Course Listing | 51��

Fall 2021

Propaganda in Modern Chinese Culture — CHI4122.01

Fall 2021

Instructor: Ginger Lin

Days & Time:

Credits: 4

Whether on banners hung in public places or in shrill voices blaring from one of the millions of loudspeakers spread across the country, propaganda slogans have been a major aspect of the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to forge a modern socialist society. In this course, a selection of these slogans from the beginning of the communist era up to the present will be used as a

Cultural Studies and Languages

Prototyping An Innovation Lab — APA2446.02

Fall 2021

Instructor: Susan Sgorbati

Days & Time:

Credits: 1

A prototyping environment is a kind of software that supports experimentation and rapid iteration of ideas. For the past 30 years I have worked on a prototyping environment called Max used by musicians and artists around the world — including at Bennington. Through this experience I have learned we can also build an organization as a kind of prototyping environment according to

CAPA

Psychological Study of Sex and Gender — PSY2240.01

Fall 2021

Instructor: Özge Savas

Days & Time:

Credits: 4

Why do people want to know about a baby's sex? How are children socialized into gender/sex binaries? How are gender roles created? How is gender/sex related to sexuality? What is it that we are attracted to in another person? Body frames? Masculinity/femininity? Having a penis or a vagina/vulva? How does gender/sex depend on other categories such as race/ethnicity, nationality,

Society Culture and Thought

Psychological Study of Sex and Gender — PSY2240.02

Fall 2021

Instructor: Özge Savas

Days & Time:

Credits: 4

Society Culture and Thought

Public Policy Forum: Understanding January 6 — APA2278.01

Fall 2021

Instructor: Carly Rudzinski

Days & Time:

Credits: 1

Join historians, policy makers and educators as we consider the events and decisions that led to the insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6. We will explore the political, racial, economic and cultural roots of this violent event that culminated in the near collapse of the Great American Experiment.

CAPA

Rakugo and Humor: The Art of Storytelling — JPN4505.01

Fall 2021

Instructor: Ikuko Yoshida

Days & Time:

Credits: 4

Rakugo is one of the traditional Japanese art and storytelling entertainment which became extremely popular during the Edo period (1603-1868). Rakugo is a rather unique storytelling performance because a storyteller sits on a seat on the stage called “kooza” and tells humorous stories without standing up from the seat. Moreover, the storytellers narrate and plays various

Cultural Studies and Languages

Reading and Writing Fiction: Lies, Spies Private Eyes — LIT4537.01

Fall 2021

Instructor: Manuel Gonzales

Days & Time:

Credits: 4

By digging into the works of contemporary crime and thriller novelists, we will explore notions of narrative tension, good mystery versus bad mystery, red herrings, unreliable narrators, complex plots, anti-heroes, slick villains, the falsely accused and the downtrodden, not to mention the dark alleyways and the hidden compartments of fiction. How do these authors manipulate

Literature

Reading and Writing Poetry: Image and Detail — LIT4536.01

Fall 2021

Instructor: Michael Dumanis

Days & Time:

Credits: 4

This poetry workshop focuses on the ways writers deploy language to achieve precision, vividness, sensory richness, singularity, and emotional resonance. We will begin by developing an understanding of the difference between a detail and a visual image, and the distance between the abstract concept of a thing and the sense of the concrete thing itself. We will go on to explore

Literature

Relation, Reflection, Refraction: Contemporary South American Fiction — LIT2424.01

Fall 2021

Instructor: Marguerite Feitlowitz

Days & Time:

Credits: 4

Contemporary South American fiction is rife with urgency, politics, and history, as well as narrative mischief, layering, and literary gamesmanship. It is a highly self-conscious stream of writing, with novelists in conversation--and conflict--with earlier writers, with their contemporaries, and with novelists of their own creation. Highly divergent stylists have perforce

Literature

Remote but Intensively Collaborative Composition — MCO4126.01

Fall 2021

Instructor: Kitty Brazelton

Days & Time:

Credits: 4

How I imagine this course starting out: One person makes a melody—a single line—and records it. It is now a “thing.” The next person takes that “thing” and adds another “thing.” When the 2nd person shows the two “things,” we talk about what “thing two” does to “thing one.” In detail. In this way, we will incorporate theory and even history (through musical genre and cultural

Music

Researching Human Rights — POL4257.01

Fall 2021

Instructor: Rotimi Suberu

Days & Time:

Credits: 4

This advanced seminar explores theories, concepts, methods, and cases in qualitative social science research on human rights. It will provide a venue for students to undertake independent, critical, work on human rights, using existing literature and databases. The course will begin with a discussion of contending conceptions and understandings of human rights, followed by a

Society Culture and Thought

Screenwriting: The Story Studio — LIT2509.01

Fall 2021

Instructor: Manuel Gonzales

Days & Time:

Credits: 4

A good movie begins with a good script. A good script begins with a good story. In this class, we will explore the basics of structure and format for a feature-length screenplay, but the majority of the course we will be focused on storytelling, the development and polishing of good, strong stories. We will ask what goes into a good story, and how do you take those elements and

Literature

Sculptural Equilibrium: Contemporary Context of Ikebana — CER4206.01

Fall 2021

Instructor: Yoko Inoue

Days & Time:

