Bennington College
Encyclopedia
Bennington College is a liberal arts college
located in Bennington, Vermont, USA. The college was founded in 1932 as a women's college
and became co-educational in 1969.
, an educational philosopher who worked with John Dewey
. In 1924 they secured a charter for the college and established a board of trustees, to prepare for a new liberal arts college for women. The tasks of funding the construction of the college and defining its philosophy were undertaken. In 1928 Robert Devore Leigh was recruited as Bennington College's first president. He wrote the Bennington College Prospectus, which outlined the college's philosophy. Booth, McCullough, Kilpatrick, Dewey, and Leigh (among others) are commemorated on campus with houses named for them.
Ground was broken on August 16, 1931, on farmland donated by Mrs. Frederick B. Jennings. The project employed many local craftsmen, many of whom had been out of work since the stock market crash of 1929. The main educational building was a renovated barn, and despite an early attempt to give it a more official name, The Barn has persisted.
The first class of eighty-seven women arrived on campus in 1932. Since its inception, the College has endeavored to place the student in charge of her education. Bennington College was the first college to include visual and performing arts as important curricular elements of a liberal arts education. Since its beginning, one of the college's defining aspects has been the Field Work Term (originally the Winter Field and Reading Period and later the Non-Resident Term). During this winter recess, all students seek internships around the world, to gain real-world experience both in their fields of study and in life. Many connections established during the recess have been pivotal in graduates' careers. For instance, Carol Channing
was "discovered" during her Field Work Term.
In 1935 the administration agreed to admit young men into the Bennington Theater Studio program, since men were needed for theatrical performances. Among the men who attended was the actor Alan Arkin
. During the 1930s, a summer program, the Bennington School of Dance, attracted many people to Bennington, among them Martha Graham
, Martha Hill
, José Limón
, and Betty Ford
.
In 1969 the college became fully co-educational.
The results of the process were published in June 1994 in a 36-page document titled Symposium Report of the Bennington College Board of Trustees. Recommended changes included the following:
Near the end of June 1994, 27 faculty members (approximately one-third of the total faculty body) were notified by certified mail that their contracts would not be renewed. (The exact number of fired faculty members is listed as 25 or 26 in some reports, a discrepancy partly due to the fact that at least one faculty member, photographer Neil Rappaport, was reinstated on appeal shortly after his firing.) As recommended in the Symposium, the Trustees abolished the presumptive tenure system, leaving the institution with no form of tenure
. The firings attracted considerable media attention.
Some students and alumni protested, and the college was censured for its actions by the American Association of University Professors
, who said, "...academic freedom is insecure, and academic tenure is nonexistent today at Bennington College." Critics of the Symposium, and the 1994 firings, have alleged that the Symposium was essentially a sham, designed to provide a pretext for the removal of faculty members to whom the college's president, Elizabeth Coleman, was hostile. Some have questioned the timing of the firings, arguing that by waiting until the end of June, the college made it impossible for students affected by the firings to transfer to other institutions.
President Coleman responded that the decision was fundamentally "about ideas", stating that "Bennington became mediocre over time" and that the college was in need of radical change. Coleman argued that the college was in dire financial straits, saying that "had Bennington done nothing...the future of this institution was seriously in doubt." In a letter to the New York Times, John Barr, Chairman of the Board of Trustees, asserted that Coleman was "not responsible for the redesign of the college...It was the board of trustees".
In the immediate wake of the controversy, for the 1994-1995 academic year, the college's enrollment dropped to a record low of 370 undergraduates, and the following year (1995–1996), undergraduate enrollment declined to 285. According to Coleman, a student body of 600 undergraduates was required for the college to break even. Over the following years, enrollment has slowly increased, reaching 500 students in 2002, and 600 in 2004.
In May 1996, seventeen of the faculty members terminated in the 1994 firings filed a lawsuit against Bennington College, seeking $3.7 million in damages and reinstatement to their former positions. In December 2000, the case was settled out of court; as part of the settlement, the fired faculty members received $1.89 million and an apology from the college.
