December 19, 2024

The fifteen students seated in a circle in Commons 318 on Friday morning could be mistaken for a support group for survivors of high school English. Each has a recollection of trauma. “I am glad we have penicillin,” said Linds Leggett ’27, who studies creative writing, “but I didn’t really want to write eight pages about it—with a timer.” The other students laughed and nodded.

“In my high school there was a lot of competition, especially in Advanced Placement History and Writing,” said Bella Kuick ’28. “There was this sense that you are working against each other. The teachers really promoted that, and it wasn’t a very nice environment.” 

A New Kind of Writing Class

The students are in The Scriptorium, a foil to both the high school and Advanced Placement classes the students have endured and their college iterations: English 101 or English Composition or Critical Writing 101, classes most college students are required to take. First of all, The Scriptorium is not required. (In fact, no class at Bennington is required.) Beyond that, as you may suspect based on its name alone, The Scriptorium is far more interesting. 

Camille Guthrie, the faculty member leading the group, named the series after the room in a monastery where monks worked on manuscripts. At Bennington, it means "a room for writing." Different sections of The Scriptorium are taught by Guthrie and Alex Creighton. Students read widely from curated texts along a particular theme, often relating to a moral question or a current cultural touchstone—monsters, beauty, utopias and dreamscapes, found families—and write at the intersection of that theme and their own interests. Students in this Scriptorium class are reading and writing about Barbie, the iconic Mattel doll and the subject of the summer of 2023’s blockbuster movie. 

In addition to watching the movie, they read texts that reveal its cultural context. In this iteration of The Scriptorium, readings cover critical studies of gender, race, and sexuality; commercialism and consumerism; beauty standards; surveillance; cuteness and other topics. Students have read "The Miniature Wife” by Manuel Gonzales, We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson, and “St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” by Karen Russell in addition to Michel Foucault, Audre Lorde, Ovid, and others. Each reading explores a theme touched on in the film. 

A Unique Path

“The most exciting thing is what students do with this material,” said Guthrie. They each choose a topic that combines what they read and the critical vocabulary they have practiced in class discussions with other studies, knowledge, or interests. Their topics, developed with support from Guthrie, are unique to each student and more rigorous than monolithic assignments handed down to students in more conventional writing classes. “Each student is on their own path,” said Guthrie. Rather than writing as a chore, students are suddenly empowered to write and eager to create new habits and develop productive strategies for analytical writing. 

In fact, they can’t stop writing. “I often get eighteen pages when the maximum length is six,” said Guthrie. “It is pouring out of them.” Leggett compares the experience of The Scriptorium to the prescriptive and restrictive writing classes she has taken in the past.

"Here, I am allowed to have a voice,” said Leggett, “and experience the strength of writing something both academically challenging and personally fulfilling. It's been as expansive as it has been liberating." 

The format also makes the classwork meaningful to Bennington students, whose work embraces interdisciplinary studies. Holland Williams ’26 is fascinated by early 20th century Muslim Egyptian painter Inji Aflatoun (sometimes spelled Efflatoun). She is using the Barbie-inspired readings from class to elucidate Aflatoun's art. Meanwhile, Hazel Windstorm ’28, who studies environmental science, is using assignments to think about the consequences of raising generations of children with disposable plastic toys that glorify consumer culture. Teddy Bailey ’27, who studies acting, used a creative/analytical assignment to write a script featuring the internal dialog of Merricat, a main character from Jackson’s We Always Lived in the Castle, and an analytical companion piece. 

Community and Revision

When drafts are well underway, students workshop and revise collaboratively. Though, it should be noted that doing so productively involves some prep work, which starts during the very first class. “In order to have the greatest success, students must trust their classmates,” said Guthrie. She facilitates crucial community building by leading the class through the selection of a team name (in this case, The Alan Appreciation Aggregate or Weird Barbiez) and by encouraging fun activities, like dress-up day, where students dress up as their favorite Barbie. “Coming here and having all of these fun activities and having a supportive environment… it has made me feel a lot better about writing,” said Kuick. 

Zak Struck ’26 agrees. “In Scriptorium, we often talk about some decently heavy topics,” he said. “[The class rituals are] helpful for creating that space for giving people the grace or ability to reword something, if what they said didn’t quite come out right, and to change your mind too.” 

On top of that, Guthrie teaches students the steps of providing constructive feedback. Students are coached to begin with a compliment, point out places to add evidence, and then ask a question. This format helps students clarify their thesis and identify areas to expand upon in ways that respect the effort. “We don’t practice any shaming,” said Guthrie. “The whole pedagogy of telling people that they are bad writers is mean–and bad teaching. We focus on encouraging people where they are, finding their strengths, and helping them develop their own voice.” (Not coincidentally, according to students, providing helpful feedback is Guthrie’s superpower.)

“Everything is structured to help students feel, ‘yes, I have a lot to say,’” said Guthrie. “It’s an encouraging and rigorous process.”

“The workshops are incredibly successful. Everyone leaves having gotten something from it,” said Leggett. “We learn how to workshop, so we can take those skills into other classes and know how to give successful critical feedback.” She continued, “At the end of it, you know what you want to do next.” More than that, they are fun. “We get to see and hear what others are writing about, and we become inspired by each other,” said Guthrie. 

Becoming Writers and Scholars

Through assignments and discussions, students get everything that they would have learned in English 101, including lessons to create a persuasive argument, edit for grammar and style, and do research. But they also learn to trust their own instincts when developing their theses. In that way, Guthrie explains, “The work students do here more closely reflects that of working scholars, who bring themselves to their work.” Edison Hicks ’26 said, “That very particular personal exploration that the Scriptorium classes have is what makes them so special. Finding what you want to be the meaning of the work, it's very challenging and very Bennington.”

Guthrie points out that even the community-building aspects of the class reflect the reality of successful writers. “It’s very hard to be a writer. There are more disappointments than there are triumphs. To be a professional writer in this world you have to have writing friends. You have to have a community you rely on and people who understand you and will support you when you need it.”