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Term
Time & Day Offered
Level
Credits
Course Duration

Reading and Writing: Poetry in Form — LIT4243.01

Spring 2018
Instructor: Phillip B. Williams
Credits: 4
Poetic form is as diverse as the poets who use them. Stretching from forms as old as the sonnet to as contemporary as the Twitter poem, poets utilize prosody to express specific concerns in shocking and beautiful ways. Every decision counts, and we will learn what those decisions are and the weight they carry for different poets. We will read extensively poems and craft essays
Literature

Reading and Writing: Poetry of Trauma and Violence — LIT4290.01

Spring 2020
Instructor: Phillip Williams
Credits: 4
Students will read various poetry collections that deal with different forms of trauma: homophobia, lynching, war, sexual abuse, colonization, and the overall idea of how to define “violence.” There will be time to discuss prosodic interests of our poets as well as discuss how content and form work together to create a seamless work. We will then turn to our own work and
Literature

Reading and Writing: the First Novel — LIT4282.01

Spring 2024
Instructor: Benjamin Anastas
Credits: 4
Some writers are born gradually over a body of work that allows them to develop a signature style and a series of concerns that will flower over time, while other writers are seemingly born complete–like Athena emerging whole from Zeus’s head–with their first novels. We will read a wide selection of remarkable first novels over the term (examples include Oranges Are Not the
Literature

Reading and Writing: the Missing Person — LIT4138.01

Spring 2019
Instructor: Kathleen Alcott
Credits: 4
Traditionally, the fiction writer’s task has been to chart the space between inner and outer lives, illustrating for the reader how one operates on the other. But in the cases of certain fictive persons and their realities, is total access always the best way forward? In this craft seminar on experimental characterization, we will explore works in which the author defines the
Literature

Reading and Writing: The Novel — LIT4326.01

Fall 2013
Instructor: Benjamin Anastas
Days & Time: TBA
Credits: 4
What is the novel and how is it constructed? This course will treat the novel, primarily, as an exercise in form, and take students on in-depth tour of the traditions as they have evolved: the epistolary novel, the picaresque, the bildungsroman, the sturdy ‘realist’ or ‘naturalist’ novel, meta-fiction in its many different guises. We’ll read from the novel’s beginnings in the
Literature

Reading and Writing: the Personal Essay — LIT4617.01

Spring 2026
Instructor: Jo Ann Beard
Days & Time: WE 2:10pm-5:50pm
Credits: 4

The essay is an intellectual and an artistic endeavor, and work in the form means work in thinking—about life, values, our own ideas and the ideas of others. Good personal essays entertain, inform and move us through the rendering of, and reflection over, our own life experiences. Essays and stories by artists such as Virginia Woolf, E. B. White, Daniel Orozco, Annie Dillard

Literature

Reading as a Collective Act: Thinking Through Dance and Performance — DAN4819B.01

Spring 2026
Instructor: Donna Faye Burchfield
Days & Time: M 1:40PM-3:30PM, W 10:00AM-11:50AM
Credits: 4

This course aims to experiment with generative and alternative forms of reading that can be thought of as not only a methodology, but as a practice that supports us as we engage in research with, alongside and through study in dance and performance. We will ask ourselves what it means to read and “make sense” of texts and events today…together. 

Dance (BFA)

Reading as a Collective Act: Thinking Through Dance and Performance — DAN4819B.01

Spring 2025
Instructor: Tania Perez
Credits: 4
This course aims to experiment with generative and alternative forms of reading that can be thought of as not only a methodology, but as a practice that supports us as we engage in research with, alongside and through study in dance and performance. We will ask ourselves what it means to read and “make sense” of texts and events today…together.  *For BFA students this

Reading Ethnography — ANT4218.01

Spring 2021
Instructor: Noah Coburn
Credits: 2
This course is an advanced exploration of theory and the history of anthropology by using the most basic of anthropological texts, the ethnography. By carefully analyzing a series of classic and more current ethnographies, students will look at the relationship between approaches, how ethnographic data is presented to the reader and how the shape of the text determines how the
Society Culture and Thought

Reading Ethnography — ANT4218.01) (cancelled 10/17/2023

Spring 2024
Instructor: Noah Coburn
Credits: 4
This course is an advanced exploration of theory and the history of anthropology by using the most basic of anthropological texts, the ethnography. By carefully analyzing a series of classic and more current ethnographies, students will look at the relationship between approaches, how ethnographic data is presented to the reader and how the shape of the text determines how the
Society Culture and Thought

Reading into Refuge: Stories of Migration — LIT2340.01

Fall 2019
Instructor: Stuart Nadler
Credits: 4
The repercussions of the refugee crisis in Syria and at our southern border have once again thrust the politics of migration and refuge into the public discussion. In this course we will investigate the literature of forced exile and resettlement in order to understand how our collective narratives about emigration are formed, and to ask what it means for a writer to
Literature

