Faculty

Barbara Alfano brings a background in journalism, translation, and short-story writing in Italian to her study of 20th- and 21st-century Italian fiction.

Jen Allen is a pianist, composer and author. She frequently performs in New York, the Northeast US and in venues throughout the world, as the leader of her own groups or as a member of other creative music ensembles.

Joseph Alpar's research focuses on the anthropology of music in Turkey and the Middle East, and the relationships between music, spirituality, modernity, marginalization, social expression, and identity.

A standout among his many books and essays, Benjamin Anastas’ novel An Underachiever’s Diary has been called “the funniest, most underappreciated novel of the ’90s.”

David Anderegg has informed and comforted millions of parents with his books and writings on children and the mind, backed by extensive research and a longtime psychotherapy practice.

When natural disaster strikes, its effects are not experienced outside of history: Lopamudra Banerjee’s work brings together issues of the environment and development to explore how the poor experience such events in disproportionate ways.

Barry Bartlett creates ceramic sculptures that take on questions of conflict, evolution, warfare, suburban sprawl, kitsch, and commemoration.

Michael Bisio returned to New York in 2006 after spending 30 years on the West Coast and quickly became an integral part of the New York City creative music community. Since 2009, he has been bass instructor at Bennington College and a member of the Matthew Shipp Trio.

Josh Blackwell’s recent works are called Neveruses (never•uses). Neveruses are lumpish, androgynous painting-objects comprised of scavenged plastic bags and colored fibers such as wool yarn and silk thread. These hybrid devices are neither useful nor redundant, although both are implied.

Thomas Bogdan’s vocal performance, in genres ranging from old music to new, avant-garde multimedia performance and cabaret, has received wonderful reviews from critics around the world.

David Bond teaches on the environment and public action. Trained as an anthropologist, Bond studies oil spills and their imprint on environmental science and governance. His work shows how toxic disruptions can fix vital relations with new forms of knowledge and care.

Colin Brant’s luxurious, color-drenched, paintings and drawings present an inquiry that is both reverent and skeptical, offering examinations of landscape as personal, politicized, and perpetually evolving historical space.

Digital-chamber-punk bands, nine-piece rockestras, 21st century medieval quartets: Kitty Brazelton’s ability to create new genres as a composer, performer, singer, and instrumentalist is rooted in a study of even the most traditional forms of music.

Carly Briggs’ mathematical research in algebraic combinatorics involves using combinatorial objects to encode information about complex structures. In the classroom, she uses collaborative, active learning methods to make mathematics inclusive and accessible.

Nicholas Brooke creates music across disciplines, from collages of recordings with live theater, to home-built instrumentariums inspired by gamelan. He has received Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and New Music USA fellowships and premieres at the Lincoln Center Festival, Spoleto, and MASS MOCA.

An inorganic chemist, John Bullock investigates the reaction pathways and mechanisms of short-lived species generated at electrodes. He is also interested in reforming the undergraduate chemistry curricula by de-emphasizing traditional boundaries between sub-disciplines within the field.

Akiko Busch’s writings—books and essays in publications ranging from Metropolis to The New York Times—weave together design, culture, and nature to address things like the geography of the home, citizen science, and the lives of objects.

Brian Campion facilitates all programs and initiatives connected to state and federal policy; he also serves as a Vermont State Senator.

A dramaturg, theater historian, and author of American Cinderellas on the Broadway Musical Stage (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), Maya Cantu specializes in twentieth-century American theater.

Andrew Cencini has developed software and services used by millions of people every day, working in the technology industry, where he helped build Bing, as well as SQL Server and other products. He serves as VP of engineering and cofounder of Vapor IO, a data center startup based out of Austin, TX.

Noah Coburn is a political anthropologist who focuses on Afghanistan and South Asia, studying violence, governance, and how people negotiate the overlap of politics, power, and culture.

Rabbi Michael Cohen, a longtime environmental activist, has written extensively on the impact of ecological issues on the Middle East peace process.

An award-winning teacher, Ronald Cohen focuses his research in social psychology on issues of justice and silence, and takes his practice into the community with his work on reparative justice.

7-string guitar player, NEA grant recipient and Grammy-nominated producer who has produced and performed with some of the biggest acts in the business.

Terry Creach directs Creach/Company, which tours throughout the United States and Europe, and his work as a choreographer has been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Foundation for the Arts, and the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts.

