Spring 2026 Course Search

Historical Dress: The Park-McCullough Project Spring ‘26

This course introduces students to econometric approaches to asking and answering questions about the economy relating to employment, health, and well-being. The primary aim of the course is to understand how economists analyze data to determine causal effect. We will analyze data sets to ask and answer socioeconomic questions such as: What factors affect a person’s income, and how do we know? How might we investigate the main causes of unemployment?

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. 

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.

How do we transition to a low-carbon economy in a manner that doesn’t reinscribe the social and environmental injustices that have plagued our fossil-fueled economy? On one hand, the continued burning of fossil fuels is producing environmental crises that threaten to destabilize the very foundations of collective life, with poor and historically marginalized communities bearing the brunt of the suffering. On the other hand, renewable energy technologies are far from environmentally and socially benign.

Commodities such as cars, smartphones, laptops, and refrigerators were initially considered luxuries but are now widely viewed as everyday necessities. This shift suggests that our understanding of need is shaped by social, historical, and cultural context. In this class we will explore questions such as: how do we distinguish what we want from what we need to live a dignified life? Moreover, how might societies determine which types of needs should be satisfied through market exchange and which should not?

This course explores how ideas about the economy – from money, to labor, to distribution – have changed over time. We will focus on different schools of thought in economics, including mercantilism, physiocracy, classical political economy, the Austrian school, Post-Keynesianism, and neoclassical economics, placing these ideas in their global context. A central focus will be on how different thinkers conceptualize capitalism: both its benefits and pitfalls.

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.

Historical Dress: The Park-McCullough Project Spring '26

Working in collaboration with the local Park-McCullough Historic Governor’s Mansion, students will create a new archive of the historic dress collection.

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.

To be LGBTQIA and AAPI is to occupy two disparate, marginalized identities that seem to be be in constant flux. What might the literature of this intersection teach us about larger questions of community, belonging, and resistance? This 2000-level class attempts to locate a Queer Asian Pacific America through literature, from Chinese American lesbian poets of the 1980s to Fatimah Asghar's recent cross-genre coming-of-age novel; from David Henry Hwang’s reimagining of Madame Butterfly to queer Hawaiian reclamations of aloha; and beyond.

Qualitative inquiry seeks to discover and to describe in narrative reporting what particular people do in their everyday lives and what the actions mean to them. This course is intended for students who wish to learn more about the impact of theoretical frameworks on their ongoing knowledge projects at Bennington College.