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We'll be reading some of the principal works that Henry James, as a young aspiring novelist, absorbed and analyzed in the process of actively forming his own aesthetic, culminating in his first great novel, The Portrait of a Lady. It's a highly various and idiosyncratic tracing and the reading list will reflect it, drawn from among Turgenev's A Sportsman's Sketches, Eliot's

This Honors Seminar will intensively explore the work of established and emerging African American poets of the past forty years. We will begin with a brief overview of African American poetry from the eighteenth century to the Black Arts Movement of the 1970s, then proceed to discuss a different poet each week. Along the way we will consider whether a distinctive "Black

The Austrian writer Robert Musil (1880-1942) never lived to complete his multi-volume Modernist masterpiece The Man Without Qualities. Conceived of as an ironic epitaph to the culture of Mitteleuropa that slid blindly into the catastrophe of the First World War, the novel--and its author--became embroiled in the dark upheavals that would lead to another suicidal conflict

War and Peace, Vanity Fair, and Shirley are novels that are set during the Napoleonic Wars. Charlotte Bronte’s novel is set in a Yorkshire deeply affected by the Peninsular wars, Tolstoy describes both Napoleon’s Russian campaign and the domestic and social life of a huge range of characters, and Thackeray’s greatest novel reaches its climax with the Battle of Waterloo.

Elizabeth Bowen and Barbara Pym provide a record of England life - social, political, and cultural - from the end of the First World War until the 1960s. Elizabeth Bowen was an Anglo-Irish novelist and short story writer. Her novels describe political tension, love, and war. She is admired for her description of landscape, her descriptions of London during the Blitz, her use of

Pleasure is one part of the aesthetic experience of fiction; another part is terror. This course will be a survey of major works of horror fiction from the 19th century through the present. We’ll pay particular attention to the techniques of writing horror, and the uses to which fiction writers have put them, from psychological examination through social critique and beyond.

Pleasure is one part of the aesthetic experience of fiction; another part is terror. This course will be a survey of major works of horror fiction (whether classified as such or otherwise) from the 19th century through the present, and of some important horror films from the 20th 21st centuries. The emphasis in this class will be on techniques for creating horror in fiction,

It’s one thing to feel scared when we watch scary movies, and it’s another to feel that same fear as we read books. After all, in books, there’s no eerie music, nor the possibility of being jolted by a sudden jump scare. Yet still, horror writing abounds and writers throughout history have found ways of communicating dread, terror, paranoia, and anguish through the written word

Architectural Design studio builds upon the lessons of subsequent design studio skills and the processes of critical inquiry, specifically as it relates to architectural investigations. These processes will be seen as interrelated and always informed by the societal, technological, and historical contexts within which architects work. The technological aspects

Housing has become a crisis for many Americans, but how it is a crisis is still poorly understood. This class takes housing as an urgent question, and aims to use the classroom as a critical research hub to better grasp the national and local dimensions of the current housing crisis. Students will be expected not only to participate in the academic study of housing in America

For more than 60 years, modern experimental psychology has focused on characterizing the intimately linked processes of learning and memory. At the same time, neuroscientists have worked doggedly since the birth of their field to unravel the neural mechanisms underlying these fundamental processes. How does an animal acquire information about its world and access and recall

How do animals work? Why do different animals work in different ways? The blue whale in the Pacific, the tapeworm lodged in the gut of a fox, and the flour beetle in your cupboard all must eat and grow and reproduce yet they differ enormously in size, longevity, and environment. The particular ways in which each of these animals has solved these problems are different yet there

How do animals work? Why do different animals work in different ways? The blue whale in the Pacific, the tapeworm lodged in the gut of a fox, and the flour beetle in your cupboard all must eat and grow and reproduce yet they differ enormously in size, longevity and environment. The particular ways in which each of these animals has "solved" these problems are different yet

The blue whale in the Pacific, the tapeworm lodged in the gut of a fox, and the flour beetle in your cupboard all must eat and grow and reproduce yet they differ enormously in size, longevity, and environment. The particular ways in which each of these animals has solved these problems are different yet there are also underlying similarities in their solutions. Evolutionary

Lab for BIO2102, How Do Animals Work?

On a daily basis, we each define a relationship to information, as a bearer of truth, evidence, authority, timeliness, social leverage, insight, etc. Part seminar and part workshop, this course will attempt to make that complex relationship visible. We will first focus on a history of knowledge, and the various ways in which it has been used to organize the world. We will then

How have psychologists defined feelings over the years, and how is the field continuing to change?  We will begin with the 19th Century, when scientists like Wundt and Charcot brought human perception and mental health symptoms out of the realm of metaphysics.  After briefly considering Darwin’s view of emotion and new perspectives on artwork from early asylums, we

In 1961, Jorge Luis Borges shared the Formentor prize with Samuel Beckett, thus internationalizing Latin American culture and supposedly initiating the Boom. Whether the swagger of the ensuing decades marked the apex of the continent's artistic production, or was simply the result of a single Spanish publishing house's hype, feeding a neo-imperialist world's expectations of

In 1961, Jorge Luis Borges shared the Formentor prize with Samuel Beckett, thus internationalizing Latin American culture and supposedly initiating the “Boom.” Whether the swagger of the ensuing decades marked the apex of the continent’s artistic production, or was simply the result of a single Spanish publishing house’s hype, feeding a neo-imperialist world’s expectations of

Webcasting radio and podcast are relatively new art forms that are transforming the way that people across the globe share ideas, music, and discourse.  This class focuses on the skills required to successfully communicate through live audio production. This will include discussions on how to: speak on a microphone, create a successful playlist, mix live from multiple

Bennington’s campus supports beautiful examples of temperate deciduous mixed hardwood forests. This class is a deep dive into forest ecology, land use change, and forest succession at a local scale. Students will explore the local forest community composition, structure, and function over the last 15,000 years and discuss the environmental conditions, disturbance dynamics, and

Bennington’s campus supports beautiful examples of temperate deciduous mixed hardwood forests. This class is a deep dive into forest ecology, land use change, and forest succession at a local scale. Students will explore the local forest community composition, structure, and function over the last 15,000 years and discuss the environmental conditions, disturbance

Bennington’s campus supports beautiful examples of temperate deciduous mixed hardwood forests. This class is a deep dive into forest ecology, land use change, and forest succession at a local scale. Students will explore the local forest community composition, structure, and function over the last 15,000 years and discuss the environmental conditions, disturbance dynamics, and

This course will investigate the physical conditions and processes necessary for creating a habitable planet. We will study the formation of stars and planets, and the evolution of planets after formation into safe harbors for life. This will include investigation of how both stellar and geological processes affect the habitability of planets, and consideration of the possible

Astronomy has gained great insights from Radio Astronomy - details of star formation, the first evidence for Dark Matter, evidence for massive galactic central black holes, and star formation in the early universe are all examples of things we have learned from observations of radio light. In this course, students will build an eight-foot radio telescope to be used in this