Taught by successful, current professionals in their fields, Bennington’s visual arts program provides students with a strong background in the creative process. As students move through their courses, they develop their own techniques, methods of investigation, conceptual thinking, and understanding of what it means to be a creative practitioner. They are encouraged to explore opportunities across a broad range of media, while examining contemporary creative practice and its connections to the history of art.
At Bennington, you design your own course of study and work, taking full advantage of the College’s resources both inside and outside the classroom. This process goes beyond the bounds of a traditional major. You identify one or more areas of interest that spark your intellectual curiosity and provide a foundation for your academic work and fieldwork, and you pursue that work with ongoing guidance from your faculty. This is your Plan.
At Bennington, we believe that good writers are good readers. In small classes centered on discussion, students are invited by a faculty of novelists, memoirists, poets, literary journalists, and translators to share a writer’s perspective on contemporary and classic works of literature. Students discover that the act of writing is a conversation with other writers, past and present; that analysis is artful and imaginative; that creative writing is rigorous and thoughtful. We aim to develop students’ skills in critical thinking, analytical reading, scholarly writing, literary translation, and creative writing by allowing them to study many types of literary works and styles from antiquity to the present.
At Bennington, you design your own course of study and work, taking full advantage of the College’s resources both inside and outside the classroom. This process goes beyond the bounds of a traditional major. You identify one or more areas of interest that spark your intellectual curiosity and provide a foundation for your academic work and fieldwork, and you pursue that work with ongoing guidance from your faculty. This is your Plan.
Psychology is more than the study of the mind and its effect on behavior; it also requires a nuanced understanding of the scope and limits of theories and other generalizations of human behavior. At Bennington, some psychology courses focus on understanding the generalizations made by others, while other courses focus on the process of research, where students make their own generalizations about human behavior. In both cases, students learn to read, understand, and critically evaluate published work in psychology. They develop the skills to write a convincing, non-prejudicial argument. And they learn how to apply ethical standards to research and theory in psychology.
At Bennington, you design your own course of study and work, taking full advantage of the College’s resources both inside and outside the classroom. This process goes beyond the bounds of a traditional major. You identify one or more areas of interest that spark your intellectual curiosity and provide a foundation for your academic work and fieldwork, and you pursue that work with ongoing guidance from your faculty. This is your Plan.
We practice video at Bennington in the framework of visual art, building a varied program that includes analog and digital, experimental and documentary, critical and poetic approaches to the medium. Students make films, videos, and installations in a dynamic studio environment that includes production facilities, editing and screening rooms, and the breathtaking landscape of the campus itself. We emphasize formal innovation, conceptual rigor, historical consciousness and the capacity to collaborate as hallmark of a vibrant moving image practice. Students analyze works from film history alongside contemporary art in order to build a vocabulary to explain their own perspectives and critique one another’s work. Students learn the basics of form (composition, mise-en-scène, lighting, editing, sound) in together with thematic inquiry (politics, race, gender, social justice, the environment) before pursuing advanced independent work.
At Bennington, you design your own course of study and work, taking full advantage of the College’s resources both inside and outside the classroom. This process goes beyond the bounds of a traditional major. You identify one or more areas of interest that spark your intellectual curiosity and provide a foundation for your academic work and fieldwork, and you pursue that work with ongoing guidance from your faculty. This is your Plan.
In our painting and drawing classes, we create an environment where you can explore the meaning of art and how it represents the world. We focus on the connection between what we see and how we create images. The work will challenge you to think deeply and ask important questions. We don’t tell you exactly how to make your art; instead, we encourage you to find your own unique approach. We believe that learning technical skills is important, but that it is equally important to think about the meaning behind your art and how it relates to the world we live in today.
At Bennington, you design your own course of study and work, taking full advantage of the College’s resources both inside and outside the classroom. This process goes beyond the bounds of a traditional major. You identify one or more areas of interest that spark your intellectual curiosity and provide a foundation for your academic work and fieldwork, and you pursue that work with ongoing guidance from your faculty. This is your Plan.
