Arabic and Hebrew language tables occur weekly during the semester. Join us for Hebrew every Monday at 6:00 p.m. in the President's Room at Kline, or for Arabic every Wednesday at 6:00 p.m. in Kline Commons. Middle Eastern Studies also sponsors special academic and social events and encourages students to attend other campus events relating to the Middle East.

Upcoming Events

  • 3/17
    Tuesday
    6:00 pm – 7:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
    Kline, College Room
  • 3/23
    Monday
    5:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
    Bertelsmann Campus Center, Weis Cinema
  • 3/24
    Tuesday
    6:00 pm – 7:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
    Kline, College Room
  • 3/31
    Tuesday
    6:00 pm – 7:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
    Kline, College Room
  • 4/01
    Wednesday
    6:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
    Preston Theater

Archive of Past Events

2026
  
2025
  
2024
  
2023
  
2022
  
2021
  
2020
  
2019
  
2018
  
2017
  
2016
  
2015
  
2014
  
2013
  
2012
  
2009


2026

  Tuesday, March 10, 2026
Arabic Table 
Please join us weekly. Stay for as long as you like.
Kline, College Room  6:00 pm – 7:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Language tables are held at Kline and entail about an hour of casual discussion during meal times, where students interested in a language get to know each other and practice colloquial conversations. They are held by the tutor of the language, and although sometimes professors join the table, it is a very low-stakes and fun setting to immerse yourself in a language, its culture and the foreign language community at Bard.
Monday, March 9, 2026
MES Spring Film Series Screening: Leila and the Wolves
Fractal Realities
Bertelsmann Campus Center, Weis Cinema  6:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
Fractal Realities screening: A sweeping, poetic tribute to the enduring role of Arab women in liberation movements, Leila and the Wolves (1984) stands as Heiny Srour’s sole narrative feature. The film follows Leila (Nabila Zeitouni), a Lebanese woman living in London, who begins to uncover the often-ignored contributions of women within the larger revolutionary struggle. Blending archival footage with staged sequences, the film crafts a powerful feminist counter-history of resistance. 

Watch the trailer here.

Heiny Srour is a Lebanese film director. She is best known for being the first female Arab filmmaker to have a film chosen for the Cannes Film Festival (The Hour of Liberation Has Arrived, 1974). Despite the film’s accolades and success at Cannes, The Hour of Liberation Has Arrived was banned in most of the Arab world for its socialist and feminist politics. Srour has advocated for women's rights through her films, her writing, and by funding other filmmakers. Her first feature film, Leila and the Wolves, also reflects her feminist politics and socialist politics. 
  Tuesday, March 3, 2026
Arabic Table 
Please join us weekly. Stay for as long as you like.
Kline, College Room  6:00 pm – 7:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Language tables are held at Kline and entail about an hour of casual discussion during meal times, where students interested in a language get to know each other and practice colloquial conversations. They are held by the tutor of the language, and although sometimes professors join the table, it is a very low-stakes and fun setting to immerse yourself in a language, its culture and the foreign language community at Bard.
  Thursday, February 26, 2026
"Innocent Knowledge: Israeli and Palestinian Children's Drawings" 
A talk by Professor Katharina Galor
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium  5:30 pm – 7:00 pm EST/GMT-5
This talk introduces Innocent Knowledge, a collaborative research and public humanities project centered on nearly four hundred drawings created by children ages five to fourteen across Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel between October 2024 and June 2025. Encountered together, the drawings render visible the radically unequal conditions under which childhood unfolds across the region. The lecture reflects on the project’s conceptual and ethical foundations: the decision to juxtapose Israeli and Palestinian children’s work without imposing narrative symmetry; the refusal to interpret individual images; the use of context rather than analysis to mediate meaning; and the implications of Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child for visual expression in wartime. Taken together, the drawings invite us to consider what it means to treat children not as symbols of conflict, but as agents of testimony and presence.
  Tuesday, February 24, 2026
Arabic Table 
Please join us weekly. Stay for as long as you like.
Kline, College Room  6:00 pm – 7:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Language tables are held at Kline and entail about an hour of casual discussion during meal times, where students interested in a language get to know each other and practice colloquial conversations. They are held by the tutor of the language, and although sometimes professors join the table, it is a very low-stakes and fun setting to immerse yourself in a language, its culture and the foreign language community at Bard.
  Tuesday, February 17, 2026
Arabic Table 
Please join us weekly. Stay for as long as you like.
Kline, College Room  6:00 pm – 7:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Language tables are held at Kline and entail about an hour of casual discussion during meal times, where students interested in a language get to know each other and practice colloquial conversations. They are held by the tutor of the language, and although sometimes professors join the table, it is a very low-stakes and fun setting to immerse yourself in a language, its culture and the foreign language community at Bard.
  Tuesday, February 10, 2026
Arabic Table 
Please join us weekly. Stay for as long as you like.
Kline, College Room  6:00 pm – 7:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Language tables are held at Kline and entail about an hour of casual discussion during meal times, where students interested in a language get to know each other and practice colloquial conversations. They are held by the tutor of the language, and although sometimes professors join the table, it is a very low-stakes and fun setting to immerse yourself in a language, its culture and the foreign language community at Bard.
Monday, February 9, 2026
MES Spring Film Series
Fractal Realities

Bertelsmann Campus Center, Weis Cinema  6:00 pm EST/GMT-5
It was Just an Accident, dir. Jafar Panahi (2025). Winner of the Palme d'Or at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival.
 Vahid, an unassuming mechanic, has a chance encounter with Eghbal, a man he strongly suspects to be his former sadistic jailhouse captor. Panicked, Vahid gathers several former prisoners, all abused by that same captor, to try and confirm Eghbal's identity. As the bickering group drives around Tehran with the captive, they must confront how far to take matters into their own hands with their presumed tormentor. From master filmmaker Jafar Panahi comes a searing moral thriller that engages with complex ideas about the uncertainty of the truth and the choice between revenge and mercy, as Panahi turns his personal dissonance into a profound and galvanizing work of art.Watch the trailer here.
  Tuesday, February 3, 2026
Arabic Table 
Please join us weekly. Stay for as long as you like.
Kline, College Room  6:00 pm – 7:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Language tables are held at Kline and entail about an hour of casual discussion during meal times, where students interested in a language get to know each other and practice colloquial conversations. They are held by the tutor of the language, and although sometimes professors join the table, it is a very low-stakes and fun setting to immerse yourself in a language, its culture and the foreign language community at Bard.
  Tuesday, January 27, 2026
Arabic Table 
Please join us weekly. Stay for as long as you like.
Kline, College Room  6:00 pm – 7:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Language tables are held at Kline and entail about an hour of casual discussion during meal times, where students interested in a language get to know each other and practice colloquial conversations. They are held by the tutor of the language, and although sometimes professors join the table, it is a very low-stakes and fun setting to immerse yourself in a language, its culture and the foreign language community at Bard.

Scholarly Resources