Literature

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Term
Time & Day Offered
Level
Credits
Course Duration

Poetry and Technology — LIT4393.01

Spring 2024
Instructor: Franny Choi
Credits: 2
Since Open AI’s release of ChatGPT, many have wondered—even panicked—about how this new technology would impact literature, including the field of poetry. But literature has always been shaped by the technology of its time. In this 2-credit class, we will look beyond the common assumption of poems as ideally “timeless” to examine how poetry has developed alongside (not against)
Literature

Poetry of Perpetual War — LIT2258.01

Spring 2018
Instructor: Stefania Heim
Credits: 4
We will begin our study of War Poetry not on the beach before Troy or in the trenches of the first World War, but in our present moment, when, as legal scholar Mary Dudziak argues, wartime is no longer “an exception to normal peacetime,” but “the only kind of time we have.” What are War Poems when war is everywhere and always? Who does and does not get to write them? What kind
Literature

Posthumanist Theory & Poetry — LIT4419.01

Spring 2027
Instructor: Franny Choi
Days & Time: TU 2:10pm-5:50pm
Credits: 4

Lyric poetry prizes the personal "I," but what happens when writers embody the lives of objects, animals, robots, and environments? How does writing from these positions help illuminate the ways that the concept of "humanity" has excluded Black, POC, trans and gender-diverse, and disabled people? And what new possibilities are opened when we think and write beyond the human?

Black Studies Literature Society Culture and Thought

Practicum: National Undergrad Literary Anthology — LIT4360.01

Fall 2014
Instructor: rebecca godwin
Days & Time: TBA
Credits: 2
This two-credit course involves reading, selecting, and editing material for plain china, an on-line literary anthology highlighting the work of undergraduate students from across the country. The work will result in a monthly on-line publication of 2014 writing and art. We're looking for readers/editors in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction; interest in art selection and computer
Literature

Practicum: National Undergrad Literary Anthology — LIT4360.01

Fall 2013
Instructor: Rebecca Godwin
Days & Time: TBA
Credits: 2
This two-credit course will focus on reading, selecting, and editing material for plain china, an on-line literary anthology featuring the work of undergraduate students across the country. The work will result in monthly on-line publication. We're looking for reader/editors in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction; interest in art direction and computer knowledge welcome. This
Literature

Prima dell'_Amica geniale_: Elena Ferrante's Short Novels — ITA4613.01

Spring 2022
Instructor: Barbara Alfano
Credits: 4
Elena Ferrante's novels are all written in the first-person. The narrator of her stories and their fictitious author weave a fabric in which they purposely overlap, suggest non-existent biographical references, lie to tell some truth, and ultimately consign to the reader a particular authorial profile as much as unforgettable female protagonists. This course explores the
Cultural Studies and Languages Literature

Puppet Full of Worms — LIT2577.01

Fall 2025
Instructor: Manuel Gonzales
Days & Time: TU 8:30am-12:10pm
Credits: 4

In this course we are tackling the Shakespeare history plays, examining the imperialistic and violent movements of Henrys and Richards, et al, exploring betrayals, battles, the War of the Roses, British history -- as understood in our contemporary time and compared to how it was understood by Shakespeare, who cut his teeth on the histories, spreading both English lore and

Literature

Queer American Poetry: Stonewall to Present — LIT2297.01

Fall 2019
Instructor: Phillip Williams
Credits: 4
Often, same-sex desire exists as the sole portrayal and determining factor of whether or not a text dwells in queerness. But the idea of queer has never been solely about same-sex desire or even sexual desire at all. Contrary to expectation, poets for years have written about revolutionary ways to exist in a society that has made the self-proclaimed orthodoxy of gender
Literature

Queer Asian Pacific American Literature — LIT2529.01

Spring 2026
Instructor: Franny Choi
Days & Time: MO,TH 1:40pm-3:30pm
Credits: 4

To be LGBTQIA and AAPI is to occupy two disparate, marginalized identities that seem to be be in constant flux. What might the literature of this intersection teach us about larger questions of community, belonging, and resistance? This 2000-level class attempts to locate a Queer Asian Pacific America through literature, from Chinese American lesbian poets of the 1980s to

Literature Society Culture and Thought

Queer Asian Pacific American Literature — LIT2529.01) (cancelled 4/23/2024

Fall 2024
Instructor: Franny Choi
Credits: 4
To be LGBTQIA and AAPI is to occupy two disparate, marginalized identities that seem constantly to be shifting. What might the literature of this intersection teach us about larger questions of community, belonging, and resistance? This 2000-level class attempts to locate a Queer Asian Pacific America through literature, from the work of early Chinese American lesbian poets
Literature Society Culture and Thought

Race in Publishing — LIT4599.01

Fall 2024
Instructor: Carly Rudzinski
Credits: 4
That writers of color earn less than their white peers in advances and fees is anecdotally well known. But we lack exhaustive data. Gearing up for such data collection the next few years in a faculty-driven project at Bennington, this course provides an overview of the broader ethical and social landscape around diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in publishing. Major
Literature