Bennington's endowment is less than $12 million, fifth among private colleges in Vermont. Founded during the Great Depression
, Bennington has historically been underfunded. In 1990, Bennington was the most expensive college or university in the United States; as of 2006, it was the seventh most expensive. As with many of its peer institutions, Bennington's high tuition is largely the result of its small endowment.
In 2007, Forbes
included Bennington as one of the top-10 most expensive colleges in America. As of the 2010 academic year, it has dropped to the top 20 in the country.
Bennington College has a low-residency MFA
program in writing. The Atlantic recently named it one of the nation's best, and Poets & Writers Magazine named it one of the top three low-residency programs in the world. Core faculty has included fiction writers David Gates
, Amy Hempel
, Jill McCorkle
, Sheila Kohler, Martha Cooley, Askold Melnyczuk, Lynne Sharon Schwartz
, and Alice Mattison; nonfiction writers Sven Birkerts
, Susan Cheever
, Phillip Lopate
, Tom Bissell
, and George Scialabba
; and poets April Bernard
, Major Jackson
, Timothy Liu
, Amy Gerstler
, Mark Wunderlich
, and Ed Ochester
. The Writing Seminars were founded by the poet Liam Rector
. Following Rector's death in August 2007, Sven Birkerts
took over as acting director of the Writing Seminars. He was subsequently named director in January 2008, following a nationwide search for Rector's successor.
Among the more notable of Bennington's alumni are: Alan Arkin
, Anne Ramsey
, Anthony Wilson, Carol Channing
, Donna Tartt
, Andrea Dworkin
, Kathleen Norris
, Susan Crile
, Kiran Desai
, Bret Easton Ellis
, Judith Butler
, Jill Eisenstadt
, Justin Theroux, Michael Pollan
, Helen Frankenthaler
, Cora Cohen
, Liz Phillips
, Tim Daly, Roger Kimball
, Holland Taylor
, Bradley S. Jacobs, Melissa Rosenberg
, Jane Thompson
, Peggy Adler
and Peter Dinklage
.
Faculty has included Wharton and James biographer R.W.B. Lewis, essayist Edward Hoagland
, literary critic Camille Paglia
, rhetorician Kenneth Burke
, fomer United Artists' senior vice-president Steven Bach
, novelists Bernard Malamud
and John Gardner, trumpeter/composer Bill Dixon
, composers Allen Shawn
, Henry Brant
, and Vivian Fine
, painters Kenneth Noland
and Jules Olitski
, politicians Mansour Farhang and Mac Maharaj
, poets Léonie Adams
and Howard Nemerov
, sculptor Anthony Caro
, dancer/choreographer Martha Graham
, drummer Milford Graves
, economist Karl Polanyi
and a number of Pulitzer Prize
-winning poets including W. H. Auden
, Stanley Kunitz
, Mary Oliver
, Theodore Roethke
and Anne Waldman
.
Kiran Desai
('93) won the Man Booker Prize
(UK) (2006) for her novel The Inheritance of Loss,. Alan Arkin
('55) won an Academy Award in 2007 for his role in Little Miss Sunshine
.
Liberal arts colleges in the United States
Liberal arts colleges in the United States are certain undergraduate institutions of higher education in the United States. The Encyclopædia Britannica Concise offers a definition of the liberal arts as a "college or university curriculum aimed at imparting general knowledge and developing general...
located in Bennington, Vermont, USA. The college was founded in 1932 as a women's college
Women's colleges in the United States
Women's colleges in the United States are single-sex U.S. institutions of higher education that exclude or limit males from admission. They are often liberal arts colleges...
and became co-educational in 1969.
History
Early years
Bennington College was the product of a movement whose goal was to create a model that would move higher education in a new direction. The pivotal figures in the College's earliest history are Vincent Ravi Booth, Mr. and Mrs. Hall Park McCullough, and William Heard KilpatrickWilliam Heard Kilpatrick
William Heard Kilpatrick was a US American pedagogue and a pupil, a colleague and a successor of John Dewey. He was a major figure in the progressive education movement of the early 20th century.-Biography:...
