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Hey all!

Just wanted to tap in here. We have been getting a couple of questions regarding mental health and resources on campus so here's a quick note!

Regarding mental health resources, we offer counseling through health services that you can check here: CAPS or Counseling and Psychology. Plenty of students on campus use these services that are sometimes also available free of cost during drop in hours during weekdays. The CAPS team specialize in different forms of therapy, and are from diverse backgrounds, so it is definitely possible to see someone who shares your experiences. There are also specific CAPS-led groups that meet once a week for working through grief, BIPOC students, chronically ill students etc. Campus safety is also available 24x7 and is always willing to forward calls to an on-call therapist anytime during the day!

That being said, there are peer-oriented support groups available as well. Each house has a house chair who offers a confidential support system and is also willing to help you connect with reasonable resources on campus.

Thank you for the questions, and please reach out at admissions@bennington.edu if you have any more!

Best,

Admissions Summer Interns' 24

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Still thinking about Donna Tartt's answer when being asked about when she was the happiest

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Bennington College

(Alfred Eisenstaedt. 1937?)

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Making Work in the Costume Shop

Hello everyone! My name is Sawyer and I am a sophomore at Bennington studying ceramics, sculpture, fashion/textiles, and sustainability. I will be discussing what it is like to make work in the costume shop and explore textiles here. 

While I am not only studying fashion at Bennington, there are definitely ways to work it into your Plan or even as the main focus if you would like. The best way to do this is to take classes with our amazing costume technical instructor, Richard MacPike. The class I am in this term with him is called Resisting the Stitch which is all about different fabric dyeing and resisting techniques. It is a very engaging course where we began with swatching dye colors to get a hang of the process and have moved through many different projects such as dyeing fabric using the Itajime resist technique for pillows or learning stitch techniques for our final scarf project.

The costume shop is such a fun place to work, there are clothes hanging from above and a large work table surrounded by many sewing machines. Students are always milling about, with many being employed by the shop to make costumes for the theater and dance productions happening at Bennington. It has been great to spend time here and learn dye techniques that I can see myself using in my advanced work. In addition to this, I am going to be taking his course in the fall called Patternmaking and Garment Construction where we will learn about how to create actual garments. I am very excited for this course and how it will allow me to explore this part of my plan.

I have included a photo of what part of the dyeing process looks like below. Let me know if you have any questions!

Sawyer '24

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Math at Bennington!

Hello, everyone!

I'm Gaurav'24 and I'll be talking about Mathematics at Bennington. I have Math as a primary field of study in my plan and I'll be talking about my experience with the subject!

I've been doing mathematics since my freshman year here and it's pretty damn fun. Bennington, due to its reputation as an art school, isn't really known for its mathematics and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed doing math here. Not to mention, mathematics in my high school was very stiff, technical and involved mostly executive function. After taking a couple of classes here, however, I realized mathematics can be just as creative as my other field of study in Literature. Instead of trying to find the right answers, learning math here centers around creative problem solving and pattern-finding.

I've taken the foundational mathematical courses so far (Calculus, Linear Algebra, and Logic & Proofs) and it's given me a good understanding of the field. Problem sets are open-ended and the emphasis is placed on thinking through problems thoroughly and articulating these thoughts into coherent writing (which is most of what you do as a real mathematician anyway). The biggest surprise, however, was how collaborative mathematics could be. Instead of working on homework alone in my room, I find myself constantly working with others. If you're looking to try mathematics again, and do it in a way that is fun, I'd definitely recommend taking a math class here (especially with Andrew McIntyre who is a fantastic professor).

Best,

Gaurav

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Looking into Lit: An intro to literature department!

Literature at Bennington

Hello! My name is Kat L’Esperance-Stokes (‘23) and I’ve studied literature at Bennington for the past three years. Most of my work is nonfiction and poetry as I look at the meaning of home and family. However, I also study anthropology meaning I haven’t taken as many literature courses as other lit students to make room for my SCT classes. Writing with me is Joey Gawtry (‘23) who is a literature and creative writing student at Bennington mostly focused on storytelling around human convergence and interaction. She transferred in my second term, and mostly uses poetry and some nonfiction as her creative mediums. And Sabine Wilson-Patrick (‘25) who’s a literature and film student at Bennington, focused mainly on creative nonfiction and playwriting. Her first semester at Bennington was primarily focused around building up on their writing skills and their second semester courses are starting to show more of what she’s really interested in focusing on long term.

to talk all about studying literature at Bennington. For each of us, our play revolves around literature and most of our coursework is in lit.