Charles Crowell is a financial economist and entrepreneur interested in the field of social entrepreneurship and community regeneration.

The work of astronomer Hugh Crowl addresses questions of how the massive collections of stars, gas, dust, and dark matter that we call galaxies assemble. How do galaxies form and evolve? Specifically, how do environmental conditions such as the flow of gas in and out of galaxies affect that process?

Annabel Davis-Goff is a novelist, screenwriter, essayist, social justice advocate, and a driving force behind Bennington College’s Incarceration in America and Prison Education Initiatives.

Rosario M. de Swanson combines creative writing with scholarly research. Her work centers on Women writers from Latin America, the literature of Equatorial Guinea, and Afro-Latin American Writers.

Alisa Del Tufo's career has been dedicated to making impact at the nexus of practice and policy; individual and community change; intellectual pursuit and activism with the goal of ending violence in the lives of women and girls addressing racism and other deep social challenges. She has founded three organizations: Sanctuary for Families, CONNECT, and Threshold Collaborative.

Elena Demyanenko was a member of Trisha Brown and Stephen Petronio Dance Companies, which premiered original choreography at Baryshnikov Arts Center, New York Live Arts, and other venues. She is the recipient of New York Live Arts and EMPAC Dance Movies commissions and a Jerome Robbins Fellowship.

Thorsten Dennerline produces paintings, drawings, and artists’ books. The main focus of his work originates from an interest in poetry, which has led to collaborative projects with writers in book form, and in paintings and drawing projects that explore the poetic possibilities of the landscape.

The acclaimed poetry of Michael Dumanis weaves together memories of childhood, diaspora, and dislocation.

Judith Enck is a senior advisor at the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development. She will work with Bennington students to tackle the giant emerging issue of our time:  plastic pollution.

Marguerite Feitlowitz is the author of the internationally acclaimed A Lexicon of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture and four volumes of literary translation, many essays, fiction, and criticism.

Janet Foley applies her expertise in inorganic chemistry to study the effects of pollutants in Vermont groundwater, to understand the effects of ocean acidification on coral reefs, and to explore the photochemistry and medicinal applications of gold compounds.

Pianist whose performing career has taken her from The Kennedy Center to tours of Europe, Japan, and South America

Mariam Ghani is an artist, writer, and filmmaker. Her work looks at places, spaces and moments where social, political and cultural structures take on visible forms, and spans video, sound, installation, photography, performance, text and data. 

Michael Giannitti has extensive professional experience as a lighting designer and educator. He has designed lighting at many of the most prestigious venues around the country and has taught abroad as a two-time Fulbright Specialist Grant recipient.

Manuel Gonzales is the author of The Miniature Wife and Other Stories, which won the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction and the John Gardner Prize for Fiction, and the novel, The Regional Office is Under Attack!

Karen Gover teaches philosophy of art, ancient Greek and continental philosophy, and is an active art critic.

Internationally acclaimed jazz musician and theorist Milford Graves has been the recipient of honors including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, the Down Beat International Award, and the Critics Award. Photo credit: Noa Ben-Amotz

Andrew Greenwald is a performing and composing musician. He is a founding member of the composer/performer collective Ensemble Pamplemousse (established 2002) and currently serves as the Artistic Director. His compositions have been performed internationally by leading ensembles including the Arditti Quartet, JACK Quartet, Ensemble Dal Niente, Ensemble Adapter, Distractfold and ICE among others. 

Camille Guthrie’s most recent book of poetry, Articulated Lair, engages with the life and work of one of the great artists of the 20th century, Louise Bourgeois, in her continued interest in ekphrasis—writing poetry in response to visual art.

Ben Hall ’04 is a chef/activist/artist based in Detroit. Hall’s work revolves around the forms community takes. Particularly at the Russell Street Deli, a 30-year-old heritage restaurant in Detroit’s "Eastern Market", which Hall owns and operates with collaborator Jason Murphy, as a long-term sited project dealing with labor structures, how capital routes itself, and hierarchical power structures.

Amber Hancock is a physical organic chemist investigating in the photochemistry of organic free radicals. Her work aims to build capacity for environmentally benign synthetic methods by revealing the factors governing reactivity using experimental kinetic and computational techniques.  

A scholar of contemporary Spanish fiction, Sarah D. Harris's research and teaching interests include sequential art, twentieth and twenty-first century Peninsular film, trauma, collective memory and forgetting, migration, monstrosity, and gender and identity studies.

