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Main Image for The Bill Mullen Recitation Contest 

The Bill Mullen Recitation Contest
 

In Ancient Greece, professional performers of Homer were called Rhapsodes.

Their job was to memorize Homeric poetry and perform at festivals. With our annual contest, we honor their tradition and that of Bill Mullen, a former professor of Classics and Rhetoric at Bard College. On March 10th, 2023 we gathered with over 60 Bard students, faculty and staff to listen to student contestants recite poetry by heart. The fourteen performances were marvelous.
  • Image for William C. Mullen Memorial Fund
    William C. Mullen Memorial Fund
    In 2021, Bard College announced the William C. Mullen Memorial Fund created by a generous donation from longtime Bard professor, Bill Mullen. This fund is used to promote his legacy through grants to any of Bill's former students to continue their studies in the liberal arts and sciences. William “Bill” Mullen (1946-2017), professor of classics and taught at Bard from 1985 - 2018. 
     

    William C. Mullen Memorial Fund

    In 2021, Bard College announced the William C. Mullen Memorial Fund created by a generous donation from longtime Bard professor, Bill Mullen. This fund is used to promote his legacy through grants to any of Bill's former students to continue their studies in the liberal arts and sciences. William “Bill” Mullen (1946-2017), professor of classics and taught at Bard from 1985 - 2018. Bill came to Bard as associate professor of classics in 1985, and was promoted to full professor in 1989. He served as chair of the Presidential Commission on the Curriculum from 1990 to 1993. During his tenure, he introduced Rhetoric and Public Speaking to the Bard curriculum and was instrumental in the development of the Classics Program and First-Year Seminar, which he directed from 1987 to 1990. He started what is now known as the West Point–Bard Exchange, which began as an educational seminar between West Point and Bard. He introduced the teaching of rhetoric to the Bard Prison Initiative and brought The Readers of Homer (a nonprofit organization that provides a method for reading Homer’s epics aloud in a continuous audience-participation format) to Bard. In 2013–14, he served as Distinguished Visiting Professor at the United States Air Force Academy, an honor of which he was particularly proud. He brought to Bard his special interest in Greek and Latin epic and lyric poetry and the classical tradition in Western civilization. Bill Mullen was an exemplar of the commitment to liberal education. Perhaps because he came to Bard directly from St. John’s College in Annapolis he cherished the inherent interdisciplinary character of the classics and believed deeply in the proposition that all students should avail themselves of a wide-ranging curriculum. Bill mirrored the nobility and honor of the vocation of scholar and teacher.
  • Image for What is the Recitation Contest? 
    What is the Recitation Contest? 
    The Bill Mullen Recitation Prize is awarded annually in competition amongst Bard College and BHSEC Cleveland students. The competition encourages the love of literature, the joy in oral recitation, the committing to memory of great poetry, the love of public speaking, and the agonal spirit, all of which are at the heart of Bill Mullen’s intellectual legacy. The contest aims to expose students to- and perhaps instill a love for- the art of memorizing and reciting poetry.  The 2023 Competition took place at Bard Hall on March 10th, and was judged by Ann Lauterbach and Thomas Bartscherer. See more details below.
     
  • Image for On being his student
    On being his student
    “It was impossible to miss Bill on campus and especially in Aspinwall, where his office was a constant source of laughter and his careful diction echoed through the third floor."

    Christian Lehmann is a Professor of Literature at Bard High School Early College,
    Cleveland, and a former student of Mullen's

    On being his student

    “It was impossible to miss Bill on campus and especially in Aspinwall, where his office was a constant source of laughter and his careful diction echoed through the third floor. My relationship with him began in earnest the spring of 2007, my Junior year, as I began to plan for moderation. I had spent my time in the lower college learning Latin, German, and Old English, and Bill and I knew each other socially. But over the summer of 2007, I knew that I wanted to dedicate the rest of my time at Bard to studying the transhistorical and geographical genre of Epic poetry. My advisor recommended that I seek out Bill, and so one day after a lecture in Olin Hall, I caught up with him in the atrium and asked if we could talk about Indo-European epic. And thus began a friendship that extended past my graduation at Bard and well into my graduate studies at USC.

    Bill’s dedication to the recitation of poetry inspired me to make a performance out of my upper-college research work. In addition to writing my senior project on Homer’s Iliad, I organized a performance in Bard Hall where I had friends recite passages of women’s laments from across the genre of epic poetry. In the days leading up to the event, Bill expressed enthusiasm, and on the day of the performance, he was in the front row. At the end, I made a mixture of a healing wine drink that is described in the Iliad, cheese and spices grated into a bowl of wine. I offered it to the audience, and Bill was the first to drink deeply, and he told me how the muses had sung that evening. 

    Once I graduated, I would still see Bill regularly. Every summer, he would come out to stay for a few weeks in LA and we would meet up for drives to exhibits, to read poetry we had discovered, and to share a meal. When I would visit Bard, I would stay with him, and we would pull volumes off the shelves to read in the cemetery or to the parliament of reality. On one memorable night, we combined the shared performance of the Finnish Kalevala with the Iliad and alternated lines deep into the night.” - Christian Lehman

    Christian Lehmann is a Professor of Literature at Bard High School Early College,
    Cleveland.

    He is also a 2009 graduate of Bard College where he collaborated frequently with Bill to recapture the spirit of the Homeric oral tradition. Whether it was competitive metrical recitation of the proem to the Iliad or a far ranging discussion about Beowulf alliterative verse and the performance of the Kalevala, their shared passion for the tradition of Epic Poetry in public displayed their trust in the power of recitation as a communal event.
     

The 2023 Mullen Contest at Bard Hall
 

  • Image for The Contestants & Their Poems
    The Contestants & Their Poems
    Athena Bason: "Dream Song 29"  by John Berryman    
    Milla Meiman: "Two-Headed Calf" by Laura Gilpin    
    Regina Cassese: "First Love by" Philip Levine 
    Ariella Brodie-Weisberg: "Planetarium"  by Adrienne Rich    
    Yadier Perez: "Sweetest love, I do not go" by John Donne    
    Jonathan Asiedu: "Young Deer" by Hilda Morley
    Nora Furlong: "A Woman Is Talking to Death"  by Judy Grahn 
    Annaliese Simons: "Modern Love XXX" by George Meredith    
    Eugenie Sappho: "Even So" Dante Rossetti  
    Shanqiue Alladen: "Limbo" by Edward Kamau Brathwaite  
    Heather Garufi: "Homosexuality" by Frank O'Hara    
    Marylena Hono: "Civilization and it's Discontents" by John Ashbery  
    Jay Evans: "The Evasion" by Paul Blackburn    
    Tallulah Woitach: "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot    
  • Video Recap
    View this post on Instagram

    A post shared by Hannah Arendt Center at Bard (@hannaharendtcenteratbard)

  • Image for The Winners & Their Judges
    The Winners & Their Judges
    Nora Furlong took first place with her poem "A Woman Is Talking to Death"  by Judy Grahn. 
    Heather Garufi won second with "Homosexuality" by Frank O'Hara.   

    Ann Lauterbach is a poet and essayist writing at the intersection of poetics, politics and the visual arts. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (1986) and a MacArthur Fellowship (1993), she is Ruth and David Schwab Professor of Languages and Literature (Written Arts) at Bard College.

    Thomas Bartscherer is the Peter Sourian Senior Lecturer in the Humanities at Bard College. He writes on the intersection of literature and philosophy, with a particular focus on tragic drama, aesthetics, and performance. He also writes on contemporary art, new media technology, and the history and practice of liberal education. 
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