Offered By: Bennington College

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.

Projection design reaches across the visual arts, drama, music, and dance. Designs and projections are developed to alter a space, bring in more information to a theatre production or act as a texture for surfaces. Students use live manipulated footage, previously created footage, and project on a variety of surfaces and spaces. The software Isadora, QLab, and various editing software are used.

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.

From ethics and political philosophy to aesthetics and ancient Greek philosophy to Marx, Kant, Wittgenstein, and topics in continental philosophy—Bennington’s philosophy curriculum provides students with a solid sense of the nature of philosophical inquiry and invites them to consider how philosophical concerns and methods can be incorporated into their studies across the curriculum.

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.

Photography at Bennington offers students an introduction to both analog and digital camera work. Courses cover a broad range of topics, exploring photography’s history from the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, and investigating all genres of the medium, as well as how it combines with other artistic practices. Studio photography classes are designed to mix creative production with relevant readings, historical research, and technical hands-on instruction.

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.