Camille Hoffman's current work is a mixed-media meditation on Manifest Destiny and its representation in the romantic American landscape. Reflecting on the embedded and latent meanings around light, nature, the frontier, borders, race, gender and power in influential American landscape paintings of the 19th century, she uses materials collected from her everyday life, including holiday-themed tablecloths, discarded medical records, nature calendars, plastic bags and paint, to craft imaginary landscapes that are grounded in accumulation, personal narrative and historical critique.

Anna Maria Hong is the author of the novella H & G (Sidebrow Books), winner of the A Room of Her Own Foundation’s Clarissa Dalloway Prize, and Age of Glass, winner of Cleveland State University Poetry Center’s First Book Poetry Competition and the Poetry Society of America’s 2019 Norma Farber First Book Award. Her second poetry collection, Fablesque, won Tupelo Press’s Berkshire Prize and is forthcoming in June 2020. A former Bunting Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, she has published work in The Nation, The Iowa Review, Ecotone, Poetry, jubilat, Fence, Southwest Review, Jacket2, Poetry Daily, The Best American Poetry, and many other publications.

John Hultgren's work explores the theoretical and ideological foundations of environmental political struggles.

Susie Ibarra is known for her innovative style and cultural fluency as a composer, improviser, percussionist, and humanitarian.

Yoko Inoue’s multidisciplinary art practice anthropologically examines complex relationships between people and objects, the commodification of culture, and the assimilation and transformation of cultural meaning and values. Using ceramic medium she explores the socio-political and economic implication of products and globalization.

Jon Isherwood is a sculptor who has pioneered high-tech CNC technologies, led international projects, and designed opportunities to investigate the sites where the intellectual and physical become visually entangled.

Kirk Jackson is an actor/director with four decades of experience on and off Broadway and regionally. A graduate of the Yale School of Drama, he has assisted Ivo van Hove on multiple productions in New York City and, recently, began to direct operas.

As the artistic director of the Dorset Theatre Festival, a host of the LAByrinth Theatre Company’s workshops at Bennington, and a member of the famed Actor’s Studio, Dina Janis has studied, worked with, and supported some of the most talented actors, writers, and directors working in theatre today.

John Kirk teaches classes in the history of American and Celtic traditional music in addition to mandolin, fiddle, banjo, ukulele, mountain and hammered dulcimers, and traditional music ensemble.

Jonathan Kline’s artwork straddles the divide between photography’s contemporary, hybrid, and digital nature and its most traditional and original forms

Celebrated playwright Sherry Kramer believes every play is created in the audience, and her classes are a treasure hunt to discover how a play shapes our experience and how it makes things matter.

How do social factors shape our use of language, and how does language use in turn impact our construction and perception of society? A sociolinguist, Thomas Leddy-Cecere addresses these questions through his research in Arabic and contemporary American English.

Pianist who has taught and performed through the United States and Italy, and prizewinner of the American National Chopin Competition and the New York Leschetizky Society.

Ginger Lin, a native of Taiwan, has 30 years of experience teaching at the cross-section of language, literature, history, and philosophy.

Jen Liu is a New York-based visual artist working in video, performance, and painting, on topics of national identity, economy, and the re-motivating of archival artifacts. She is a 2017 recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship in Film/Video, as well as the NYSCA/NYFA Fellowship in Digital/Electronic Art.

Mary Lum’s paintings, collages, and wall works, which have been praised by critics and exhibited widely, draw attention to the overlooked but subliminally powerful architecture of modern life.

Vanessa Lyon's teaching and research range from early Renaissance to modern and contemporary visual culture with a focus on European painting. She is especially interested in cross-cultural exchange, the intersectionality of gender, race, and theology in early modern visuality, and the legacies of the 'Old Masters' in subsequent art and its histories.

As a visual and sound artist, Thessia Machado’s work delves into the mechanical relationships among physical things: how they work and are affected by other things – interactivity of a tangible sort. "Working with sound allows me to think of the air in which we all swim, as yet another malleable and responsive, physical material. A non-hierarchical approach to sound (isn’t it all noise?) and its organizational principles (this doesn’t sound like music!) allows for the uncovering and exposing of latent patterns and systems that hide in the unremarkable."

