The Composer's Salon

During FWT 2012, music faculty member Kitty Brazelton invited professional singers and music students to her home to workshop students' compositions, explore the composing process, and eat homemade apple pie. 

Students work in close collaboration with faculty members who themselves are actively practicing in their fields. This teacher-practitioner model helps students discover their distinctive intellectual passions and drives their work in the most compelling directions.

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Dance Teacher-Practitioners

More than 75 years ago, hundreds of students flocked to The Bennington School of the Dance to study with the "Big Four" of modern dance: Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Hanya Holm, and Charles Weidman. Today, an esteemed faculty of professional dancers and choreographers continues to draw students interested in making daring new work to Bennington.

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Drama Teacher-Practitioners

The drama faculty is composed of award-winning performers, directors, designers, and playwrights who use their experience as professionals to inform their work in the classroom, on the stage, and behind the curtain.

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Literature Teacher-Practitioners

Bennington’s literature faculty is comprised of renowned novelists, nonfiction writers, essayists, poets, and playwrights. They are National Endowment for the Arts fellows, Fulbright fellows, and PEN Award finalists, and have been published in The New Yorker, Slate, The Paris Review, Yale Review, Tin House, The Literary Review, Chicago Review, Best American Short Stories, and The O. Henry Award Winners, among others.

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Mathematics and Science Faculty

Active biologists, chemists, physicists, astronomers, and mathematicians make up the science and mathematics faculty at Bennington. Not only are they making meaningful contributions to their respective fields, they are often conducting research right here on campus, inviting students to join them in their work.

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Music by Bennington Faculty

Bennington’s music faculty is made up of renowned musicians, composers, and performers. They have premiered operas at the Lincoln Center, toured festivals around the globe, and performed at such legendary venues as the New York punk rock club CBGB. Here’s a sample of their work.

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Social Science Faculty

At Bennington, you can take international relations from the former Iranian ambassador to the United Nations, study politics from a former fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace, or do field research in Africa with an anthropologist who has been studying one Kenyan village for 20 years. The social science faculty, all active scholars and researchers in their fields, advances the work by doing the work.

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Visual Arts Teacher-Practitioners

Bennington’s visual arts faculty is composed of photographers, sculptors, painters, architects, ceramicists, printmakers, and digital artists whose pioneering work has appeared in some of the most prestigious museums, galleries, and art publications in the world. They are keen to use their experience as professionals to inform and expand their work in the classroom.

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Food Justice in NYC

Environmental Studies Director Valerie Imbruce was interviewed on WBAI Pacifica Radio in New York City for a segment on the City's plans to make its food system more locally sourced and accessible to low-income and immigrant communities. Imbruce's expertise on the subject stems from her extensive research on the global expansion of Chinatown's food system, which examines the demand for ethnic produce from Asian immigrants in New York City, and maps the distinct agricultural networks that have formed as a result.

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Skip Navigation LinksThe Faculty

Bennington's teacher-practitioner model means that students work in close collaboration with faculty members who themselves are actively practicing in their fields. The many ways in which faculty create new work and pose new questions make them models for students, who in turn and over time create work and pose questions of their own.

As advisors, the faculty are both mentors and guides. They oversee the unfolding of the Plan Process by helping students discover their distinctive intellectual passions and figure out how these interests might shape an education of depth, breadth, and rigor. Through ongoing conversation, in one-on-one advising sessions and as part of Plan Committees, faculty help students steer their work in the most compelling directions.