To start off, here’s a list of what we’ve taken during our time here at Bennington

Fall Term 2019:

I was the only one out of the three of us during that term and I was just a baby freshman so I took only one literature class:

The New York School of Poets: Studied both generations of the New York School of poets: a poetry style with a casual, lighthearted tone which often reads as nonfictional. The first generation (group of poets) started writing these poems as a way to impress each other.

Spring Term 2020

Joey transferred to Bennington that term (if you have questions about transferring, you can reach out to her at joeyg@bennington.edu!). This is what classes looked between us!

Kat’s courses:

The Devil: Studying different interpretations of the Devil in a literary sense. Taught by Phillip Williams and one of the largest classes at Bennington thanks to popular demand. This was a one time only class

The Self, The Soul, and Saint Augustine: Given that Saint Augustine is seen as one of the first confessional writer, the class looked at him as the start to personal essay and confessional poetry.

FLEABAG: A Workshop on Structure: An intensive, two weekend class that looked at the structure of both seasons of Fleabag.

Joey’s courses:

The Ocean, The Creek, The Lake: Writing Water: A course in which we read several nonfiction books, such as Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard, and Refuge by Terry Tempest Williams, and wrote our own stories about bodies of water. The teacher for this class, Akiko Busch, was one of my favorites at Bennington–I very much miss her.

The Courtly World: Lady Shonagon and Lady Murasaki: We read the Tale of Genji, the first novel ever written, and also The Pillow Book by Sei Shonagan, both portrayals of Heian era Japan and beautifully written. This was a class I took because it was one of the last literature classes with an open spot, but it ended up being one of my favorites–it was with Anna Maria Hong, who was excellent but does not teach at Bennington anymore.

Fall Term 2020

Joey and I's start to sophomore year.

My courses:

Recreating The Classics: In this, we looked over a few classical works like The Tempest and the Stranger and paired them with a retelling/recreation of them somehow. Either by extension of the original story or the story from an perspective of a different character. The final was writing our own recreation where I took characters and lines from The Tempest to make a poetry sequence.

Horror Fiction and Film: This class looked the history of horror by pairing books and film to cover various tropes in horror.

Reading and Writing: Autofiction: My first workshop class. Autofiction is a subgenre where the writer blurs true events and fiction while keeping to an emotional truth.

Joey’s courses:

Fundamentals of Creative Writing: A basic creative writing class with reading and writing exercises every week in each of the 3 primary genres. Taught by the ingenious Jenny Boully, so, of course, an excellent experience (though Jenny is a poetry and nonfiction writer, so expect to not have a big focus on fiction if she is your Fundamentals teacher).

Shipwrecked: A study of different books in which characters have been literally and metaphorically shipwrecked, such as Robinson Crusoe and Concrete Island. We also completed several writing exercises about our own experiences with shipwreck.

The Jazz Age Revisited: A class in which we studied classic Jazz Age authors such as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, but mainly delved into the Black authors of that time such as Nella Larsen and Jean Toomer. Cane ended up being one of my favorite books of all time.

Reading and Writing Nonfiction: Childhood and Its Aftermaths: My first advanced course in creative writing, with Jenny Boully. We studied several texts, such as Heartberries by Terese Marie Mailhot and In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado, that touched on traumatic experiences in and out of childhood in nonfiction texts. We also workshopped our own nonfiction pieces and discussed smaller short stories throughout the term.

Spring Term 2021

My spring term, I decided to take a term off literature. Thanks to there being so many literature students, classes often fill up pretty quickly, especially Reading and Writing courses. Further, literature courses are a lot of work between constant reading and writing. I decided I wanted to spend a term studying SCT because I hadn’t really had the chance to do so being so focused on literature. However, Joey remained focused on literature and she took:

Reading and Writing Poetry: Refusals and Mythic Transformations: Another class with Jenny, this was my first advanced poetry course at Bennington. Instead of workshopping individual poems each week, we workshopped one long poem that went through many revisions and studied books such as Jane: A Murder and Autobiography of Red.

Reading Poetry: A Basic Course: A class with my current advisor, Michael Dumanis, which taught me the mechanics of how to read poetry, what to look for, and terminology such as line break and sonnet. This was one of the larger classes I’ve taken at Bennington, with what I believe was 35 or so students. It was definitely more of a lecture course in which we went through an extensive packet of poetry dating through time, and did not do our own writing exercises.

Fall Term 2021

The start of the current academic year! Joey and I became upperclassmen and Sabine came in and begun their journey at Bennington.

Kat’s courses

Muriel Spark and the Vanishing Novel: Taught by Benjamin Anastas, we read through all of Muriel Spark’s novels. She’s known for writing short, concise works with very little emotionality in it’s delivery.

The Problem With Sylvia Plath: A short, seven week course taught by Mark Wunderlick where we read through her published works, went over her life and legacy, and did our best to separate her and her life experiences from her work to see how it stands on their own.

