Course Listing | 51��

Spring 2019

The Working Class — SOC2203.01

Spring 2019

Instructor: Debbie Warnock

Days & Time:

Credits: 4

The American working class has been nearly ubiquitous in the media the last few years. Purported to have fueled the rise of Donald Trump due to class resentment, many now claim to speak for the working class, their experiences, and their motivations. But who are the working class, really? Grounded in the academic tradition of working-class studies, this course will use an

Society Culture and Thought

Traditional Music Ensemble — MPF4221.01

Spring 2019

Instructor: John Kirk

Days & Time:

Credits: 2

We will study and perform from the string band traditions of rural America. Nova Scotia, Quebecois, Irish, New England, Scandinavian, African American dance and ballad traditions will also be experienced with listening, practice (weekly group rehearsals outside of class), and performing components. Emphasis on ensemble intuition, playing by ear, and lifetime personal music

Music

Transformation: an Approach to Character — DRA4149.01

Spring 2019

Instructor: Oliver Wadsworth

Days & Time:

Credits: 4

Whether Meryl Streep transforms into an old male Rabbi in Angels in America or Mark Rylance becomes a whisky swilling cult leader in Jerusalem, actors transforming into characters can be inspiring. It not only challenges the actor’s instrument – vocally, physically and emotionally – it can be artistically fulfilling in a deeply personal way. Walt Whitman said, “I contain

Drama

Transpacific Worlds — canceled

Spring 2019

Instructor: Emily Mitchell-Eaton

Days & Time:

Credits: 4

In recent years, the concept of the “transpacific” has attained new significance, in geography and beyond, as a way of naming the two-way “traffic in peoples, cultures, capital, and ideas between ‘America’ and ‘Asia’, as well as across the troubled ocean that lends its name to this model” (Hoskins and Nguyen, 2014: 2). This interdisciplinary field of inquiry has approached the

Society Culture and Thought

Traveling in Italian Film — ITA4401.01

Spring 2019

Instructor: Barbara Alfano

Days & Time:

Credits: 4

In Italian culture, as it happens for every culture, the idea of travel is deeply connected to the country's social and historical contexts, and to the questioning of personal identity. In this respect, travel becomes a mirror for the traveler. In the case of Italian narratives, is the mirror sending back surprising images, disclosing secrets, or repeating stereotypes? Focusing

Languages

Tribes, Traditions Modern Practices of African Dance — DAN2135.01

Spring 2019

Instructor: Souleymane Badolo

Days & Time:

Credits: 2

In this course, we will focus on the specific dance in many areas of Africa including: Zimbabwe, South Africa, Ghana, Benin, Niger, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire. We will study the movement history and meaning behind these different cultural styles and work to understand the many different stories that inform them. Students will be expected to research the use of costume

Dance

Truth, Beauty, and Goodness: The Philosophy of Iris Murdoch — PHI4108.01

Spring 2019

Instructor: Douglas Kremm

Days & Time:

Credits: 4

Iris Murdoch (1919-1999) was a provocative and profoundly original thinker whose significance for contemporary philosophy is still being processed and absorbed today. Her work engages a wide range of topics, including art and religion, morals and politics, metaphysics and mysticism, the nature of the imagination, and the nature of the self. In this course, we will engage with

Society Culture and Thought

Tuesday Soup-er Club: Cooking is Power — APA2168.01

Spring 2019

Instructor: Yoko Inoue

Days & Time:

Credits: 2

This is a transdisciplinary course that investigates local and global food sovereignty. Incorporating activities such as collective soup making to intersect with academic research and theoretical reading, this course aims to enhance our overall understandings about the modern day food chain (i.e. industrial food production and systems of distribution). Through collaborative

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Ukulele Comprehensive — MIN2230.01

Spring 2019

Instructor: John Kirk

Days & Time:

Credits: 2

A comprehensive course on learning skills on the ukulele. We will learn the history of the uke and both traditional and contemporary styles. Music theory and playing techniques will be covered and students will be expected to perform as a group or individually at Music Workshop. Students must have their own soprano or tenor ukulele. Corequisites: Student must have own

Music

Understanding PFOA: Science and Policy — ENV2173.01

Spring 2019

Instructor: Timothy Schroeder and John Hultgren

Days & Time:

Credits: 2

The water supply of Hoosick Falls, NY, Bennington’s western neighbor, has been contaminated with Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) by past industrial activity. PFOA is an “emerging contaminant” that is correlated with a range of health problems. This course will investigate the social and physical aspects of this ongoing disaster, from how the regulation of chemicals in the US

Environment

Unique Prints: 3-D Prints and Modular Works — PRI4272.01

Spring 2019

Instructor: Thorsten Dennerline

Days & Time:

Credits: 4

This course is an introduction to unique prints, or prints that are not necessarily printed as an edition. We will emphasize the making of mixed media prints using a broad range of methods from monotypes to digital prints. The class is structured around a series of projects where rigorous experimentation is encouraged. Students will learn various non-typical printmaking methods

Visual Arts

Unlocking Italian Culture II: Reporting Italy — ITA4214.01

Spring 2019

Instructor: Barbara Alfano

Days & Time:

Credits: 4

Entering the worlds of Italy is an integral part of learning the language. We will continue exploring Italian culture through journalism: you will be journalists exploring Italy and reporting about it. In this, you will be supported by specific web tools, role-play, videos, and on line newspaper and magazines. The class will create its own magazine. Meanwhile, you will advance

Languages

US-Russian Relations, Past and Present — HIS4115.01

Spring 2019

Instructor: Eileen Scully

Days & Time:

