Black Studies
How have the cultures, histories, and experiences of people of African descent shaped our worlds? How do Black intellectual traditions challenge hegemonic notions of academic disciplinarity? What might it mean to write, research, and create in relation to community visions for freedom?
The Black Studies Concentration allows students to explore and participate in the history of the African and Afro-diasporic community of thinkers and makers. Bennington’s interdisciplinary and student-designed approach to learning helps students draw on various resources to gain new insights and develop their own perspectives on the representations of Blackness and the Black body.
Black Studies interrogates the assumptions, objects of study, practices and limits of other established disciplines. Students who focus on Black Studies complete culminating projects that include research on specific issues, development of informed and innovative thinking, and/or creation of new ways to express and communicate understanding of Black Studies. Black Studies graduates work in scientific research, policy development, law, education, social studies and advocacy/activism, dance, theater and performance, literature and creative writing, and curatorial contexts and art.
Field Work Term
As with all areas of study at Bennington, students of Black Studies are encouraged to support, enhance, and contextualize their classroom learning with a range of experiential and professional development opportunities. When participating in their annual Field Work Term experience, students of Black Studies may choose to center this learning through their choice of a professional organization with whom to intern, their proposal of an independent study or research project that aligns closely with their interdisciplinary studies, or collaborative work with a thinker, artist, and professional whose work in this space they admire.
Study Away
Many students also choose to support and enhance their learning with a term studying away from Bennington, either internationally or domestically. Students who study away will find the opportunity to explore the world, and their academic interests, through another lens, while also creating the time and space to center voices they may not regularly hear. Whether your unique blend of interdisciplinary interests within Black Studies draws you to sail the Mississippi while studying the unique conservation efforts being led by queer communities of color in this essential watershed; unpack the intersection of fashion, music, and Sankofa within the “Afro-Chic” communities of Accra; or to connect with a Howard University-designed curriculum researching the role of race and identity in South America’s largest Afro-diasporic community in Cali, Colombia, we are confident that you will be able to find a program away that aligns to and enhances your academic interests at Bennington!
Black Studies Resources
Crossett Library
Black Studies Library Guide: This resource guide was created by Crossett Library staff and Deja' Haley, '20 to highlight and make more visible materials related to Black Studies.
Usdan Gallery
Usdan Gallery exhibitions and programs support teaching across the curriculum. Examples of projects related to Black Studies include solo exhibitions by artists Alexandra Bell (Fall 2017). Torkwase Dyson (Fall 2018), and Allana Clarke (Fall 2022); the Covid-era public collaborations “Bring It Home” and “Carrie Mae Weems Resist COVID / Take 6!” (2020–21); the Milford Graves retrospective “A Mind-Body Deal” (Spring 2024); and the group exhibition “We Have Reach” (Spring 2025).
Information about all Usdan programming is on the Usdan Gallery website.
Faculty
Your faculty will be your mentors, challenging you to ask the most interesting questions and to find the most meaningful answers to the problems you’ve chosen to tackle.
Field Work Term
As with all areas of study at Bennington, students of Black Studies are encouraged to support, enhance, and contextualize their classroom learning with a range of experiential and professional development opportunities.
Alumni
Bennington has always built deep connections between doing and knowing, action and reflection, the classroom and the world. Our alumni have long put that spirit into practice, playing leading roles.
Trailblazing attorney who has spent a career working to highlight issues of gender bias in the legal profession
Renowned choreographer of works performed by Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and the New York City Ballet
Performance curator, producer, poet, choreographer, and performance artist
Poet and memoirist. Author of How to Say Babylon, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Kirkus Prize, and longlisted for the Women’s Prize in Nonfiction.
Abstract painter whose work held a prominent position in the 52nd Venice Biennale exhibition.
Trans* poet, curator, and artist. Author of I NEED MUSIC, Blackspace: On the Poetics of an Afrofuture Take This Stallion, and Mount Carmel and the Blood of Parnassus.
Choreographer, educator, and performer of traditional and contemporary dance. Keeper of his family’s traditional Gurunsi ways.