On Sustaining a Practice of Literary Documentation: This course looked over docupoetics which is a subgenre of poetry and prose that involves adding onto a primary document(s) to comment on/create a new piece of work. They’re usually very experimental and pushes what makes a piece poetry.

Screenwriting: I took this Sabine! It was an introductory course to screenwriting where after reading script we wrote 30 pages of a film screenplay.

Joey’s courses

Kalon and Chaos: The Secret History and its References: In this class, we studied texts like Donna Tartt’s The Secret History along with Plato’s Symposium to contextualize Greek references in modern literature. I loved the chance to study The Secret History at Hampden College–I mean, Bennington College–and enjoy the mythology of it all. It was goofy at times, but fun and also very educational.

Screenwriting: The Story Studio: This was another big class, with around the same number of students (30-40). We each read a new screenplay every few weeks, talked about the mechanics of screenwriting, and workshopped our own screenplays. Taught by one of Bennington’s *coolest* professors, Manuel Gonzales.

Reading and Writing Poetry: Image and Detail: This was my favorite class I’ve taken thusfar at Bennington–if you’re at all interested in writing poetry, please take a poetry workshop with Michael Dumanis! We all wrote and read new poems every week, our prompts ranging from Elizabeth Bishop mimetics to ekphrastic poems based on works of our choosing after visiting a local museum.

On top of taking screenwriting, Sabine also took Scriptorium:Beauty. The Scriptorium classes are taught by Camille Guthrie and are designed to help strength your writing skills. Every scriptorium class revolves around a theme. Beauty, Love and Happiness, and The Body to name a few!

Spring Term 2022

And this is the current term! We don’t have much to say about these classes yet because we’re in the middle of them now, but you can reach out to any of us regarding these classes or anything else regarding literature at Bennington! Joey’s email: joeyg@bennington.edu  Sabine’s: sabinewp@bennington.edu  mine: katl@bennington.edu

Kat’s courses

Poet’s Proof

The Prose Poem (Joey and I are in this together!)

Joey’s courses

Chance Encounters

The Russian Modernist Poets

Beastly and Beautiful: Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita

Sabine’s courses

Reading and writing fiction

Playwriting as Civic Inquiry

Bennington Review: Prose

Coming of Age: Gender and Genre

If you’ve read this far, thank you! Before we wrap up, Joey has a couple more bits of important information about literature at Bennington:

It is one of the largest departments with many faculty. With literature classes, some are competitive and some are not: in literature 2000’s many students will not be primarily or even secondarily literature students. Some classes I’ve taken that weren’t as competitive were the Courtly World, which studies The Tale of Genji and The Pillow Book in my freshman year, and The Jazz Age Revisited, which studied primarily Black authors during the Jazz age, as well as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Some I have taken that were more competitive and composed of mostly literature students were The Ocean, The Creek, The Lake, which was about writing about bodies of water and their significance, and Persona Poetry in this upcoming semester.

Creative writing, specifically, is a competitive discipline. The only 2000 course that is for creative writing, Fundamentals of Creative Writing, typically requires an ‘exception’ which you can get from your advisor if this is a course of study you plan to pursue. That’s the typical jump-off point for upper level creative writing classes, but it is definitely not required. The 4000-level writing courses are among the most competitive on campus, sometimes earning upwards of 80 applications for 15 spots. Don’t be intimidated: some are not as competitive as that, but they definitely require a well-honed supplement of writing or relevance to your specific plan. There are three types of creative writing courses, Reading and Writing Poetry, RW Fiction, and RW Nonfiction. Most terms, they will have both fiction and poetry, nonfiction is rarer. These are ‘workshop’ classes, in which you are usually expected to do a significant amount of reading as well as writing every week.

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Hello! My name is Thomas and I'm a senior at Bennington! I study theatre and psychology and am working on my senior work now. It would mean the world to me if you could fill out this survey to help out with that!

bit.ly/finegarresearch

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The Office of Admission in Bennington College wishes everybody joy, warmth and love. We hope that you have a blessed time with your loved ones. We are grateful for the year that passed and looking forward to the year to come.

Happy Holidays!!!

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REMINDER! Last day to apply for ED1. Swipe for some tips for the application process. https://www.instagram.com/p/CWTkoGuLf-8/?utm_medium=tumblr

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Some Bennington Photos

Hey all! I just wanted to drop some photos of our beautiful campus here for you all to enjoy!

