At Bard, the study of a foreign language provides students with the opportunity to acquire a critical appreciation of foreign cultures and literatures in addition to language skills. Integral to the process is the mastery of the foreign language and the use of this mastery in the study of written texts—not only literature, but also texts from such fields as philosophy, history, and theology—and of nonverbal expressions of culture such as art history, music, and cinema.
Languages currently taught at Bard include Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Russian, Spanish, ancient Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit. A host of resources may be found at the F. W. Olin Language Center. Students may choose to learn a language to enhance their majors or they may major in any language offered as an interdisciplinary program. Literature majors are encouraged to study a language other than English and to consider literary texts across disciplinary boundaries, such as in Middle Eastern Studies. Those who choose a foreign language major can explore a range of interests and develop courses of study that bring together investigations into culture, history, and other fields. Their studies culminate in a professional-grade Senior Project.
Most of the languages taught through the Foreign Languages, Cultures, and Literatures (FLCL) Program offer an intensive format for beginners that allows students to complete the equivalent of two years of language study within just a few months. Such courses include a one- or two-month summer or winter program in a country of the target language. After studying abroad, students demonstrate an impressive increase in linguistic capacity. They have also gained cultural knowledge, and the exposure to different manifestations of cultural activity alerts them to the interrelatedness of diverse disciplines.
Why take a foreign language at Bard?
There is no general Foreign Language Requirement at Bard with the exception of some programs that do require knowledge of another language. Please view the Guide to Academic Programs and Concentrations for specifics.
However, Foreign Language, Literature, and Culture (FLLC) is one of the nine distribution requirements. Courses offered by the disciplinary program are focused on language acquisition and/or the analysis of literature or culture via an engagement with a non-English language.
To ensure that undergraduate students are exposed to a range of ideas and disciplines during their time at Bard College, Bard requires them to fulfill a variety of distributional requirements. As knowledge of more than one language and familiarity with more than one culture is becoming increasingly important, the distributional requirements include FLLC courses – i.e. a foreign language course or a course in foreign literature taught in English.