Reading Marx — PHI4106.01

Spring 2020
Instructor: Paul Voice
Credits: 2
Marx's ideas remain an important source of political and social science thought. This class requires students to engage in a close and critical reading of a number of Marx's essays and to assess his work in the light of critical philosophical responses.
Society Culture and Thought

Reading Marx — PHI4106.01

Spring 2018
Instructor: Paul Voice
Credits: 2
Marx's ideas remain an important source of political and social science thought. This class requires students to engage in a close and critical reading of a number of Marx's essays and works. The aim of this short course is to acquire a firm understanding of Marx’s central concepts.
Society Culture and Thought

Reading Marx — PHI4106.01

Spring 2015
Instructor: Paul Voice
Credits: 2
***Time Change*** Marx's ideas remain an important source of political and social science thought. This class requires students to engage in a close and critical reading of a number of Marx's essays and to assess his work in the light of critical philosophical responses. This course will be offered the first seven weeks of term.
Social Science

Reading Poetry: A Basic Course — LIT2357.01

Spring 2021
Instructor: Michael Dumanis
Credits: 4
In what ways is reading poetry a fundamentally different practice from reading prose? What can we discover about a poem by examining its structure and the choices the poet made? In this introductory course we will trace the chronological development of poetry in English as we carefully consider a range of different poems from different historical periods, as well as
Literature

Reading Poetry: A Basic Course — LIT2357.01

Spring 2019
Instructor: Michael Dumanis
Credits: 4
In what ways is reading poetry a fundamentally different practice from reading prose? What can we discover about a poem by examining its structure and the choices the poet made? In this introductory course we will carefully consider a range of different poems from different historical periods, as well as a number of contemporary works, as we try to ascertain what a poem is,
Literature

Reading Revolution — LIT4602.01

Spring 2025
Instructor: Michael Dumanis
Credits: 4
In this seminar, we join in consideration of our consciousness in the act of creation on and off the page, as a means and expression of revolution. We explore what a revolution in reading as writing and writing as reading means, in experience, for each of us; rather than relegating our understanding of consciousness to total mystery, the object of this class is to directly and
Literature

Reading the Body — ANT4208.01

Spring 2014
Instructor: Miroslava Prazak; Susan Sgorbati
Credits: 4
Should boys be robust and ruddy? Should girls be wan, lithe and prone to vapors? Unlike the Western scientific, biomedical constructions of the body, a cultural constructionist approach accepts the body, the self, and the person as culturally shaped, constrained, and invented. In this course, we will explore how social values and hierarchies are written in, on, and through the
Social Science Dance

Reading the Headlines through the Conflict Resolution Theory Lens — MED2132.01

Spring 2018
Instructor: Michael Cohen
Credits: 2
This course will take a critical look at how news is reported in the media with a particular focus on stories dealing with conflicts. We will read articles from the news with, if you will, conflict resolution glasses on as we analyze the dynamics of different conflicts. We will also examine what gets reported, what does not get reported, and how stories are reported.
CAPA

Reading the Photograph — PHO2306.01

Fall 2020
Instructor: JKline@bennington.edu
Credits: 4
This course invites students to explore a range of writings on the photograph from the 19th, 20th, and current century. Readings will be shared by literary and cultural critics, artists, scholars including Lady Eastlake, Charles Baudelaire, Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, Susan Sontag, John Berger, Martha Rosler, Allan Sekula, bell hooks, T.J. Demos, and Mark Sealy. Students
Visual Arts

Reading the Photograph — PHO4218.01

Fall 2014
Instructor: jonathan kline
Days & Time: TBA
Credits: 4
This course invites students to explore the myriad ways that the photograph has been considered over past 175 years. From the early observations of Charles Baudelaire, Lady Eastlake, and Fox Talbot through the 20th century insights of Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, and John Berger, we will investigate the aesthetic, social, and political aspects of the medium. More recent
Visual Arts

Reading Wilderness — LIT2236.01

Fall 2018
Instructor: Akiko Busch
Credits: 2
For generations, the passage west and notions of wilderness have provided resonant subject matter for American writers. In the words of Wallace Stegner, “the wilderness idea is something that has helped form our character and certainly shaped our history as a people.” But if that idea is rooted in perceived notions of untouched earth, today it has more to do with managed
Literature

Reading Wilderness — LIT2236.01

Spring 2015
Instructor: Akiko Busch
Credits: 4
For generations, the passage west and the idea of wilderness have provided resonant subject matter for American writers. In the words of Wallace Stegner, "the wilderness idea is something that has helped form our character and certainly shaped our history as a people." The course will explore how our understanding of wilderness has evolved from perceived notions of untouched
Environment Literature

Readings in Chaucer — LIT2124.01

Spring 2015
Instructor: Rebecca Godwin
Credits: 4
Our overriding aim is simple: to read, discuss, write about, and generally immerse ourselves in Geoffrey Chaucer's masterworks, The Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde. In that process, we'll aim to get sufficiently comfortable with Middle English to read, delight in, and even imitate that rich language. We'll also consider something of Chaucer's life and times as
Literature