Amie McClellan is a cell biologist who utilizes baker’s yeast with a very serious goal in mind: to explore how “molecular chaperones” participate in helping proteins attain and maintain their structure and function, and how this relates to human diseases that arise when this process goes awry.

Andrew McIntyre’s mathematical research concerns problems in geometry related to mathematical physics. His teaching is student centered and historically driven.

Catherine McKeen is a philosopher whose research focuses on ancient Greek thought, gender, and politics. 

A combined interest in LGBTQ studies, comparative literature, film studies, and Eastern European culture is at the center of Alexandar Mihailovic’s writing and teaching. Among other subjects, he writes and teaches about artificial intelligence in literature and popular culture, postcolonial women writers and filmmakers, and Russian Jewish literature.

Emily Mitchell-Eaton is a critical human geographer who studies how empires create diasporas that stretch to unexpected places. Her work focuses particularly on migration between the Pacific Islands and the U.S. South. As a geographer interested in mobility and migration, she explores how racial meanings, laws and policies, military infrastructures, and emotions travel through space and over time.

Kathryn Montovan uses mathematical modeling and analysis to understand complex ecosystem interactions and to discover the potential evolutionary causes of insect and animal behaviors. Her teaching is based on active learning techniques and is focused on engaging students of all levels in authentic mathematical inquiry.

Josef Mundt is a mathematician whose interests lie in the visualization of data, building mathematical confidence and connections, and helping others think of mathematics as an art form.

Brian Michael Murphy is a media archaeologist, poet, and essayist. In his work, he examines how media technologies, from taxidermy to digital photography archives, represent and reshape human experience.

Stuart Nadler is the author, most recently, of The Inseparables, which was named a Best Book of the Year by Kirkus, and was a finalist for the Mark Twain Prize for the American Voice. He is the recipient of the 5 Under 35 Award from the National Book Foundation, and has had his work translated into five languages.

In post-conflict transitions, whose visions of peace are privileged? Which structures of war are disassembled, and which are left intact? Kate Paarlberg-Kvam’s work brings together studies of peace processes and Latin American social movements to examine transitions as moments of socioeconomic reckoning.

Carol Pal is a historian who works on the intellectual history of early modern Europe. A former auto mechanic and pastry chef, she now focuses on the histories of science, medicine, the Republic of Letters, and knowledge production—with an emphasis on how women were always part of the picture.

Nathaniel Parke is a regional freelance cellist and is also on the faculty of Williams College.

Aysha Peltz’s ceramics blur the lines between utility and art, as the material properties of clay itself—the way it swells, fissures, and tears under its own weight—create a certain kind of poetry.

Ann Pibal’s widely recognized and highly acclaimed paintings have been exhibited extensively, in the United States, Europe, and Asia.

Senem Pirler is an intermedia-sound artist whose work is an interdisciplinary attempt that crosses over into sound engineering, sound art, video art, dance, performance, and installation. Pirler’s recent work has been exhibited at EMPAC, Roulette, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Mount Tremper Arts, and Collar Works, NY and has been recognized by grants, residencies, and awards including most recently Signal Culture residency and The Malcolm S. Morse Graduate Research Enhancement Award to honor the work of Pauline Oliveros and Deep Listening in 2018.

Jonathan Pitcher is a scholar of Latin American literature, philosophy, and history whose research interests exceed any one discipline: identity, exile, film, politics, travel, art, architectural ideology, puppetry, and the aftermath of the Boom, to name a few.

Prazak teaches anthropology and African studies, specializing in economic development and cultural change in East Africa, using multidisciplinary research strategies to address globalization, inequality, culturally-based ways of knowing, gender-based violence, and politics of the body.

In her work as a documentary filmmaker and film editor, Kate Purdie focuses on finding and portraying insights into the human experience by delving into lives and ideas that speak to themes of work, family, and community.

Jean Randich is an award-winning director, writer, and librettist specializing in new works, musical theatre, opera, and re-envisioned classics. She is cofounder and co-artistic director of Collider Theater in New York City.

Robert Ransick draws inspiration from the social and political world we live in, history, and the potential for a future that is better.

Sue Rees has exhibited her set designs, animations, installations, and video works worldwide and has worked collaboratively with choreographers, directors, and musicians in the United States, Europe, and India.

Choreographer, dancer, and visual artist Dana Reitz weaves movement and light scores that continually shift perception of time and space. Often performed in silence, they reveal musical nuance. She has collaborated with Jennifer Tipton, created works for Mikhail Baryshnikov, and toured extensively.

