Spring 2026 Course Search

A song feedback collective, focused on how musical restrictions can spur us to growth. Over the course of the term, students will write five songs (or revise a single song in radical ways) based on the critique and decisions of the group. We’ll discuss how to form supportive but insightful critique while challenging each other to go new places. What does it take to create a song based on someone else’s text, completely a cappella, or without a single chord? How do you welcome in new materials and collaborators, from across genre and style?

This spring semester course, taught each year by different members of the Music faculty, serves as a workshop and forum for seniors to develop, present, and receive feedback on their advanced work in Music. Senior projects may take many forms, reflecting the breadth of creative practice in Music; performances, installations, musical plays, recordings, research projects, publications, or interdisciplinary collaborations are all viable options.

This is a course for composers who have taken composition courses previously and have good notation skills.  Enrollment is limited to 10 students. Each student will produce a sizable piece for String Quartet. The class time will be used for analysis and study of works composed for string quartet and for examination of the student’s works-in-progress.

Accessibility describes the practice of freeing a space or an event so it might be visited by more people in more ways than one could ever presume at the outset. In this course, we will explore the litany of practices that allow more people (and in particular, disabled, mad, and chronically ill people) into all spheres of public life with a particular focus on performance events.

Economic inequality is often described in terms of uneven distribution of income and wealth. Yet, more importantly, it reflects uneven access to opportunities, advantages, and life chances. Why do some people enjoy a higher standard of living and better quality of life than others? Are such inequalities fair and just? What role do history, policy, and institutions play in sustaining or reducing inequality?

Why does chronic hunger endure even in times of prosperity? How can famine devastate entire regions in extreme cases, while food deserts quietly persist in wealthy countries like the United States? And what does it mean to treat nourishment not as charity or commodity, but as a right of citizenship?

Drawing from news articles, interviews, archival materials, and more, writers throughout the 20th and 21st Centuries have sought to document the world through poetry.

This course explores the art and science of mixing and producing audio for both emergent immersive formats and traditional legacy platforms. Students will gain hands-on experience with spatial audio technologies such as Dolby Atmos, Ambisonics, and binaural mixing, while also mastering industry-standard techniques for stereo and 5.1 surround sound production.

This ensemble-based course explores the intersection of live performance, experimental soundscapes, and dub aesthetics. Rooted in the traditions of dub music—including remix culture, delay and reverb manipulation, and bass-driven textures—students will create immersive sonic environments using a mix of acoustic instruments, electronic tools, field recordings, and live effects processing.

This is the post-fellowship course for students selected to participate in the Endeavor Environmental Action Fellowship Program. The class is designed to sharpen each student’s skills and capacities for success in their future work, and ultimately, to successfully advance environmental justice issues, address complex societal challenges, and become effective change-makers in the world.

The Tuning in the Trees is an advanced seminar in microtonality that treats tuning systems as both technical structures and living landscapes. Students will explore how musical intervals emerge from natural patterns—such as tree bifurcations, harmonic ratios, and number sequences—while engaging deeply with Just intonation, Meantone, Bohlen–Pierce, and other non-Western tunings.

The CAPA Workshop is for Seniors who are engaged in their advanced work and want to complete a project as part of it in Public Action.Students are able to connect this work to any area of study at Bennington College. Each student will be required to assemble a digital portfolio that will include their research or thesis, along with a description and implementation of their project during the term. A proposal form will be required once admitted to the class. Projects, can be local, national or international. 

Journalism & Democracy is the result of a grant and partnership with the Center for Community News at the University of Vermont, a national network of student journalism programs around the United States. The course recognizes the essential role that the arts and culture play in a healthy democracy. Arts and culture invite us to experience perspectives and ways of life different from our own; they shape conversations about freedom, equal rights and other values that are at the core of American society; and they help us engage with the world in new and important ways.

This class will investigate various pedagogical approaches to food studies by examining curriculums, topics and discourses being taught at some academic institutions. More importantly, we will put focus on researching art collectives, contemporary civic engagement practices, and other non-institutional models developed by creative practitioners and activists, which engage with food as a conduit to undertake social, political and cultural identity issues and to enhance their community cohesion.