, an educational philosopher who worked with John Dewey
John Dewey
John Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. Dewey was an important early developer of the philosophy of pragmatism and one of the founders of functional psychology...
. In 1924 they secured a charter for the college and established a board of trustees, to prepare for a new liberal arts college for women. The tasks of funding the construction of the college and defining its philosophy were undertaken. In 1928 Robert Devore Leigh was recruited as Bennington College's first president. He wrote the Bennington College Prospectus, which outlined the college's philosophy. Booth, McCullough, Kilpatrick, Dewey, and Leigh (among others) are commemorated on campus with houses named for them.
Ground was broken on August 16, 1931, on farmland donated by Mrs. Frederick B. Jennings. The project employed many local craftsmen, many of whom had been out of work since the stock market crash of 1929. The main educational building was a renovated barn, and despite an early attempt to give it a more official name, The Barn has persisted.
The first class of eighty-seven women arrived on campus in 1932. Since its inception, the College has endeavored to place the student in charge of her education. Bennington College was the first college to include visual and performing arts as important curricular elements of a liberal arts education. Since its beginning, one of the college's defining aspects has been the Field Work Term (originally the Winter Field and Reading Period and later the Non-Resident Term). During this winter recess, all students seek internships around the world, to gain real-world experience both in their fields of study and in life. Many connections established during the recess have been pivotal in graduates' careers. For instance, Carol Channing
Carol Channing
Carol Elaine Channing is an American singer, actress, and comedienne. She is the recipient of three Tony Awards , a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination...
was "discovered" during her Field Work Term.
In 1935 the administration agreed to admit young men into the Bennington Theater Studio program, since men were needed for theatrical performances. Among the men who attended was the actor Alan Arkin
Alan Arkin
Alan Wolf Arkin is an American actor, director, musician and singer. He is known for starring in such films as Wait Until Dark, The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Catch-22, The In-Laws, Edward Scissorhands, Glengarry Glen Ross, Marley & Me, and...
. During the 1930s, a summer program, the Bennington School of Dance, attracted many people to Bennington, among them Martha Graham
Martha Graham
Martha Graham was an American modern dancer and choreographer whose influence on dance has been compared with the influence Picasso had on modern visual arts, Stravinsky had on music, or Frank Lloyd Wright had on architecture.She danced and choreographed for over seventy years...
, Martha Hill
Martha Hill
Martha Hill was one of the most influential American dance instructors in history. She was the first Director of Dance at the Juilliard School, and held that position for almost 35 years.-Biography:...
, José Limón
José Limón
José Arcadio Limón was a pioneer in the field of modern dance and choreography. In 1928, at age 20, he moved to New York City where he studied under Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman. In 1946, Limón founded the José Limón Dance Company...
, and Betty Ford
Betty Ford
Elizabeth Ann Bloomer Warren Ford , better known as Betty Ford, was First Lady of the United States from 1974 to 1977 during the presidency of her husband Gerald Ford...
.
In 1969 the college became fully co-educational.
The Symposium
In 1993, the Bennington College Board of Trustees initiated a process known as "The Symposium." Arguing that the college suffered from "a growing attachment to the status quo that, if unattended, is lethal to Bennington's purpose and pedagogy," the Board of Trustees "solicit[ed]...concerns and proposals on a wide and open-ended range of issues from every member of the faculty, every student, every staff member, every alumna and alumnus, and dozens of friends of the College." According to the Trustees, the process was intended to reinvent the college, and the Board said it received over 600 contributions to this end.The results of the process were published in June 1994 in a 36-page document titled Symposium Report of the Bennington College Board of Trustees. Recommended changes included the following:
- adoption of a "teacher-practitioner" ideal;
- abandonment of academic divisions in favor of "polymorphous, dynamically changing Faculty Program Groups";
- replacement of the college's system of presumptive tenure with "an experimental contract system"; and
- ten-percent tuition reduction over the following five years.
