Spring 2025

The Puppet Project — DRA4244.01

Spring 2025

Instructor: Tilly Grimes

Days & Time:

Credits: 4

Part performance, part design, part construction, this class will center around the creation of characters, fabricating them, and then bringing them to life. We will also explore an overview of the history and use of puppets in storytelling and different forms of puppet performance. We will also look at different Puppetry practitioners practicing today. Although we will

Drama

The Return of All Things — MUS2031.01

Spring 2025

Instructor: Nicholas Brooke

Days & Time:

Credits: 2

In The Return of All Things, we are activated to investigate the Bennington College Archive as source material for the creation of sound works. These new works can take on a multitude of forms including collaborative cross-media projects, improvisations, variously notated compositions, radio plays, or installations. We will look at other ways in which the archeological dig of

Music

The Scriptorium: Found Families — WRI2165.01

Spring 2025

Instructor: Camille Guthrie

Days & Time:

Credits: 4

The Scriptorium, a “place for writing,” is a class for writers interested in improving their critical essay-writing skills. We will read to write and write to read. Much of our time will be occupied with writing and revising—essai means “trial” or “attempt”—as we work to create new habits and productive strategies for analytical writing. As we write in various essay structures

Writing

The Scriptorium: Multiverses, Utopias, and Dreamscapes, Oh My! — WRI2163.01

Spring 2025

Instructor: Camille Guthrie

Days & Time:

Credits: 4

Writing

The Sins of Nature: The Dark Side of Animal Behavior — BIO2141.01

Spring 2025

Instructor: Blake Jones

Days & Time:

Credits: 2

Nature is often violent and unforgiving, but few understand the extent to which animals engage in behaviors that, if judged by human ethical standards, would be considered malicious, immoral, or even evil. This provocative course will challenge our understanding of morality through the lens of non-human behaviors. Throughout this course, you will uncover the ecological and

Science and Mathematics

The Songwriter's Guitar — MIN4362.01

Spring 2025

Instructor: Nicholas Brooke

Days & Time:

Credits: 2

Self-taught guitar playing often begins with the recognition of simple patterns, evolving into complexity. These patterns, while helping us gain familiarity, can eventually become a constrictive box, requiring new material to refresh the old. How do we make a song more effective through focusing on guitar, how can we make a song find its destination? This course develops each

Music

The Textual City — SPA4805.01

Spring 2025

Instructor: Jonathan Pitcher

Days & Time:

Credits: 4

This course will chart the development of identity within the postcolonial Latin American city. The latter will be read both literally and as a guiding metaphor, as a reality ordered by ideas. We will use interdisciplinary theoretical models as discursive markers, selected from architecture, politics, philosophy, literature, and photography, in order to problematize urban

Cultural Studies and Languages

Thème et Version — FRE4810.01

Spring 2025

Instructor: Stephen Shapiro

Days & Time:

Credits: 4

In this course we will focus on translating from French into English as well as from English into French. We will work on developing a mindfulness about language use as well as a comparative eye focused on English and French’s stylistic and structural preferences. Grammar and lexical development will also be on offer and will highlight points where the two languages converge

Cultural Studies and Languages

Theory of Impressionism — MTH4112.01

Spring 2025

Instructor: Nicholas Brooke

Days & Time:

Credits: 2

This seminar will look at works by Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, as well as by Erik Satie, Les Six, Tailleferre, Boulanger, and diverse U.S. composers at the turn of the 20th century. We will start by looking at Debussy’s Preludes as a microcosm of his harmonic style, and then analyze major orchestral works. Ravel’s Tombeau de Couperin, String Quartet, and select songs will

Music

Thesis Forms: Thinking Partners 1 — DAN5423B.01

Spring 2025

Instructor: Donna Faye Burchfield

Days & Time:

Credits: 2

A synthesis of the program's coursework, Thesis Forms: Thinking Partner is taken across two terms. Students propose, plan, discuss and develop a (research) thesis project. They choose a thinking partner to work alongside for the term. With the graduate school model, the thinking partner will expect the student to take action rather than wait to be told what to do.

Thesis Practice (Research as Action) — DAN5424B.01

Spring 2025

Instructor: Donna Faye Burchfield

Days & Time:

Credits: 2

Students work to develop definitions, resources and methodologies to support varied approaches to thesis practices to include research into practice, performance as research, practice into research, practice-based research, bibliography as method, citational fieldings and research as action. The course guides students through reflective, critical processes during one-on

Thesis Practice: Artist's Book — DAN5420B.01

Spring 2025

Instructor: Donna Faye Burchfield

Days & Time:

Credits: 2

In this class, students will start working on their artists' book documenting their ongoing thesis research, process and practice, and we will discuss how this relates to potential ideas for Research As Action presentations. To make this possible, we will use software such as Adobe CC Indesign and Photoshop. Slide presentations, software demos, group and individual critiques

Thinking Like A Greek — PHI2122.01

Spring 2025

Instructor: Catherine McKeen

Days & Time:

Credits: 4

The Mediterranean Greeks of the 4th-6th c. BCE powerfully shaped the political, cultural, and intellectual worlds we inhabit today. The Greeks are credited with inventing democracy, drama, spectator sports, and astronomy, physics, biology, musical theory, history, and philosophy as areas of study. Various Greek thinkers championed free inquiry, global citizenship, radical

