Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College Hosts 17th Annual International Conference on “JOY: Loving the World in Dark Times” October 16–17

Participants Include Author Teju Cole, Choreographer Bill T. Jones, Writer Ann Lauterbach, Classical Music Critic Jeremy Eichler, Author Ilya Kaminsky, and Author Shane McCrae.

The Hannah Arendt Center’s 17th annual fall conference on “JOY: Loving the World in Dark Times” will explore the profound meaning of joy as a deep and necessary act of loving the world, even in our most challenging times. Bringing together notable speakers with diverse narratives and insights at Bard College in Annandale, the conference will be a vital conversation around fostering resilience, and a timely exploration of joy as a crucial lens for finding meaning and connection amidst today’s fractured world.

Inspired by Hannah Arendt’s own resilience, the conference theme delves into how we can find and cultivate joy as a path to a more engaged and meaningful life. On one level, the question of joy in dark times asks: Can we truly love a world filled with evil, pain, and injustice?  Arendt knew well the horrors of totalitarianism and genocide, and yet insisted that we must still find ways to love the world. Joy is not about the denial of painful truths—it is a conscious decision to embrace life as it is, to see the full picture without succumbing to despair, to see the present horror of a world torn apart and celebrate with the knowledge that the mended world will be even more glorious.

The two-day conference takes place on Thursday, October 16, and Friday, October 17, in Olin Hall, on Bard’s Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y. campus. It is free and open to the press, and will include a dedicated press room for interviews. Register here.

The conference is free for Hannah Arendt Center members (plus one guest), Bard College students, faculty, and staff, as well as for members of the press. For non-members, the registration fee is $175.

Conference Highlights include:

• Post Lecture Discussion and Reflection with Teju Cole, where the public may engage directly with the speaker.

• Dark Charisma, a talk by Donovan Hohn, acting editor of Lapham’s Quarterly (now part of the Hannah Arendt Center and Bard College family) and Charles Baxter, author of Blood Test: a Comedy,published by Pantheon in 2024, in conversation with Francine Prose, a Distinguished Writer in Residence at Bard College.

• Joy: Loving the World in Dark Times – A Dialogue Group. New this year, there will be two virtual breakout sessions – each day of the two-day conference – with Susan Oberman, who runs the Arendt Center’s Dialogue Project, especially geared towards those participating virtually from around the globe.

• A guided walking tour to visit Hannah Arendt’s grave on Bard College campus to commemorate the 50th anniversary of her death, with former Hannah Arendt Center chairman Steve Maslow and Bard College’s Jana Mader, co-author of Walk Her Way New York City.

• A staged reading of Jenny Lyn Bader‘s play, Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library, about the 1933 arrest of Hannah Arendt by the Gestapo.

• A special performance and workshop with Bard’s own student improv group, BRAD Comedy Club.

For a full conference schedule, click here.

Featured speakers include:

Teju Cole, a novelist, essayist, and photographer. His latest novella is Every Day Is for the Thief; Bill T. Jones, Artistic Director of New York Live Arts, an award-winning choreographer and performer; Ann Lauterbach whose writing lies at the intersection of poetics, politics and the visual arts; Jeremy Eichler, the chief classical music critic of The Boston Globe, who will be in conversation with Bard College President Leon Botstein; Ilya Kaminsky, award-winning author of Deaf Republic; and Shane McCrae, author of ten books of poetry.