Credits: 4

In 1852, a leading American newspaper proposed that, “As we look into the future, with the past and the present for our guides, we see two great objects looming up conspicuously above all others, Russia and the United States …. What is to be their mysterious fate and their mission in the World? What can we now seize upon to guide us in calculating their future history?” Though

Society Culture and Thought

Viewpoints Groundwork — DRA2124.01

Spring 2019

Instructor: Jennifer Rohn

Days & Time:

Credits: 4

Viewpoints is a physical improvisational form used for training actors and creating movement for the stage. This class encourages students to explore the physical and vocal possibilities of time and space, with a specific focus on developing the capacity to be physically present, emotionally open, and free to follow creative impulses. Special emphasis will be placed on the

Drama

Violin/Viola — MIN4345.01

Spring 2019

Instructor: Kaori Washiyama

Days & Time:

Credits: 2

Studies in all left-hand position and shifting and an exploration of various bow techniques. Students can select from the concerto, sonata repertoire, short pieces and etudes for study designed to develop technique, advance musicianship and prepare for performance. Corequisites: Must participate and perform at least twice in Music Workshop (Tu. 6:30pm – 8:00pm)

Music

Visual Arts Lecture Series — VA2999.01

Spring 2019

Instructor: visual arts faculty

Days & Time:

Credits: 1

Each term, Bennington offers a program of five-six lectures by visiting arts professionals: artists, curators, historians and critics, selected to showcase the diversity of contemporary art practices. Designed to enhance a broader and deeper knowledge of various disciplines in the Visual Arts and to stimulate campus dialogue around topical issues of contemporary art and culture

Visual Arts

Visual Arts Lecture Series Seminar — VA4218.01

Spring 2019

Instructor: J Vanessa Lyon

Days & Time:

Credits: 2

This discussion-animated, readings-based seminar provides art historical, cultural, and critical contexts for the Visual Arts Lecture Series (VALS). In addition to our ongoing interrogation of the public lecture as such, students present their own work (in any field) and analyze the technical and stylistic aspects of structuring an effective and engaging ‘talk.’ The course

Visual Arts

Visual Cultures of the Americas, 1500-Now — AH4119.01

Spring 2019

Instructor: J Vanessa Lyon

Days & Time:

Credits: 4

Recognizing the sheer impossibility of a survey of American art, properly conceived, this micro-historical intermediate course selectively explores the arts, architecture, material, and visual cultures of North and Latin America—from Canada to the continent of South America, dwelling at length in the U.S. Through close looking, field trips, and transdisciplinary reading and

Visual Arts

War/Disaster: The Ethics of the Photographer — PHO2109.01

Spring 2019

Instructor: Jonathan Kline

Days & Time:

Credits: 4

This course will explore the role photography has played in representing recent conflicts, disasters, and social upheaval from around the world. As a class, we will read and view essays and films that articulate a wide range of perspectives. Students will be expected to use their smartphones/camera phones off campus and develop a visual inquiry into our surrounding community.

Visual Arts

Waterways: Exploring the Landscape and Watershed with Artist Marie Lorenz — VA2204.03

Spring 2019

Instructor: Anne Thompson

Days & Time:

Credits: 1

In this class, taught on the occasion of Lorenz’s exhibition in Usdan Gallery, students study the landscape from Bennington to Stillwater, following the course of the Walloomsac and Hoosic Rivers. The group will look at the history of land use in the watershed, examine current ecological issues, and think about ways that current actions might affect the land. Each session,

Visual Arts

Westworld/Our World — AH4115.01

Spring 2019

Instructor: J. Vanessa Lyon

Days & Time:

Credits: 2

Season Two of Westworld, HBO’s “science fiction western thriller” television series, drives a broadly-conceived visual culture/cultural studies course in which we identify and analyze various themes, tropes, and genres, histories and visions, typologies and allegories on screen and off; both inside and outside the show’s narrative. Possibilities include: feminism, sexploitation

Visual Arts

Wharton and James: Gender and Power — LIT2331.01

Spring 2019

Instructor: Kathleen Alcott

Days & Time:

Credits: 4

Long before ideas about the 'performativity' of gender entered the cultural conversation, the Progressive-era writers Henry James and Edith Wharton—who were also correspondents and travel companions—produced fiction that subtly examined the ways that factors including class, region, age, and travel operated upon our conceptions of personhood, and particularly as they related to

Literature

What Comes After the State? — ANT2114.01

Spring 2019

Instructor: Noah Coburn

Days & Time:

Credits: 4

Particularly since the treaty of Westphalia the state has been the dominant feature of the international system. In almost every case its sovereignty is assumed. Yet from unauthorized US drone strikes in Pakistan to the European Union, there are examples of ways in which the power of the state as an organizing concept is beginning to erode. This course will look at

Society Culture and Thought

Windfall — DRA4159.01

Spring 2019

Instructor: Sherry Kramer Susan Sgorbati

Days & Time:

Credits: 4

This course explores movement, improvisation and text in order to generate patterns of discovery and interstitiality. We will investigate wind—from summer breezes to 100-miles an hour derechos; trees--from redwoods to bonsai; and bounty--as it exists in the riches of the natural world and the man-made worlds of money, greed, generosity, exploitation, and exaltation. We will

Dance Drama

Women and Human Mobility — APA2213.02

Spring 2019

Instructor: Andrea Galindo

Days & Time:

Credits: 1

The course will provide a comprehensive understanding of the effect of human mobility on women; how women’s human rights are affected by States’ policies and practices; and what is their protection under international human rights law. Mobility is different for men and women, both in terms of the reasons why they migrate as well as the impact wile in transit and upon arrival to

CAPA