Near the end of June 1994, 27 faculty members (approximately one-third of the total faculty body) were notified by certified mail that their contracts would not be renewed. (The exact number of fired faculty members is listed as 25 or 26 in some reports, a discrepancy partly due to the fact that at least one faculty member, photographer Neil Rappaport, was reinstated on appeal shortly after his firing.) As recommended in the Symposium, the Trustees abolished the presumptive tenure system, leaving the institution with no form of tenure
Tenure
Tenure commonly refers to life tenure in a job and specifically to a senior academic's contractual right not to have his or her position terminated without just cause.-19th century:...
. The firings attracted considerable media attention.
Some students and alumni protested, and the college was censured for its actions by the American Association of University Professors
American Association of University Professors
The American Association of University Professors is an organization of professors and other academics in the United States. AAUP membership is about 47,000, with over 500 local campus chapters and 39 state organizations...
, who said, "...academic freedom is insecure, and academic tenure is nonexistent today at Bennington College." Critics of the Symposium, and the 1994 firings, have alleged that the Symposium was essentially a sham, designed to provide a pretext for the removal of faculty members to whom the college's president, Elizabeth Coleman, was hostile. Some have questioned the timing of the firings, arguing that by waiting until the end of June, the college made it impossible for students affected by the firings to transfer to other institutions.
President Coleman responded that the decision was fundamentally "about ideas", stating that "Bennington became mediocre over time" and that the college was in need of radical change. Coleman argued that the college was in dire financial straits, saying that "had Bennington done nothing...the future of this institution was seriously in doubt." In a letter to the New York Times, John Barr, Chairman of the Board of Trustees, asserted that Coleman was "not responsible for the redesign of the college...It was the board of trustees".
In the immediate wake of the controversy, for the 1994-1995 academic year, the college's enrollment dropped to a record low of 370 undergraduates, and the following year (1995–1996), undergraduate enrollment declined to 285. According to Coleman, a student body of 600 undergraduates was required for the college to break even. Over the following years, enrollment has slowly increased, reaching 500 students in 2002, and 600 in 2004.
In May 1996, seventeen of the faculty members terminated in the 1994 firings filed a lawsuit against Bennington College, seeking $3.7 million in damages and reinstatement to their former positions. In December 2000, the case was settled out of court; as part of the settlement, the fired faculty members received $1.89 million and an apology from the college.
Bennington in the media
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
, Bennington has historically been underfunded. In 1990, Bennington was the most expensive college or university in the United States; as of 2006, it was the seventh most expensive. As with many of its peer institutions, Bennington's high tuition is largely the result of its small endowment.
In 2007, Forbes
Forbes
Forbes is an American publishing and media company. Its flagship publication, the Forbes magazine, is published biweekly. Its primary competitors in the national business magazine category are Fortune, which is also published biweekly, and Business Week...
included Bennington as one of the top-10 most expensive colleges in America. As of the 2010 academic year, it has dropped to the top 20 in the country.
Graduate Program in Writing
MFA
MFA may refer to:An academic degree or professional field:* Masters of Finance and Accounting* Master of Financial Analysis* Master of Fine Arts* Material Flow Accounting* Material Flow AnalysisA concept or phrase:* Made For Ads...
program in writing. The Atlantic recently named it one of the nation's best, and Poets & Writers Magazine named it one of the top three low-residency programs in the world. Core faculty has included fiction writers David Gates
David Gates (author)
David Gates is an American journalist and novelist. His first novel, Jernigan , about a dysfunctional one-parent family, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. This was followed by a second novel, Preston Falls , and a short story collection, The Wonders of the Invisible World...
, Amy Hempel
Amy Hempel
Amy Hempel is an American short story writer, journalist, and university professor at Brooklyn College.-Life:Hempel was born in Chicago, Illinois...
, Jill McCorkle
Jill McCorkle
Jill Collins McCorkle is an American short story writer, and novelist.She graduated from University of North Carolina, in 1980, where she studied with Max Steele, Lee Smith, and Louis D...
, Sheila Kohler, Martha Cooley, Askold Melnyczuk, Lynne Sharon Schwartz
Lynne Sharon Schwartz
Lynne Sharon Schwartz is a contemporary American writer.She grew up in Brooklyn, the second of three children of Jack M. Sharon, a lawyer and accountant, and Sarah Slatus Sharon; she married Harry Schwartz in 1957. She holds a BA from Barnard College, an MA from Bryn Mawr, and started work on a...
