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This course serves as an introduction to dance studies at 51��������. It is intended for students new to Bennington who have a serious interest in dance, as well as those with a desire to deeply explore movement and embodied practice as an artistic form.

In this course we will examine the role of music as a vehicle for political and social change in Africa. Our focus will be music-making throughout the continent of Africa during the nationalist struggles that resulted in independent African states and how musicians responded (and continue to respond) to the persistent challenges faced by those post-colonial states.

Join a public dialogue about global contemporary art and ideas! Each year the New York nonprofit apexart holds an open call for curatorial proposals. Out of hundreds of submissions from around the world, three are chosen to become apexart exhibitions through an online jury process. Students in this class will be part of the jury. Initial readings and assignments will address the history of New York nonprofit spaces and apexart’s position within that landscape over three decades.

Whose class is this anyway? Yours! Improv is for everyone—just like life, it’s all about making it up as we go.

In this course, we’ll explore the fundamentals of improvisation through high-energy theater games, pattern and rhythm exercises, and ensemble-building activities. We’ll dive into character, object, and environment work while staying grounded, truthful, and spontaneous.

This 2-credit course is an introduction to Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, which inaugurated a distinctly American free verse by breaking with European formal traditions of poetry. We will read the entire original 1855 version (a self-published volume with only twelve poems) as well as selections from some of the subsequent editions that Whitman published over his lifetime (including the 1892 “deathbed” edition, which contains 383 poems!).

The Scriptorium, a “place for writing,” is a class for writers interested in improving their critical essay-writing skills. We will read to write and write to read. Much of our time will be occupied with writing and revising—essai means “trial” or “attempt”—as we work to create new habits and productive strategies for analytical writing.

Climate change, poverty, and food access are all compelling and urgent issues confronting our society. Growing local food is one significant way we can respond. Having received the Bennington Fair Food Initiative Grant with the mission to develop educational training programs in agriculture/food system workforce development and to create small business, this class will be practice based learning in regenerative agricultural practices and the creation of sustainable food systems.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, mathematics underwent a vast expansion, into new, exciting, and increasingly counter-intuitive realms. The subject risked mystification and mutual incomprehensibility between experts in different sub-fields. In the first part of the twentieth century, a group of French mathematicians, under the pseudonym Bourbaki, undertook an ultimately successful program to use the foundation of set theory to put all of mathematics onto a common conceptual and logical foundation.

Today it is clear that the environment matters. In activism and scholarship and public policy, the environment has become a potent (if sometimes obligatory) point of reference. Less attention, however, has focused on the emergence of the environment itself as a converging field of action for advocacy, science, and statecraft. In this seminar, we will reflect not only on what we know of the environment but also on how we came to know the environment.

How do economic crises reshape economies and societies? What triggers recessions, inflation, and financial upheavals—and how do governments respond? More importantly, how do these responses influence long-term economic structures and global dynamics?

In this seminar, we will dive into the complexities of today’s global economy, engaging with the most pressing economic challenges of our time. We will explore how economic policies, geopolitical dynamics, and global trends intersect, shaping the economic landscape. Through real-time data, contemporary research, and case studies, we’ll analyze the forces driving change and the key decisions shaping the future of the global economy.

Modeling and Thinking in Rhino 8 is an introductory course to Computer-Aided Design (CAD) Modeling and how those models can be used in real-world applications. This course will explore the use of Rhino to create interactive models that represent imagined designs for manufacturing, architecture, and spatial sketching. Particular attention will be paid to how computer models relate to specific measurements, spaces, context, and future outputs. This course aims to build technical skills but will also consider aesthetics, functionality, and design concepts.

“Not long ago, a near prerequisite for vanguard architecture was an engagement with theory; lately it has become an acquaintance with art” or so observed Hal Foster in his 2011 book ‘The Art Architecture Complex.’ While ideas about what constitutes cutting edge architecture may have transformed in the decade since, entanglements between art and architecture and the reciprocal effects that they have on each other remain central to architectural discourse.