moment while reading Darwin to think about how he describes the peculiar vulnerability of tortoises, lizards, and birds to human predation, and why the wildness of some creatures and the timidity of others is crucial to understanding how life finds its place on Earth. You might also pause while reading Baldwin to consider how he reimagines his “role” as a black American writer while self-exiled in France and Switzerland, as he listens to Bessie Smith records and feels as though he is seeing the open sky for the first time. You might even pause to think about Baldwin while listening to Bessie Smith yourself. I’d recommend listening to her 1923 hit, “Baby Won’t You Please Come Home,” which you can easily find online, while writing about what you hear, and then circle back to write a bit about what “home” might mean to Smith, Baldwin, and Darwin. 

Many of these same questions about home, travel, and belonging will come up throughout our time together in August. In addition to purchasing the Darwin volume, we also ask that you purchase Sophocles I: Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, edited by David Grene and Richmond Lattimore. We will read Antigone together in August, so you do not have to read it before you arrive. I don’t wish to spoil anything, but Antigone also raises questions about what it means to belong to a “home,” and whether home is found primarily in the family or the city. These questions lead Antigone to undertake a dangerous journey herself. 

Finally, you will also receive as a gift from the College a copy of Daniel Mendelsohn’s wonderful book, An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic. Mendelsohn’s story is about his own journey as a student and scholar, one that centers on his relationship with his father and the poetry of Homer’s The Odyssey. We will read this book together in August as well, so there are no assigned readings from this text before your arrival at Bard. 

I wish you happy reading, and I look forward to meeting all of you soon, when our own journeys converge at Annandale!

Best wishes, 
William Dixon 
Director, The Language and Thinking Program 
Bard College
ltdirect@bard.edu