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The craft of acting will be the main focus of this class.

How do we physically understand the spaces we are in? How is each of us affected by them? How do we develop a deeper sense of place? The Body Acoustic aims to heighten awareness of the reciprocal relationship between the built environment and our senses. Light and sound, distances, height, volume, surfaces, angles/curves and a/symmetries all affect one’s movement through interior and exterior spaces; one’s movement, in turn, affects the perception of these spaces.

What happens when you start a rehearsal process and you are not sure what you are wanting yet? How do you present movement phrases, concepts, and structures and incorporate new information from the performers? What is it that you see? How do you change your mind?

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 developing listening skills and ensemble building. Coursework will cover the nine Viewpoints and their application to character exploration and composition within the world of a play.

Each term, Bennington Visual Arts offers a program of 4-5 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 and issues in the Visual Arts and to stimulate campus dialogue around topical issues in contemporary art and culture, these thematically curated presentations offer students the opportunity to engage with art by emerging and internationally-known artists from underrepresented backgrounds.

In this course, students will examine the building blocks which make up the interlocking systems of language and observe how those systems are enacted and granted layers of meaning through social practice.

How have psychologists defined feelings over the years, and how is the field continuing to change?  We will begin with the 19th Century, when scientists like Wundt and Charcot brought human perception and mental health symptoms out of the realm of metaphysics.  After briefly considering Darwin’s view of emotion and new perspectives on artwork from early asylums, we will evaluate emotion as featured in two central debates from the 20th Century: (1) the psychodynamic approach of Freud, one of Charcot’s students, versus humanism and (2) the behaviorists’ broad rejection of feelings a

This class examines a variety of answers to the ancient question: How do I live a good life? We’ll engage with thinkers from diverse traditions across time and space as we clarify our own understanding of what makes life worth living and as we articulate a more developed conception of the good life.

In this 7-week course, we’ll explore a variety of approaches to improvised scene work, focusing on techniques beyond the Upright Citizens Brigade paradigm. Emphasizing Chicago-style improv, we’ll shift away from a strict ‘Game’ focus and instead prioritize relationship and character.

Get ready to jump in, take risks, and perform hundreds of scenes as you sharpen your skills and expand your improv toolkit. And of course, we’ll top it all off with a final class show where anything can happen!

In this course, students will work on an extended piece (10+ minutes), as well as a suite of miniatures (< 30 seconds). By playing with scale and continuity, students will be challenged to find their own way to extend their ideas while enriching their own musical language. Students can propose a piece in any style or forces, and we will work together to recruit instrumentalists or resources towards an end-of-term performance or installation.

We can define Ndaga as the awareness of legacy and debt, border crossing, re/invention, re/creation, and the desire to create new space for time travel. This is a self-journey. This course is for students who wish to find their artistic voices by exploring an interdisciplinary approach to making work.

Mystics––historically portrayed as passionate, dangerous, romantic, heretical, satanic––are a thorn in the side of organized religion. From the very beginnings of recorded human time, the presence and practice of mystics has been controversial. Sufi mystic al-Hallaj’s pronouncement that he was “the Truth” was received as blasphemy by the orthodoxy. His execution followed shortly after. Christian mystics of the 4th and 5th centuries were relegated to practicing outside the peripheries of the Roman Empire, in relative secrecy.

Designed to help beginner translators with no experience build their own ethical translation practices—with attention to issues of race, gender, and queerness—this course offers an introduction to translation via a hands-on approach. What pronouns do you use when translating from a language that doesn’t have gendered pronouns? Do you translate slurs? We will tackle these questions, plus the basics, thinking about a work’s tone, audience, and sociohistorical context in order to bring it to life in English.

This course examines the evolution of Chinese rock music in the post-Mao era, focusing on influential artists such as Cui Jian, Dou Wei, and Zuo Xiao Zu Zhou. Their lyrics not only reflect significant historical and social transformations in China after Mao but also capture the cultural shifts brought by economic reforms, the one-child policy, and the experiences of migrant workers in major cities.

This course will focus on teaching methods. While applicable to college, they’ll mostly be of the K-12 variety. Proleptically, it should always already recognize the false dichotomy rather too neatly encapsulated in its subtitle.

How do we organize data to solve complex problems efficiently? This course studies the fundamental structures and algorithms that form the cornerstone of computational problem-solving. Building upon the programming foundations established in CS1, we will explore how algorithmic thinking and sophisticated data organization enables us to tackle increasingly challenging computational problems.

This Scriptorium, a “place for writing,” functions as 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 discussion, writing, and revising—essai means “trial” or “attempt”—as we create new habits and strategies for our analytical writing. We will write in various essay structures with the aim of developing a well-supported thesis; in addition, we will revise collaboratively, improve our research and citation skills, and study grammar and style.

Bennington’s campus supports beautiful examples of temperate deciduous mixed hardwood forests. This class is a deep dive into forest ecology, land use change, and forest succession at a local scale. Students will explore the local forest community composition, structure, and function over the last 15,000 years and discuss the environmental conditions, disturbance dynamics, and biotic interactions responsible for the forest we have today.

The comforts and amenities of modern life require vast inputs of energy to power an industrial society. While the benefits of industrial society are significant, if unevenly shared, the environmental costs of energy extraction and production are significant. These environmental costs are also unevenly shared.

How have economic histories and past structures shaped present-day realities? Why do patterns of inequality persist between the Global North and South? This course examines these questions by exploring the long-lasting economic effects of colonial encounters—not just on the economies of formerly colonized countries, but also on those of the colonizers.

High-intermediate level. More details to come soon.

Sustainable development has been defined as development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It calls for concerted efforts towards building an inclusive, sustainable, and resilient future for people and planet. For sustainable development to be achieved, it is crucial to harmonize three core elements: economic growth, social inclusion, and environmental protection. Ending poverty in all forms is vital.