, and Alice Mattison; nonfiction writers Sven Birkerts
Sven Birkerts
Sven Birkerts is an American essayist and literary critic of Latvian ancestry. He is best known for his book The Gutenberg Elegies, which posits a decline in reading due to the overwhelming advances of the Internet and other technologies of the "electronic culture."Birkerts was born in Pontiac,...
, Susan Cheever
Susan Cheever
Susan Cheever, , daughter of John Cheever and sister of Benjamin Cheever, is an author whose books include My Name is Bill - Bill Wilson: His Life and the Creation of Alcoholics Anonymous, a biography of Alcoholics Anonymous cofounder Bill Wilson; Home Before Dark, a memoir about her father, John...
, Phillip Lopate
Phillip Lopate
Doctor Phillip Lopate is an American film critic, essayist, fiction writer, poet, and teacher. He is the younger brother of radio host Leonard Lopate.-Early life and education:...
, Tom Bissell
Tom Bissell
Tom Bissell is a journalist, critic, and fiction writer, originally from Escanaba, Michigan and currently based in Portland, Oregon.-Life:...
, and George Scialabba
George Scialabba
George Scialabba is a book critic living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His reviews have appeared in the Boston Globe, Dissent, the Virginia Quarterly Review, The Nation, The American Prospect, and many others...
; and poets April Bernard
April Bernard
April Bernard is an American poet. She was born and raised in New England, and graduated from Harvard University. She has worked as a senior editor at Vanity Fair, Premiere, and Manhattan, inc. In the early 1990s, she taught at Amherst College. In Fall 2003, she was Sidney Harman...
, Major Jackson
Major Jackson
Major Jackson is an American poet and professor. He is the author of three collections of poetry: Holding Company and Hoops Major Jackson (born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an American poet and professor. He is the author of three collections of poetry: Holding Company (W.W. Norton, 2010)...
, Timothy Liu
Timothy Liu
Timothy Liu is an American poet and the author of such books as Bending the Mind Around the Dream's Blown Fuse, For Dust Thou Art, Of Thee I Sing, Hard Evidence, Say Goodnight, Burnt Offerings and Vox Angelica. He is also the editor of Word of Mouth: An Anthology of Gay American Poetry...
, Amy Gerstler
Amy Gerstler
Amy Gerstler is an American poet. Her books of poetry include Ghost Girl ; Medicine - finalist for the Phi Beta Kappa Poetry Award; Crown of Weeds ; Nerve Storm ; Bitter Angel - winner of the 1991 National Book Critics Circle Award - The True Bride and Dearest Creature, .Described by the Los...
, Mark Wunderlich
Mark Wunderlich
Mark Wunderlich ) is an American poet. He was born in Winona, Minnesota and grew up in a rural setting near the town of Fountain City, Wisconsin...
, and Ed Ochester
Ed Ochester
Edwin Frank Ochester is an American poet and editor.Born September 15 in Brooklyn, New York, he was educated at Cornell University, Harvard University, and the University of Wisconsin–Madison....
. The Writing Seminars were founded by the poet Liam Rector
Liam Rector
Liam Rector was an American poet, essayist and educator. He had administered literary programs at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs , the National Endowment for the Arts, the Academy of American Poets, and the Folger Shakespeare Library...
. Following Rector's death in August 2007, Sven Birkerts
Sven Birkerts
Sven Birkerts is an American essayist and literary critic of Latvian ancestry. He is best known for his book The Gutenberg Elegies, which posits a decline in reading due to the overwhelming advances of the Internet and other technologies of the "electronic culture."Birkerts was born in Pontiac,...
took over as acting director of the Writing Seminars. He was subsequently named director in January 2008, following a nationwide search for Rector's successor.