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Looking for things to do outside Bennington? Take a look at Clark Art Institute! Clark Art Institute is a fantastic place to visit. It is only a 20 minutes drive from campus. Bennington students have a discount as well. Bennington College has a cross-enrollment program with Williams College which happens to be next to the Institute! Students go there to hangout, eat, study, enjoy the outdoor spaces. They have cool architectural designs, a cool library and amazing art exhibitions. -Stefanos '23 & Shlesha'24 https://www.instagram.com/p/CU5Upl0rtiU/?utm_medium=tumblr

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'The Haunting of Hill House' Inspired by our very own Jennings Music Mansion

As we enter the fall season, the green mountains changing their evergreen hue to deep lush autumn colors, some say that the spirits on-campus get a little....lively. Let's shed a little light on one of the most beautiful and spooky places on Campus.

Jennings, donated to Bennington in 1939 by the wealthy Jennings family, is our music building (pictured above during a First-Year Forum tour of the various rehearsal and practice spaces). It is a vine-ridden majestic mansion with such historic lore that it probably inspired Shirley Jackson's 'Haunting of Hill House) - read up on the history of her relationship with the campus in this interview with previous admissions intern Maeve Bustell '19!

Personally, I find the endless maze-like hallways and creaking floors quite comforting. Some students stay late into the night in the electronic and acoustic practice studios - where they hear sounds other than the music played from their instruments.

Ask anyone around campus about the lore they have gathered during their time here and sure enough, you'll have a plethora of stories. During my first month at Bennington, I was told never to wear red across the commons lawn during the misty hour of the night.

Why you might ask? Well, you'll have to come to explore and find out.

What are the spooky stories that most intrigue you about your surroundings and what fall activities are you most looking forward to?

As soon as the first leaves fall, I am gearing up to visit Lumberjacks or the Apple Barn, two heavenly spots to get warm cider and hot apple cider donuts 🍩

Ecstatically,

Imara-rose G '23

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: Literature Faculty Spotlight :

As Bennington supports an individualized, multi-sensory, and ethical pursuit of knowledge, it is important to recognize what achievements faculty members embark on outside of the academic sphere.

My advisor (the faculty member who aids you in the design of the content, and structure of your Bennington plan pathway) Marguerite Feitlovitz will be reading her literary translation of Small Bibles for Bad Times: Selected Prose and Poetry by Liliane Atlan (Mandel Vilar Press, 2021). For those interested in literary translation, Marguerite is the sponsor of multilingual student-created online journal (M)othertongues (get involved with student writing initiatives on-campus, check out SILO)

Camille Guthrie, Director of Undergraduate Writing Initiatives, will be reading from her work Diamonds (BOA Editions, 2021).

Phillip Williams, a mentor for many BIPOC students on-campus who delves into the myriad ways that Black bodies inhabit and navigate spatiality, will be reading from his newest work Mutiny (Penguin Random House, 2021).

Literature evenings are wonderful spaces to be inspired and engage with the work of both faculty and students. This past Saturday, the SILO crew hosted a poetry and prose night to share new works with the extended campus community, hearkening the rebirth of this age-old Bennington tradition.

Carry on writers and readers alike!

-Imara-rose Glymph '23

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back to school means time to spend the day studying crossett or commons! look how pretty the buildings are in the early fall sun ☀️

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Get out in the Green Mountains!

We recently had our club fair on campus that introduced a whole new generation of Benningtonians to the variety of extracurricular activities to get engaged in. Despite the fact that we are a small community, we have more than 30 active club associations, with more added each year as students promote their own growing passions.

The Ultimate Frisbee and football (soccer) club are the more sporty sides to campus while the Planned Parenthood and DREAM programs offer socially-engaged, community-oriented interactions outside of academic life.

I wanted to shed a spotlight on one of my favourite year-round clubs, The Outdoor Collective which hosts abundant activities in the great green expanse ranging from moonlit hikes, beginner - intermediate skii trips, sunrise yoga, foraging, and lake swimming. Club members have direct input into future adventures, the collective voice matters in the decision-making of what to prioritize.

Here are some pictures of sights within walking/biking distance of campus to seek refuge in when you want to be in connection with nature:

- Mile Around the Woods features amazing pathways that wind through fields, lush forest canopies, and fungi-laden trails. Tips: Laying down in the pine needles provides a lush, soft bed for decompressing from stress.

- Lake Shaftsbury is a 35 minute drive or hour-long bike ride from campus where camping, barbecuing, star-gazing, and geese-watching happen simultaneously. It's breath-taking.

As a FloW student, it is especially important to provide free options for enjoying the natural surroundings. As Mary Oliver eloquently said, "the world offers itself to your imagination."🦌🌳🌲

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@benningtonstudents

Hi head down to our Insta stories for a question and answer series!!

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Hello All! We have made a house tour series on a 40s(colonial), 70s(milk carton) and 2000s(woo) houses on our Insta handle. You'll find them in our highlights. Go check it out if you're interested.

Our Insta is: benningtonstudents