Jennifer Rohn has appeared in theatre productions on and off Broadway, in the United States and Europe, and in films and television, collaborating extensively with the renowned director Robert Wilson.

Noëlle Rouxel-Cubberly teaches French language through the lenses of French film, historical correspondence, and other aspects of French cultural life.

Kerry Ryer-Parke performs in a range of musical styles, from oratorio, opera, and early music to folk, jazz, and rock, in addition to directing the Bennington Children’s Chorus and Bennington Voice Workshop.

Charles Schoonmaker is an Emmy Award-winning costume designer for theatre, dance, opera, and television.

Tim Schroeder applies physical and chemical principles to understand interactions between deep-Earth and shallow-Earth systems. His courses are based on the idea that geology begins as an observational science, but that understanding Earth observations requires a physical sciences context.

Eileen Scully is an award-winning scholar of American diplomacy and international history. Her recent work explores historical understandings of human trafficking and international customary law on the coming, going, and staying of destitute, physically disabled migrants.

Susan Sgorbati, the director of the Elizabeth Coleman Center for the Advancement of Public Action, is a professional mediator and educator whose creative research has led to collaboration across disciplines ranging from dance improvisation to biology to visual arts, as both an artist and a driver of social change.

Stephen Shapiro’s research on early-modern French literature and culture focuses on aristocratic memoirs, the history of sexuality, culinary culture, and the history of the city of Paris. He is currently looking at the development of a modern gay culture in 18th-century Paris.

Allen Shawn’s work as a composer and pianist comprises a large catalogue of orchestral and chamber music, chamber operas, songs, piano music, and music for ballet, theatre, and film; he is also celebrated for his writings on Arnold Schoenberg and Leonard Bernstein, as well as his compelling memoirs.

Donald Sherefkin is an architect whose projects range from urban loft renovations to rural retreats to sacred spaces, extending from the heart of New York City to New England.

Elizabeth Sherman is known for her work on amphibians and, more recently, on coral reefs and climate change; she collaborates with student researchers in her study of how animals work — both individually and as part of larger ecosystems.

Rotimi Suberu’s research on Nigerian government and politics and international relations have prompted invitations to consult for the Nigerian government, the World Bank, the National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House, and the Forum of Federations.

An artist whose practice involves writing and curating, Anne Thompson creates community through collaborative projects that move art outside its institutionalized spaces.

Justin Vasselli’s work as a software engineer focuses on utilizing iOS technology to create efficient and enjoyable educational experiences for language learners.

Paul Voice is a scholar of moral and political philosophy with interests in problems of justice, liberalism, and pluralism.

Debbie Warnock's work draws upon sociology, education, and social statistics to investigate how underrepresented students access and experience higher education.

Elizabeth White is a multidisciplinary artist whose work has been exhibited nationally and internationally.

Phillip B. Williams is the author of Thief in the Interior, winner of the 2017 Kate Tufts Discovery Award and a 2017 Lambda Literary award. He received a 2017 Whiting Award and 2013 Ruth Lilly Fellowship. Phillip is the co-editor in chief of the online journal Vinyl.

Bruce Williamson is a jazz composer and multi-instrumentalist/recording artist who has collaborated and performed with such luminaries as Bobby McFerron, Fred Hersch, Julie Taymor, and Mark Rylance in a variety of genres, and whose work has been featured in Academy Award-winning film scores.

Michael Wimberly is a composer, percussionist, and music producer who has recorded and toured throughout Europe, Africa, and the Americas. He is the driving force behind Power of Drum, an alternative arts program whose mission is to make music education accessible to all youth worldwide.

Kerry Woods is an ecologist whose recent work includes long-term studies of old-growth forests, landscape ecology of the Taconic Mountains, and collaborative biogeographic analyses of global temperate forests. His work has been supported by NASA, NSF, US Forest Service, and the Mellon Foundation.

Mark Wunderlich is author of three critically acclaimed books of poetry, and his poems, interviews, reviews, and translations have appeared in journals such as Slate, The Paris Review, and Poetry, and in more than 30 anthologies.

Ikuko Yoshida teaches Japanese language and culture, and her research interest areas are second language acquisition, pedagogy, critical thinking in foreign language learning, technology, and Japanese aesthetics. She is a certified instructor of ikebana—traditional Japanese flower arrangement.