Fall 2025

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

Students propose an independent study plan with approval from Donna Faye Burchfield and select an approved thinking partner/mentor.

Credits to be determined between faculty and student.

Variable Credit, 1-3 Credits

Through mentor approved independently paced work, students develop and schedule their own weekly, planned creative practices using student-initiated resources and/or classes. Mentors guide students through the designed plan that can include a combination of practices, techniques, technologies and methodologies. The study format

Students will work with their advisor to self-design study through combining and creating new pathways through the curriculum.

Variable Credit, 1-4 Credits

This course allows students to self-design course work by combining topics and approaches from the Practice LABs and the Study LABs to meet required hours. The Individualized LABS take the form of a series of self directed intensive workshops and study immersions.

Viewed from the outside, the French-speaking world offers enticing images of beauty, pleasure, and freedom. From the inside, however, it is a complicated, often contradictory world where implicit codes and values shape the most basic aspects of daily life. This course will give you an insider’s perspective on a cultural and communicative system whose ideas, customs, and

“Disability justice culture is simultaneously beautiful and practical. Poetry and dance are as important [to disability justice culture] as a blog post about accessible bathroom hacks—because they are interdependent.”
- Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

This course will introduce students to the basic concepts of disability justice and disability justice culture

Instrumental Study on Guitar.  Continued studies from Beginning Guitar. Advanced study in fret-board harmony and theory.

Instrumental Study on Guitar. Continued studies from Beginning Guitar. Advanced study in fret-board harmony and theory, play in different tunings, increase chord vocabulary and repertoire.

This course is intended for students with some playing and reading experience, who have passed Piano Lab I or its equivalent. The goals of this course are to gain ease and dexterity at the keyboard, further developing a confident piano technique, musical expression, and the skill of reading musical notation. Students will expand upon a repertoire of scales and chords. They

Intermediate Video builds on the concepts and technical skills introduced in Intro to Video, and has a different theme each term. This semester of Intermediate Video will be focused on the following thematic, conceptual and formal questions. Documentary as a form or genre has expanded over the past century to encompass a wide range of

For students with some prior singing experience. This class is designed to refine awareness and coordination of the mind and body and develop a reliable vocal technique applicable to all styles of singing and speaking performance.  <

For students with some prior singing experience. This class is designed to refine awareness and coordination of the mind and body and develop a reliable vocal technique applicable to all styles of singing and speaking performance.  <

For students with some prior singing experience. This class is designed to refine awareness and coordination of the mind and body and develop a reliable vocal technique applicable to all styles of singing and speaking performance.  <

For students with some prior singing experience. This class is designed to refine awareness and coordination of the mind and body and develop a reliable vocal technique applicable to all styles of singing and speaking performance.  <

An introduction to 16mm film techniques, students will shoot and edit analog 16mm film, develop by hand and finally will transfer film to video. Through screenings, experiments and hands-on workshops students will learn about cinematography and the photochemical process. Taking advantage of the special tactile, tangible nature of

This is an introductory course to international public law and its relevance in today’s complex and interconnected world. 

International law can be considered as the law governing the relations between States, but it also includes relations with international

In this introductory course, we will read, examine, discuss, and design in conversation with a selected literature of recorded audio, sound design practice, and history. This course will provide the foundational technical, historical, and contextual/cultural support to your knowledge of working in music and sound design in music, theater,

Have you ever imagined speaking in the language of computers, and transforming your ideas into actions that computers can perform? This course is a gateway to discovering the art and science of programming, a crucial skill that serves as the backbone of computer science. But computer science transcends mere programming. Our actual aim is to nurture your ability to think like

This course provides its students with a deep and expansive exploration of the field of psychology. As a diverse field of study, psychology is broadly defined as the study of human behavior. Psychology has numerous sub-areas of study that take different research approaches to examine biological, social, and cultural factors and

This foundational class covers modes of reasoning used in quantitative sciences and mathematics. While learning the art of mathematical modeling, i.e. translating the physical systems/real-life situations into mathematics, we will apply problem solving and practice effective communication of mathematics. This process involves isolating the essential variables and

This course is an introductory level print media and drawing class. Students will learn about relief printmaking through demonstrations of techniques, hands-on experience, and critiques. Techniques include but are not limited to wood cut and linoleum cut. With this simple process, we will be able to explore color printing in depth. This course is also an

This production course introduces students to the fundamentals of working in video and the language of film form. Drawing on the energy, intensity and criticality of avant-garde film and contemporary video art practices, students will complete a series of projects exploring all basic aspects of film/video production (centered on DSLR cameras), such as cinematography, mise-en

The course is designed for students with no prior string instrument experience. Admission is on a first come, first served basis. Classes will be one-on-one, individual lessons.

Daily practice of 10 to 15 minutes is expected, in order for students to become familiar and comfortable with the basic mechanics of playing the viola.

Experience with reading music,

In this intermediate course, students will learn about various art forms in Japan from pottery in the Jomon Era (about 14,000 BC – 300BC) to Takashi Murakami’s so-called “superflat,” a postmodern art movement, in the Heisei Era (1989 -2019).  As they learn about Japanese art, they will analyze elements of Japanese aesthetics that were shared in various