Postbaccalaureate Premedical Program
For students who have excelled in an undergraduate program in an area other than science and now wish to acquire the prerequisites necessary to apply to medical and other health-related professional schools, Bennington offers a one-year intensive science curriculum. Now in its thirtieth year, the program offers advising and support through and beyond the postbac year during the medical school admissions process. Postbac students are both recent college graduates and experienced professionals from many backgrounds advancing on to Dartmouth Medical School, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, UVM, Yale and other medical and health profession schools.Notable alumni and faculty
Alan Arkin
Alan Wolf Arkin is an American actor, director, musician and singer. He is known for starring in such films as Wait Until Dark, The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Catch-22, The In-Laws, Edward Scissorhands, Glengarry Glen Ross, Marley & Me, and...
, Anne Ramsey
Anne Ramsey
Anne Ramsey was an American stage, television, and film actress. She is probably most famous for her roles as Mama Fratelli in The Goonies and as Mrs...
, Anthony Wilson, Carol Channing
Carol Channing
Carol Elaine Channing is an American singer, actress, and comedienne. She is the recipient of three Tony Awards , a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination...
, Donna Tartt
Donna Tartt
Donna Tartt is an American writer and author of the novels The Secret History and The Little Friend . She won the WH Smith Literary Award for The Little Friend in 2003.-Early life:...
, Andrea Dworkin
Andrea Dworkin
Andrea Rita Dworkin was an American radical feminist and writer best known for her criticism of pornography, which she argued was linked to rape and other forms of violence against women....
, Kathleen Norris
Kathleen Norris (poet)
for the novelist Kathleen Norris, see Kathleen NorrisKathleen Norris is a best-selling poet and essayist. She became known for her writings about Christian spirituality, especially after she became a Benedictine oblate and spent two extended periods at Saint John's Abbey in Minnesota...
, Susan Crile
Susan Crile
Susan Crile is an artist, primarily a painter and printmaker. She has had over 50 solo exhibitions, and her work is in the collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Denver Art Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the Hirshhorn Museum, the Phillips Collection, and...
, Kiran Desai
Kiran Desai
Kiran Desai is an Indian author who is a citizen of India and a permanent resident of the United States. Her novel The Inheritance of Loss won the 2006 Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Fiction Award...
, Bret Easton Ellis
Bret Easton Ellis
Bret Easton Ellis is an American novelist and short story writer. His works have been translated into 27 different languages. He was regarded as one of the so-called literary Brat Pack, which also included Tama Janowitz and Jay McInerney...
, Judith Butler
Judith Butler
Judith Butler is an American post-structuralist philosopher, who has contributed to the fields of feminism, queer theory, political philosophy, and ethics. She is a professor in the Rhetoric and Comparative Literature departments at the University of California, Berkeley.Butler received her Ph.D...
, Jill Eisenstadt
Jill Eisenstadt
Jill Eisenstadt is an American novelist, screenwriter, teacher and freelance journalist.Eisenstadt was born in Queens, New York and attended Bennington College, graduating in 1985. She was considered part of the 'Literary Brat Pack' whose members included Bret Easton Ellis, Jay McInerney, and...
, Justin Theroux, Michael Pollan
Michael Pollan
Michael Pollan is an American author, journalist, activist, and professor of journalism at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. A 2006 New York Times book review describes him as a "liberal foodie intellectual."...
, Helen Frankenthaler
Helen Frankenthaler
Helen Frankenthaler is an American abstract expressionist painter. She is a major contributor to the history of postwar American painting. Having exhibited her work in six decades she has spanned several generations of abstract painters while continuing to produce vital and ever-changing new work...
, Cora Cohen
Cora Cohen
Cora Cohen is an American Abstract Painter. Cohen lives and works in Long Island City, New York. Her works are in many major public collections, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Swedish State Art Council, The Ulla and Heiner Pietzsch Collection, Berlin, The Weatherspoon Art...
, Liz Phillips
Liz Phillips
Liz Phillips is an American artist specializing in sound art and interactive art. She was one of the first artists to make interactive sound sculpture. Her installations create sounds in relation to live forms. Phillips has exhibited her work at numerous art museums, alternative spaces, festivals,...
, Tim Daly, Roger Kimball
Roger Kimball
Roger Kimball is a conservative U.S. art critic and social commentator. He was educated at Cheverus High School, a Jesuit institution in South Portland, Maine, and then at Bennington College, where he took a BA in philosophy and classical Greek, and Yale University...