Society Culture and Thought

Third Cinema — FV2315.01) (cancelled 10/17/2024

Spring 2025

Instructor: Beatriz Santiago Muñoz

Days & Time:

Credits: 4

This course is a seminar focusing on films that were made by filmmakers and collectives which saw themselves as inaugurating a new kind of filmmaking modeled neither on the commercial American filmmaking, nor on the European “Auteur” Cinema, instead crafting a third position, a cinema that was implicated in anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist struggles of the time. These works

Tile: Expanding the Parameters — CER2126.01

Spring 2025

Instructor: Aysha Peltz

Days & Time:

Credits: 4

This course will explore the ceramic medium through the format of tile. Given this as a parameter, we are presented with an exciting opportunity to explore clay in two dimensions and low relief. Students will be introduced to historic and contemporary tiles as examples of both architectural elements and art objects. This general survey of ceramic tiles will include many

Visual Arts

Time-Travel 101: Toni Morrison and Octavia Butler — LIT2548.01

Spring 2025

Instructor: An Duplan

Days & Time:

Credits: 4

Both Toni Morrison's and Octavia Butler’s novels push us to consider time differently. Rather than as static artifacts, both women’s characters treat time, memory, and history as malleable materials. Take Morrison’s idea of "re-memory" in her novel Beloved, for example, a vivid reliving of the past that seems more than memory itself, something closer to being transported

Literature

Tools for the Advancement of Public Action: The Destruction and Rebuilding of a Democratic Future-An Intergenerational Conversation — APA2031.02

Spring 2025

Instructor: Susan Sgorbati

Days & Time:

Credits: 1

Staggering change and suffering have occurred around the world in the last month. These changes are leaving many scared and uncertain for their futures and for the future of a free and civil society. This series aims to understand the gravity of the problems before us and how to address them. Students and guests will contrast the former workings of American politics to the

CAPA

Topics in Applied Philosophy: War — PHI2140.01

Spring 2025

Instructor: Paul Voice

Days & Time:

Credits: 2

This course examines philosophical debates concerning war. In particular, we will look at the distinction between just and unjust war, as well as moral issues concerning the use of military technologies such as drones, and questions of moral responsibility for war.

Society Culture and Thought

Traditional Music Ensemble — MPF4221.01

Spring 2025

Instructor: John Kirk

Days & Time:

Credits: 2

We will study and perform from the string band traditions of rural America, Nova Scotia, Quebecois, Irish, New England, Scandinavian, African-American dance and ballad traditions. In addition, these will be experienced with listening, practice (weekly group rehearsals outside of class), and performing components. Emphasis on ensemble intuition, playing by ear, and lifetime

Music

Transformative Justice — APA4167.01

Spring 2025

Instructor: Alisa Del Tufo

Days & Time:

Credits: 2

What is the difference between restorative and transformative justice? How can the concepts of transformative justice be used in campaigns for social justice? Can transformative justice be used to replace or supplement the criminal legal system in the United States? These are all questions we will explore in this 4000 level course. We will explore the reasons why the

CAPA

Trusting the Body: Form, Balance and Letting Go — DAN4371.01

Spring 2025

Instructor: Dana Reitz

Days & Time:

Credits: 2

In this class we pose the questions: How do we create or utilize movement that is meaningful and essential to our dance making? and how does our movement evolve and how do we work with it and direct its potential? We will consider the relevance and importance of how depth and continuity of practice in our various forms can be the basic framework for our evolution as movement

Dance

TV Comedy Pilot I — DRA4393.01

Spring 2025

Instructor: Shawtane Bowen

Days & Time:

Credits: 4

In this course, I will be working with a small group of students to explore the process of writing a comedy pilot for television. We’ll be reading and watching pilots from some of the best comedies of the last decade or so (Detroiters, Community, What We Do In The Shadows, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, etc.) to learn how they function and what makes a great pilot. Each week students will

Drama

TV Shows, Social media and The Contemporary Taiwanese Society — CHI4406.01

Spring 2025

Instructor: Ginger Lin

Days & Time:

Credits: 4

This course encourages students to explore and analyze contemporary Taiwanese society through the lens of popular TV shows currently airing in Taiwan. Topics for discussion will include identity, democracy, indigenous culture, immigration and multiculturalism, Tech industry, gender equality, LGBTQ+rights, marriage, family structure, and the broader social development of

Cultural Studies and Languages

U.S.-Asian Relations (c. 1800-Present) — HIS2146.01

Spring 2025

Instructor: Carly Rudzinski

Days & Time:

Credits: 4

This course explores US relations with East and Southeast Asia from the early 1800s up through the present. We examine how transnational and international forces have shaped pivotal moments across three centuries, including the Opium Wars (1840s-1860s), the Meiji Restoration (1868-1889), US seizure of the Philippines (1899-1902), the two World Wars, the Vietnam War (1954-1975),

Cultural Studies and Languages Society Culture and Thought

Ukulele Comprehensive — MIN2230.01

Spring 2025

Instructor: John Kirk

Days & Time:

Credits: 2

A comprehensive course in learning musical skills on the ukulele. We will learn the history of the uke, from its Portuguese and Indigenous Hawaiian origins, and both traditional and contemporary styles. Music theory and playing techniques will be learned and practiced. Awareness of traditional styles of playing the instrument will be furthered through a listening component and

Music