Race, Robots, and Asian American Literature — LIT2603.01

Spring 2024
Instructor: Franny Choi
Credits: 4
From Blade Runner to Ex Machina, visions of robotic futures are populated with Asian bodies, settings, and cultural forms. How is it that robots became so closely linked to the racialization of Asian/American people? What might we learn about the latter by examining how the former shows up in our cultural imagination? And how have Asian diasporic writers handled these
Literature Society Culture and Thought

Race, Robots, and Asian/American Literature — LIT2603.01

Spring 2023
Instructor: Michael Dumanis
Credits: 4
From Blade Runner to Ex Machina, visions of robotic futures are populated with Asian bodies, settings, and cultural forms. How is it that robots became so closely linked to the racialization of Asian/American people? What might we learn about the latter by examining how the former shows up in our cultural imagination? And how have Asian diasporic writers handled these
Literature

Racine — LIT4157.01

Spring 2015
Instructor: Dan Hofstadter
Credits: 4
During the seventeenth century France rose to unparalleled heights of literary creativity. We explore the historical context of this development, devoting some attention to classical models, particularly Euripedes' play Andromache. Jean Racine, who was at times in conflict with the royal court, offered his tragedies Andromaque, Phedre, Berenice, Iphigenie, and others, which we
Literature

Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man — LIT2277.01

Spring 2021
Instructor: Benjamin Anastas
Credits: 2
“All novels are about certain minorities,” Ralph Ellison insisted in a 1955 interview with The Paris Review. “The individual is a minority," he went on. "The universal in the novel–and isn’t that what we’re all clamoring for these days?–is reached only through the depiction of the specific man in a specific circumstance.” If this assertion is still to be believed, then the the
Literature

Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man — LIT2277.01

Spring 2023
Instructor: Benjamin Anastas
Credits: 4
Before Donald Glover donned prosthetic whiteface for the “Teddy Perkins” episode of Atlanta, before Get Out flipped the contemporary horror movie on white audiences, Ralph Ellison’s 1952 novel Invisible Man turned the bildungsroman, a realist staple since the 18th century, into a wild phantasmagoria about structural racism in the U.S. and the experience of Black Americans. “All
Literature

Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man — LIT2277.01

Spring 2018
Instructor: Benjamin Anastas
Credits: 4
"All novels are about certain minorities," Ralph Ellison insisted in a 1955 interview with The Paris Review. "The individual is a minority. The universal in the novel--and isn't that what we're all clamoring for these days?--is reached only through the depiction of the specific man in a specific circumstance." If this is true, then the enduring power of Ellison's Invisible Man
Literature

Re-Creating the Classics — LIT2318.01

Spring 2015
Instructor: Marguerite Feitlowitz
Credits: 4
"Why read the classics?" Italo Calvino famously asked. What does it mean to be "contemporary"? Why is it that our meditations on, and debates with, these landmark works never seem to be "settled"? Why is it that some of our most deeply experimental, politically combative, and visionary writers continually find inspiration in canonical works? In our exploration of these
Literature

Re-Creating the Classics — LIT2318.01

Fall 2017
Instructor: Marguerite Feitlowitz
Credits: 4
"Why read the classics?" Italo Calvino famously asked. What does it mean to be "contemporary"? Why is it that our meditations on, and debates with, these landmark works never seem to be "settled"? Why is it that some of our most deeply experimental, politically combative, and visionary writers continually find inspiration in canonical works? In our exploration of these
Literature

Re-Creating the Classics — LIT2318.02

Fall 2020
Instructor: mfeitlowitz@bennington.edu
Credits: 4
A contemporary drama critic recently wrote: “Whenever you return to something—to a play, a song, a scene—you bring your past with you. And not just what you’vebeen through and figured out, but what your culture has been through and figured out too, and what you are both still going through.” How is it that a work written hundreds or thousands of years ago can resonate so
Literature

Reading Writing Fiction: ESLit — LIT4594.01) (day/time updated as of 5/10/2024

Fall 2024
Instructor: Mariam Rahmani
Credits: 4
Reversing the typical shame around so-called "ESL" speakers, this course explores the rich history of modern and contemporary Anglophone literature written by authors who learned English as a second language or within a bi/multilingual context. This rigorous reading list is then used as a springboard for cultivating diverse voices and stories in the classroom. The course’s
Literature

Reading Writing Fiction: Plot and Suspense — LIT4144.01

Spring 2020
Instructor: Manuel Gonzales
Credits: 4
What is plot? What are stakes and how are they raised and can a story or a novel still compel a reader with small or smaller stakes? What is dramatic tension and what are the other ways a writer can build tension into a short story or a chapter? What, in other words, keeps a reader turning pages through a story or a novel and what happens when these same tools are applied to
Literature