Credits: 4

Understanding the form of a container is an integral part of the aesthetic reconfiguration of nature in Ikebana. The concept of activating an interior architectural space with collected cut plants and their arrangement stems from ancient Japanese animism. The container is considered a mysterious receptacle for the sustainability of life and acts as a symbolic focal point in its

Visual Arts

Seminar on Monolingualism — LIN2103.01

Fall 2021

Instructor: Tom Leddy-Cecere

Days & Time:

Credits: 4

Scholarly estimates consistently place the percentage of the world’s population able to communicate proficiently in more than one language over 50%. Yet multilingual competence is regularly treated as a secondary or even aberrant state requiring explanation and interpretation, while monolingualism is assumed as default despite its numerically inferior status. In

Cultural Studies and Languages Society Culture and Thought

Senior Projects in Literature — LIT4498.01

Fall 2021

Instructor: Jenny Boully

Days & Time:

Credits: 4

This class is for seniors writing extended manuscripts in a unified genre: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, or a hybrid form that combines genres. We welcome entirely hybrid-form manuscripts, but mixed collections, i.e. some poems with some prose, are not acceptable in this class, for we privilege extended immersion in a single genre. Think of your work as having two,

Literature

Senior Seminar in Society, Culture, and Thought — SCT4750.01

Fall 2021

Instructor: Tatiana Abatemarco, Özge Savas Eileen Scully

Days & Time:

Credits: 4

This advanced research seminar offers students the opportunity to conduct culminating work in Society, Culture and Thought (SCT) in the form of an independent research project. For most students, this will be a one-semester project. For other students, this will be the first half of a year-long project that involves fieldwork, archival research, and/or the collection of data.

Society Culture and Thought

Sensory Exploration/Scene Study — DRA4255.01

Fall 2021

Instructor: Dina Janis

Days & Time:

Credits: 4

How do you create imaginary rain or cold or heat? Where are you coming from when you enter a stage from the wings? How do you personalize and endow the set and props your character thinks of as real? What is substitution and how can it help bring the relationships of a play to life? In this class, we will work with the basic canon of sensory exercises designed to give the

Drama

Shakespeare's Tragedies — LIT2421.01

Fall 2021

Instructor: Paul La Farge

Days & Time:

Credits: 4

In this course, we’ll read a selection of Shakespeare’s tragedies, including Anthony and Cleopatra, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Macbeth, Othello, and Romeo and Juliet. We’ll consider the historical context of the plays, their sources, and the shadows they have cast on subsequent cultural productions. We’ll study Shakespeare’s language closely, and think about what his

Literature

Silkscreen Printmaking — PRI2122.02

Fall 2021

Instructor: Thorsten Dennerline

Days & Time:

Credits: 2

Screen printing is an extremely versatile means of reproducing a 2-D image onto a variety of objects. Hand-drawn, painted, photographic and digital images can be used singularly and in combination with each other. Preparation and processing is relatively simple and multiples can be produced quickly. In this class, we will print with water based inks. We will begin by covering

Visual Arts

Sing — MUS2148.01

Fall 2021

Instructor: Kerry Ryer-Parke

Days & Time:

Credits: 2

We will gather once a week to learn and sing rounds, chant, chorales, work songs, protest songs, sea chanteys, Sacred Harp, and folk songs and dances from around the world. The goal is purely the joy of singing as a community. No performances. Evaluation is by attendance and participation only. We will use our ears and simple notation to learn the music- no previous

Music

Slow Studio — APA4164.01

Fall 2021

Instructor: Sal Randolph

Days & Time:

Credits: 4

“An unhurried sense of time is in itself a form of wealth.” — Bonnie Friedman This studio class will explore slow aesthetics and slow politics in relation to our lived experience in time. We will come together in an experimental lab, devoting generous time to slow experiences of looking, listening, moving, making, reading, and being. Our collective investigation of slow

CAPA

Social Stratification — SOC2207.01) (cancelled

Fall 2021

Instructor: Debbie Warnock

Days & Time:

Credits: 4

How is American society stratified on the basis of race and social class? What are the social categories of race and class and how are these defined and reified through institutional structures? What are the consequences of inequality for a democratic society? Through examinations of classical and contemporary sociological texts, we will identify and interrogate patterns of

Society Culture and Thought

Socially Engaged Art Seminar: Critical Kitchen Pedagogy — APA4113.01

Fall 2021

Instructor: Carly Rudzinski

Days & Time:

Credits: 4

This course focuses on developing an independent, self-directed research project, anchored in cultural discourse and social-political context of food and to be pursued through various creative practices. Research topics include but are not limited to decolonization, migration, identity, community activism, mutual care and collective healing. Engaging with creative

CAPA Visual Arts

Sociology of Education — SOC2205.01) (cancelled

Fall 2021

Instructor: Debbie Warnock

Days & Time:

Credits: 4

What is the purpose of schooling in modern society? Does everyone have access to equal educational opportunities? How do experiences of education vary by race, class, and gender? What role does education policy play in maintaining or reducing social inequalities? In this course, we will employ sociological theories and research to explore current issues, debates, and policies

Society Culture and Thought

Spatial Narratives — DAN4228.01

Fall 2021

Instructor: Dana Reitz

Days & Time:

Credits: 2

The configuring of two people simply standing in a particular space can mean many different things — to those in it and to those seeing it. By having the two change where they face, switch positions with each other, or move to other locations, we can notice the impact of these changes on how we see the space, how we read the relationship and how we understand the action.

Dance Drama Visual Arts