, Holland Taylor
Holland Taylor
Holland Virginia Taylor is an American actress of film, stage and television. Her notable television roles include Ruth Dunbar in Bosom Buddies, senator's wife Margaret Powers on Norman Lear's The Powers That Be, Judge Roberta Kittleson in The Practice and Evelyn Harper in Two and a Half...
, Bradley S. Jacobs, Melissa Rosenberg
Melissa Rosenberg
Melissa Anne Rosenberg is an American screenwriter. She has worked in both film and television and has been nominated for two Emmy Awards, and two Writers Guild of America Awards. She won a Peabody Award...
, Jane Thompson
Jane Thompson
Jane Thompson, AICP, Hon. AIA, principal of Thompson Design Group, is an urbanist, designer and planner, whose work over forty years has touched cities in North America and around the world.Ms...
, Peggy Adler
Peggy Adler
Peggy Adler is an American author and illustrator of children's books and investigative researcher. She is the daughter of Irving Adler and Ruth Adler and younger sister of Stephen L. Adler.-Early career:...
and Peter Dinklage
Peter Dinklage
Peter Dinklage is an American film, television and theater actor. Since his breakout role in the 2003 film The Station Agent, he has acted in Elf, Underdog, Find Me Guilty, the 2007 film Death at a Funeral and its 2010 remake, and The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian...
.
Faculty has included Wharton and James biographer R.W.B. Lewis, essayist Edward Hoagland
Edward Hoagland
Edward Hoagland is an author best known for his nature and travel writing.-Life:...
, literary critic Camille Paglia
Camille Paglia
Camille Anna Paglia , is an American author, teacher, and social critic. Paglia, a self-described dissident feminist, has been a Professor at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania since 1984...
, rhetorician Kenneth Burke
Kenneth Burke
Kenneth Duva Burke was a major American literary theorist and philosopher. Burke's primary interests were in rhetoric and aesthetics.-Personal history:...
, fomer United Artists' senior vice-president Steven Bach
Steven Bach
Steven Bach was senior vice-president and head of worldwide productions for United Artists studios.In 1990, he was a member of the jury at the 40th Berlin International Film Festival....
, novelists Bernard Malamud
Bernard Malamud
Bernard Malamud was an author of novels and short stories. Along with Saul Bellow and Philip Roth, he was one of the great American Jewish authors of the 20th century. His baseball novel, The Natural, was adapted into a 1984 film starring Robert Redford...
and John Gardner, trumpeter/composer Bill Dixon
Bill Dixon
Bill Dixon was an American musician, composer, visual artist, and educator. Dixon was one of the seminal figures in the free jazz movement. He played the trumpet, flugelhorn, and piano, often using electronic delay and reverberation as part of his trumpet playing.-Biography:Dixon hailed from...
, composers Allen Shawn
Allen Shawn
Allen Shawn is an American composer, pianist, educator, and author who lives in Vermont.-His music:Among Shawn's available recordings are several of chamber music, a collection of piano music, and his Piano Concerto performed by Ursula Oppens with the Albany Symphony Orchestra under the direction...
, Henry Brant
Henry Brant
Henry Dreyfuss Brant was a Canadian-born American composer. An expert orchestrator with a flair for experimentation, many of Brant's works featured spatialization techniques.- Biography :...
, and Vivian Fine
Vivian Fine
Vivian Fine was an American composer.Over her 70 year career, Vivian Fine became one of America’s most important composers. She wrote virtually without a break for 68 years, producing over 140 works...
, painters Kenneth Noland
Kenneth Noland
Kenneth Noland was an American abstract painter. He was one of the best-known American Color field painters, although in the 1950s he was thought of as an abstract expressionist and in the early 1960s he was thought of as a minimalist painter. Noland helped establish the Washington Color School...
and Jules Olitski
Jules Olitski
Jules Olitski was an American abstract painter, printmaker, and sculptor.-Early life:Olitski was born Jevel Demikovski in Snovsk, in the Russian SFSR , a few months after his father, a commissar, was executed by the Russian government...