Contemporary sculpture in practice and research, now more than ever before, embraces a full range of exploration from the historic traditions of figuration to innovative content in the areas of functional and non-functional object-making, installation, performance, site-specific work, and digital forms. As they progress to advanced classes, students are challenged to use their skills to make work that is more self-directed and research-driven to contribute to the ever-extending visual dialogue that interprets our personal and public lives.
At Bennington, you design your own course of study and work, taking full advantage of the College’s resources both inside and outside the classroom. This process goes beyond the bounds of a traditional major. You identify one or more areas of interest that spark your intellectual curiosity and provide a foundation for your academic work and fieldwork, and you pursue that work with ongoing guidance from your faculty. This is your Plan.
To enrich students’ exploration, artists, writers, and scholars in the field of Japanese studies regularly visit campus, and faculty and students collaborate to organize out-of-school activities. Students are encouraged to pursue Field Work Term opportunities related to their studies, and study abroad is strongly encouraged for students of Japanese. Bennington offers an exchange program with Kansai Gaikokugo University, Osaka, Japan.
At Bennington, you design your own course of study and work, taking full advantage of the College’s resources both inside and outside the classroom. This process goes beyond the bounds of a traditional major. You identify one or more areas of interest that spark your intellectual curiosity and provide a foundation for your academic work and fieldwork, and you pursue that work with ongoing guidance from your faculty. This is your Plan.
There are many ways to study mathematics at Bennington. The self-directed and problem-oriented approach of a Bennington mathematics education prepares students for the challenges of graduate school or careers requiring mathematics. Our courses also provide the support students in other areas requiring mathematics (physics, economics, computer science) need to prepare for graduate school or careers in their fields. In addition, students focusing in areas that are not usually connected to mathematics (dance, visual arts, literature) often take advantage of our unique course structure to include mathematics in their work in interesting and new ways. Many students who take even one course in mathematics find that it gives them new perspectives and skills that carry over into their other work in surprising ways.
At Bennington, you design your own course of study and work, taking full advantage of the College’s resources both inside and outside the classroom. This process goes beyond the bounds of a traditional major. You identify one or more areas of interest that spark your intellectual curiosity and provide a foundation for your academic work and fieldwork, and you pursue that work with ongoing guidance from your faculty. This is your Plan.
The study of media at Bennington explores media history and theory, as well as scholarly and artistic work in the new fields of sound studies, visual culture, media archaeology, and the digital humanities. We work from an expanded definition of media that includes not only printed and digital texts and imagery, but also the physical strucutures make media possible, from undersea fiber optic cables to the ring of telecommunications satellites orbiting the earth. Students learn how to analyze the circulation of media artifacts and their meanings in relation to structures of power, the construction of social difference, and the range of possibilities for interpreting the past, perceiving the present, and imagining the future.
At Bennington, you design your own course of study and work, taking full advantage of the College’s resources both inside and outside the classroom. This process goes beyond the bounds of a traditional major. You identify one or more areas of interest that spark your intellectual curiosity and provide a foundation for your academic work and fieldwork, and you pursue that work with ongoing guidance from your faculty. This is your Plan.
Music at Bennington helps students grow in their ability to do creative work in performance and composition. Our faculty of active professional musicians and composers represent a rare diversity of musical traditions who share a belief in hands-on learning and the development of versatile, thinking musicians who are able to understand multiple musical perspectives. Courses range from ensemble classes in Filipino kulintang, North American traditional music, and percussion music from the African diaspora, to classes in counterpoint, voice, jazz improvisation, electroacoustic music, studio recording, music history, and individual instrumental study.
At Bennington, you design your own course of study and work, taking full advantage of the College’s resources both inside and outside the classroom. This process goes beyond the bounds of a traditional major. You identify one or more areas of interest that spark your intellectual curiosity and provide a foundation for your academic work and fieldwork, and you pursue that work with ongoing guidance from your faculty. This is your Plan.
