Spring 2026 Course Search

For students doing work-study or internships, we will focus on three core areas of professionalization. First, each week will journal our work weeks, discussing and sharing our work experiences in a round-table. Second, we will build our professionalization skills, especially networking (in person and on LinkedIn), resume writing, and doing practice interviews. Finally, we will work on writing 5-year plans, to help us figure out where we’d like to be a few years after graduation. More specifically

Following up on the fall course on web3, this course helps students learn to track transactions and actions across blockchains, which are large distributed censorship resistant databases. The course starts by exploring the fundamental nature of the blockchain: how data is stored, accessed, and traversed. It then introduces common patterns and software used for blockchain analytics.

How can we create machines that think, learn, and solve problems? This course explores the fascinating field of artificial intelligence (AI), introducing the fundamental concepts, techniques, and ethical considerations that drive this rapidly evolving discipline.

Building upon your programming knowledge, you will explore key AI paradigms including search algorithms, evolutionary algorithms, swarm intelligence, and machine learning.  You will implement AI solutions to real-world problems, and gain an understanding of how to think about contemporary AI development.

Everything is geometry! This class is about two things: first, about how mathematicians have extended the concept of "geometry" beyond triangles and circles, into higher-dimensional spaces, curved spaces, spaces of functions, discrete spaces, and more. Second, about how this extension of "geometry" can allow us to apply our powerful geometric intuition to a wide range of problems that might not initially seem geometric, both within mathematics, and in physics, computer science, and elsewhere.

In this class, students will start working on their artists' book documenting their ongoing MFA 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 will help students develop and shape their ongoing thesis research and actions. 

Discrete mathematics studies problems that can be broken up into distinct pieces. Some examples of these sorts of systems are letters or numbers in a password, pixels on a computer screen, the connections between friends on Facebook, and driving directions (along established roads) between two cities. In this course we will develop the tools needed to solve relevant, real-world problems. Topics will include: combinatorics (clever ways of counting things), number theory and graph theory. Possible applications include probability, social networks, optimization, and cryptography.

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.

The term will be spent focusing on a teaching statement, evidence of teaching history, with a focus on intersectional Life writing. The continuation of the collection of documentation of professional activity, a full CV, an artist statement, and any other applicable statements will be added to the materials to create the fullness of the Portfolio book. An artist’s talk will conclude the portfolio process during the summer term.

The term will be spent focusing on a teaching statement, evidence of teaching history, with a focus on intersectional Life writing. The continuation of the collection of documentation of professional activity, a full CV, an artist statement, and any other applicable statements will be added to the materials to create the fullness of the Portfolio book. An artist’s talk will conclude the portfolio process during the summer term.

This course allows students more time to complete thesis project work.

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.

Variable Credit, 1-2 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 should provide opportunity for varied approaches and choices.

This topic driven seminar focuses on current developments within the field of dance and performance. Students will learn to think of dance and performance through their own embodied experiences and by placing dance, movement, and performance in wider disciplinary, cultural and global contexts.

Where and how does study happen? What is the value of study and how do we recognize that value? What does it mean to think of our study of dance and performance as an encounter and how might that thinking offer up a chance for one to pay attention differently? Is it different from research?  Or, as Kevin Quashie suggests, does it perhaps re-situate the activities of research, scholarship, teaching and practice in an important way? These Labs take the form of intensive workshops and/or lectures.

Variable Credit, 1-2 Credits

What does studying together offer us critically that studying alone might not? Ariella Azoulay refers to studying with companions as a method of unlearning. What are the shifts experienced when you are studying with and alongside others? What conditions might group study provide that allow different questions and understandings to emerge? If, as Irit Rogoff states, “All research is collaborative,” how might these study groups expand our thinking through collaborative practices? What methodologies emerge?

The record of the processes and research practices take shape in the writing and designing of the artist’s book. The Research as Actions are discussed and planned. These actions are shared informally and at the conclusion of the term. 

Students propose, plan, discuss and develop a (research) thesis project. They choose a thinking partner to work alongside and begin the processes.

In this course, students will gain experience with using simple programmable robots and how they can be utilized in STEM education. The focus of this class will be on learning and designing lessons for K-12 students utilizing these robots. This class is accessible for students at all levels of computer programming experience (including none). 

Catastrophic events—droughts, earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, and landslides—are growing in frequency and intensity around the world. As more of the global population concentrates in urban areas, the nature and consequences of these natural hazards are taking on a distinct and often violent shape in today’s metropolises and megacities. This course investigates how urban life reshapes both the impact of disasters and our capacity to respond to them.

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?

This is an environmental policy course with a focus on public action. The class will explore the dimensions of the production, use and disposal of plastics, including climate change impacts, alternatives to single-use plastic packaging, and the need for innovation. There will also be a focus on environmental justice.

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

Introduction to Computer Science 2 continues the design-recipe approach started in Introduction to Computer Science 1. We extend our toolkit from structural recursion into generative recursion, abstraction, and algorithmic problem-solving. Students move beyond simple data definitions to work with more sophisticated structures (trees, graphs, sets, maps) while beginning to reason about program efficiency and resource use.

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 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. 

In 1948, Elanor Roosevelt, instrumental for the approval of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, said “In a true sense, human rights are a fundamental object of law and government in a just society. Human rights exist to the degree that they are respected by people in relations with each other and by governments in relations with their citizens.”

Human mobility has been an inherent human condition throughout history. From earliest human history, women and men have migrated in search of a better life, to populate other places on the planet, or to escape and survive human-made or natural dangers. Today migration is a fact of life for an increasing number of people around the world: there are more than 281 million migrants that cross borders, about 71.2 million that are internally displaced and around 40 million seeking asylum. Almost half of them are women.

This class will introduce students to creating digital archive that includes digitizing photographs, documents, videotapes and basic types of metadata. We will have discussions about why digitizing personal collections is so important. Students will be expected to bring their own materials to the class. 

With billions of images uploaded to the internet daily, we are bombarded by media content on corporately owned platforms from news outlets to algorithmic social media feeds and YouTube videos. How do we create meaningful independent media for each other in this current age of disinformation? What importance do physical materials such as books, zines, posters, and pamphlets still have in disseminating information and ideas to our communities? How does the art of self-publishing become a means of empowerment and an act of care?

This Module will serve as an introduction to the work of Peacebuilding around the world, both in theory and practice. Vahidin Omanovic, Director of Center for Peacebuilding in Bosnia, will be joining us to reflect on his work and introduce us to key topics in peacebuilding, including: peacebuilding in a local community, obstacles for peace, identity,  discrimination, methods of sustainable peacebuilding.

This Module will introduce Conflict Resolution skills and the fundamentals of Dialogue exchanges.

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 examine interesting thinkers about our future.  Artists, anthropologists, afro futurists, writers, scientists and philosophers have all thought about what we are facing in our futures. Books and essays such as “The Fourth Turning” by Neil Howe, “The Dawn of Everything” by David Graeber, “The End of History” by Francis Fukuyama,  "Emergent Strategies" by Adrienne Maree Brown, “A Paradise Built in Hell” by Rebecca Solnit, “The Work After Our Rage” by Kenneth Bailey and Lori Lobenstine”, "DeltasUNite and the UNCCRD" and others.

In this course, students will document the lived experiences of individuals during this immensely challenging period in American history. Students will receive training in the methods of oral history, interviewing techniques, historical ethics, and archival work. They will conduct interviews of classmates and community members. These narratives will then be preserved in order to provide future generations with a firsthand account of the United States during this period of history. 

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.