Harvard Radcliffe Institute proudly announces its 26th class of fellows, who will pursue an array of projects that advance bold new thinking across disciplines. Coveted yearlong Radcliffe fellowships provide a rare opportunity to pursue ambitious projects in the unique environment of an interdisciplinary institute for advanced study within Harvard University. Each fellowship cohort draws leading scholars in the humanities, sciences, social sciences, and arts—along with writers, journalists, playwrights, and other distinguished professionals. This year, Radcliffe received 1,677 applications for roughly 50 fellowship slots.
At Radcliffe, Jen Bervin will work closely with Houghton Library’s Emily Dickinson Collection and the conservator Debora Mayer of Weissman Preservation Center to compile the embossed images on Dickinson’s machine-made papers, questioning the local and global origins of paper made from highly processed cotton and linen cloth fibers.
John Yau reviews Jen Bervin: Source in Hyperallergic. Of the artist’s first West Coast survey and the inaugural exhibition at Catharine Clark Gallery's newly expanded 9,200 square-foot space, he writes: "An unclassifiable artist and a deep reader, Jen Bervin has expanded the notion of what it is to be a poet in the 21st century."
Published for the first survey exhibition of artist and poet Jen Bervin (b. 1972), Shift Rotate Reflect features 23 individual and collaborative projects from 1997 to 2020. The works demonstrate the range of her interdisciplinary research, including the legacies of women artists and writers, relationships between text and textiles, and abstractions of language and landscape. This 192-page monograph is available here.
In this new artist book from Granary Books, Bervin responds to the omission of the word 'no' in The Concordance to the Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by S.P. Rosenbaum (Cornell University, 1964). A concordance indexes the words a major author has used in her work over the course of her lifetime. Each word is listed alphabetically and chronologically, indexed, and cited in order of frequency. Dickinson used the 'nonsignificant' word 'no' 395 times. 'Yes' which was included? Four. What is significant to a poet writing to further 'no?'
Jen Bervin’s work has been covered in national and international publications and media outlets such as NPR, The Nation, Artforum, Art in America, Frieze, The New York Times, Times Literary Supplement, Hyperallergic, and The New Yorker.