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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.

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.

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.

Dalcroze Eurhythmics is a music class where we practice sensing the body through musical movement. Can our bodies help us learn how to read and interpret sheet music too? Yes!

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.

Viewed from the outside, the French-speaking world offers enticing images of beauty, pleasure, and freedom. From the inside, however, it is a complicated, often contradictory world where implicit codes and values shape the most basic aspects of daily life. This course will give you an insider’s perspective on a cultural and communicative system whose ideas, customs, and belief systems are surprisingly different from your own.

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.

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.

Studio Practice is designed to offer each student a rigorous and immersive dance study experience. A deep-dive into practices of critical physicality, students will be supported in making direct connections across an abundance of dance forms that rearrange and blur the boundaries between traditional and emerging techniques. Studio Practice courses focus on the relationships between curiosity, desire, strength, effort, force, and presence, all while moving within the lineages and histories that inform the ways in which we create and encounter our dancing futures.

Studio Practice is designed to offer each student a rigorous and immersive dance study experience. A deep-dive into practices of critical physicality, students will be supported in making direct connections across an abundance of dance forms that rearrange and blur the boundaries between traditional and emerging techniques. Studio Practice courses focus on the relationships between curiosity, desire, strength, effort, force, and presence, all while moving within the lineages and histories that inform the ways in which we create and encounter our dancing futures.

This semester-length, 2-credit course, intended for students who will continue to the Advanced Projects in Film/Video II course in spring 2023, supports advanced students in planning, pre-production, and early production (or for 8th term students, post-production and finishing) for more complex, larger-scale, longer-duration, self-directed film/video projects. It also includes a screening series where we watch and analyze feature and mid-length films.

In this introductory-level Japanese course, students will explore Japan’s artistic treasures and diverse art forms to examine Japanese visual culture, history, and society while developing and practicing basic listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills in Japanese. This course offers a fun and dynamic way to begin your journey to study the Japanese language and culture.

Students with little or no Spanish will learn the language through an immersion in Latin American painting. While there will be some discussion of standard tactics such as stylistic nuances and artists’ biographies, it is expected that we will rapidly develop sufficient linguistic ability to focus on movements, ranging from the republican art of nation-building in the 19th century to modernism, magical realism, and the postmodern, thus treating the works as ideologemes, representations of political and social import.

This class will examine the current diplomacy and process of a new Convention for the United Nations on Conserving the River Deltas. We will hear from some of the lead partners on the project: The Transboundary Water In-Cooperation Network (TWIN), co-founded by CAPA and the Institute for Environmental Diplomacy and Security at the University of Vermont, and the African Centre for Climate Action and Rural Development (ACCARD) directed by Freeman Oluohor.

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.