, politicians Mansour Farhang and Mac Maharaj
Mac Maharaj
Sathyandranath Ragunanan "Mac" Maharaj is a South African politician affiliated to the African National Congress, academic and businessman of Indian origin....
, poets Léonie Adams
Léonie Adams
Léonie Fuller Adams was an American poet. She was appointed the seventh Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1948.-Biography:...
and Howard Nemerov
Howard Nemerov
Howard Nemerov was an American poet. He was twice appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1963 to 1964, and again from 1988 to 1990. He received the National Book Award, Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and Bollingen Prize for The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov...
, sculptor Anthony Caro
Anthony Caro
Sir Anthony Alfred Caro, OM, CBE is an English abstract sculptor whose work is characterised by assemblages of metal using 'found' industrial objects.-Background and early life:...
, dancer/choreographer Martha Graham
Martha Graham
Martha Graham was an American modern dancer and choreographer whose influence on dance has been compared with the influence Picasso had on modern visual arts, Stravinsky had on music, or Frank Lloyd Wright had on architecture.She danced and choreographed for over seventy years...
, drummer Milford Graves
Milford Graves
Milford Graves is an American jazz drummer and percussionist, most noteworthy for his early avant-garde contributions in the early 1960s with Paul Bley and the New York Art Quartet...
, economist Karl Polanyi
Karl Polanyi
Karl Paul Polanyi was a Hungarian philosopher, political economist and economic anthropologist known for his opposition to traditional economic thought and his book The Great Transformation...
and a number of Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
-winning poets including W. H. Auden
W. H. Auden
Wystan Hugh Auden , who published as W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet,The first definition of "Anglo-American" in the OED is: "Of, belonging to, or involving both England and America." See also the definition "English in origin or birth, American by settlement or citizenship" in See also...
, Stanley Kunitz
Stanley Kunitz
Stanley Jasspon Kunitz was an American poet. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress twice, first in 1974 and then again in 2000.-Biography:...
, Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver is an American poet who has won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. The New York Times described her as "far and away, this country's [America's] best-selling poet".-Early life:...
, Theodore Roethke
Theodore Roethke
Theodore Roethke was an American poet, who published several volumes of poetry characterized by its rhythm, rhyming, and natural imagery. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1954 for his book, The Waking.-Biography:...
and Anne Waldman
Anne Waldman
Anne Waldman is an American poet.Since the 1960s, Waldman has been an active member of the “Outrider” experimental poetry community as a writer, performer, collaborator, professor, editor, scholar, and cultural/political activist....
.
Kiran Desai
Kiran Desai
Kiran Desai is an Indian author who is a citizen of India and a permanent resident of the United States. Her novel The Inheritance of Loss won the 2006 Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Fiction Award...
('93) won the Man Booker Prize
Man Booker Prize
The Man Booker Prize for Fiction is a literary prize awarded each year for the best original full-length novel, written in the English language, by a citizen of the Commonwealth of Nations, Ireland, or Zimbabwe. The winner of the Man Booker Prize is generally assured of international renown and...
(UK) (2006) for her novel The Inheritance of Loss,. Alan Arkin
Alan Arkin
Alan Wolf Arkin is an American actor, director, musician and singer. He is known for starring in such films as Wait Until Dark, The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Catch-22, The In-Laws, Edward Scissorhands, Glengarry Glen Ross, Marley & Me, and...
('55) won an Academy Award in 2007 for his role in Little Miss Sunshine
Little Miss Sunshine
Little Miss Sunshine is a 2006 American comedy-drama film. The road movie's plot follows a family's trip to a children's beauty pageant.Little Miss Sunshine was the directorial film debut of the husband-wife team of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris. The screenplay was written by first-time writer...
.
See also
External links
- Official website
- College Newspaper's site
- College assessment by The Princeton ReviewThe Princeton ReviewThe Princeton Review is an American-based standardized test preparation and admissions consulting company. The Princeton Review operates in 41 states and 22 countries across the globe. It offers test preparation for standardized aptitude tests such as the SAT and advice regarding college...