Spring 2026 Course Search

This course asks each student to work in a self-directed way among a community of critical thinkers. Finding one’s voice, as a maker, requires research sources of influence and inspiration. Students are expected to undertake a significant amount of work outside of regular class meetings. At this point in your Visual Arts Education you must be able to represent serious attention and dedication to your work, and prove that you can manage your time and energy towards advanced inquiry.

This course focuses on the additive construction methods essential to contemporary sculpture. Students will embark on independent projects that hone their skills in constructing armatures and exploring innovative skinning techniques. Throughout the term, participants will learn to build and manipulate forms using primarily additive processes, developing their own sculptural vocabulary in a studio environment. There will be two personal independent projects in this class that will ultimately converge into a dynamic, large-scale collaborative sculpture.

In this course we will focus on cutting and welding non-ferrous metals. Hand cutting and CNC assisted plasma cutting will be the methods in which stock will be cut. The fabrication processes will begin through brazing methods (acetylene) for connecting non-similar metals. There will also be instruction on pinpoint forging as well as the safe use of the blacksmithing forge in the Sculpture department. We will then advance to learning the skills involved in using the GTAW welders for non-ferrous welding.

Learning to draw is as much about learning how to use your hand as it is about learning how to see. The focus of this course is on learning to draw from observation and developing close looking skills. Drawing from observation fundamentally alters our day-to-day experience by heightening our attention to details and the specificity of our surroundings. In this course, you will work with various materials, including ink, compressed and vine charcoal, graphite, and/or collage to represent a range of subjects.

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.

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.

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.

These technical applications, can lead you to a concept due to the design/practicality of said application.

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.

This course is a hands-on color laboratory where students will explore the tactile, material, and physical characteristics of pigments. Working with both earth and synthetic colors, we’ll grind, mix, and transform pure pigments into drawing materials including watercolor paints and chalk pastels. If time allows, we will also make inks. Outside of class, students will complete a short research project/presentation, and create a self-directed body of drawings using the materials created in class.

This course is an introduction to the magic of copper plate Intaglio. We will explore various techniques to prepare our plates including hand working and acid etching with materials such as rosin resists and sugar lifts. By the end of term, we will be printing in color. Ultimately, the overall goal of our endeavors will be to begin a dialog about artistic production in a contemporary context while also exploring the unique history of the intaglio process.