WRC 1104.101 Investigations Global: Autobiography
- Gen Ed Designation: Liberal Studies Experience.
- Instructor: Professor Joseph Bathanti
- Time: TR 11:00 am to 1:45 pm & TR 2:00 pm -3:15 pm
Philippe Lejeune, a contemporary French essayist, defines autobiography as a “retrospective prose narrative produced by a real person concerning [their] own existence, focusing on [their] individual life, in particular on the development of [their] personality.” You’ll be writing your autobiographical stories in this class, a class that will remain an ongoing conversation during which we will attempt our own idiosyncratic definitions of autobiography. Autobiography shelters under the umbrella of creative nonfiction (sometimes called the fourth genre). Essentially creative nonfiction utilizes all the traditional elements of fiction: plot, narrative, point of view, characterization, dialogue, etc. – to relate what “really happened,” to uncover and discover the elusive ephemeral abstract known as truth.
I want to state emphatically that this IS NOT a journalism class. It’s a creative writing class on reading and writing memoir – a class during which you’ll write autobiographical nonfiction (true stories) about your lived life, and in which, essentially, YOU are the main character. In many ways, this class is an exercise in memory. What you write about does not have to be something terrifically dramatic or momentous. It can be something very small, but nonetheless significant. We’ll read and discuss autobiographical essays/memoirs that exemplify the genre, as well as craft essays on autobiographical memoir. The class is designed to get students thinking and writing about specific episodes/scenes throughout their lives that in some way exemplify their identities in a particular place and time, and how those experiences have shaped them and travel with them. Students can also expect to showcase their essays, in front of classmates, in the traditional roundtable workshop format.
*Honors students interested in this course should register for WRC 1104.410
WRC 1104.102 Investigations Global: The Lives of Animals
- Gen Ed Designation: Liberal Studies Experience.
- Instructor: Dr. Michael Dale
- Time: TR 11:00 am to 1:45 pm & MW 2:00 pm -3:15 pm
As Martha Nussbaum reminds us, we homo sapiens do not live alone on the planet. We share the world and its resources with a wonderful variety of flora and fauna, including other intelligent and emotional creatures. The nature of communal living requires that we be attentive to the moral questions and issues that relationships between living beings demands. What should be the nature of our human relationships with the non-human animals with which we share this world? Should non-human animals be seen as part of the community of human beings? What, if any, are the moral demands that non-human animals make upon us if they are seen as a part of our community? What does it mean to be a human being in a moral relationship with other living, non-human beings? Drawing upon novels, short stories, essays, and narrative works of non-fiction we will be attentive to and engaged with questions and issues of our humanly intimate and complex relations to, and at times callous disregard for and cruelty towards the lives and deaths of non-human animals.
*Honors students interested in this course should register for WRC 1104.411
WRC 1104.103 INVESTIGATIONS GLOBAL: Mapping Monsters
- Gen Ed Designation: Investigations: Global and Liberal Studies Experience
- Instructor: Dr. Audrey Fessler
- Time: TR 11:00 am - 1:45 pm & MW 2:00 pm - 3:15 pm
This course will range across many eras and cultures to explore diverse monsters and their psychological and social functions. Andrew J. Hoffman, in his anthology Monsters, posits that "Monsters are not merely entertainment. The study of monsters is the study of what it means to be human in a world that provides much to fear and avoid. Since time immemorial, people have had to deal with fear: fear of the wild, fear of the unknown, even fear of each other. Monsters may be a repository for much that is negative in human experience. In this way, monsters provide us with the opportunity to connect to important issues of society, psychology, science, medicine, art, and religion" (3). Analyses by scholars from many fields—including classical studies, critical studies, cultural anthropology, history, monster theory (yes!), sociology, philosophy, psychology, religion, and urban theory—will inform our responses to primary sources of monster lore. Course work will include weekly reading reflections, frequent quizzes, occasional leadership of portions of class discussion, and two research projects with accompanying research presentations.
*Honors students interested in this course should register for WRC 1104.412
WRC 1104.104: America's Original Sin: Race and Religion in the Novels of Marilynne Robinson
- Gen Ed Designation: Investigations: Global and Liberal Studies Experience
- Instructor: Dr. Clark Maddux
- Time: TR 11:00 am - 1:45 pm & TR 2:00 pm - 3:15 pm
In this section of WRC 1104, we'll read the Gilead novels of Marilynne Robinson, along with several of her essays. All of these works consider the historical amnesia that followed Reconstruction and the Civil War, and the ways in which America, as exemplified by the stories of two families in one small town in Iowa, conveniently forgot its own relationship to what has been called "America's Original Sin," its legacy of chattel slavery. We'll ask questions as we read about what it means to be good in a deeply flawed society, what it means to love beyond all reason, and how the sins of the past insistently sprout in the soil of our present lives.
*Honors students interested in this course should register for WRC 1104.413
WRC 2001.101 28607: DAYS IN THE LIFE
Gen Ed Attribute: Sophomore Writing, Fills ENG/RC 2001 requirements
Instructor: Cary Curlee
Time: MW 2:00 pm-3:15 pm
Days in The Life: Mountain Messages, will introduce students to writing across the curriculum using poems, essays, short stories and scientific texts. Readings in the course will touch spiritual, cultural, and environmental aspects of living in Appalachia and beyond. Our exercises will hone research and analytical skills learned in WRC 1000 while introducing you to writing and reading across academic disciplines. We will take a rhetorical approach to reading and writing across the curriculum and students will engage in more independent work and more involved research. We will read texts from a variety of academic disciplines, including analyses of disciplinary writing in order to identify other writers’ rhetorical choices and discipline-specific writing strategies and conventions. Our writing projects, some of which will entail independent research, will provide you opportunities to make effective choices in your own writing for specific purposes and academic communities, and using various digital methods. Learning to assess different writing situations and make effective context-specific rhetorical choices should prepare you to meet writing challenges in the future, whether it be for another college course, on the job, or for civic or personal reasons.
WRC 2100.101 THE LIVES OF ANIMALS
- Gen Ed Designation: ILE-Human-Animal Bond
- Instructor: Dr. Michael Dale
- Time: TR 2:00 pm - 3:15 pm
As Martha Nussbaum reminds us, we homo sapiens do not live alone on the planet. We share the world and its resources with a wonderful variety of flora and fauna, including other intelligent and emotional creatures. The nature of communal living requires that we be attentive to the moral questions and issues that relationships between living beings demands. What should be the nature of our human relationships with the non-human animals with which we share this world? Should non-human animals be seen as part of the community of human beings? What, if any, are the moral demands that non-human animals make upon us if they are seen as a part of our community? What does it mean to be a human being in a moral relationship with other living, non-human beings?
*Honors students interested in this course should register for WRC 2100.410
WRC 2201.102 HEARING VOICES. INQUIRY IN LITERATURE: Mountains Speak
- Gen Ed Designation: Lit Studies and ILE-Experiencing Inquiry
- Instructor: Cary Curlee
- Time: TR 2:00 pm - 3:15 pm
This course explores an eclectic collection of literature about living, loving, and surviving in high places. Students will locate, analyze, and compare voices discovered throughout course readings.
*Honors students interested in this course should register for WRC 2201.410
WRC 2201.102 HEARING VOICES Truth, Lies, and Nonsense
Gen Ed Attribute: Integrative Learning Experience Theme; Literary Studies Designation
Instructor: Dr. Clark Maddux
Time: TR 9:30 pm-10:45 pm
What is truth? What is a lie? Maybe more importantly, what is nonsense, and how is it different from a lie? In this course, we'll look at a variety of material: cultural, historical, and literary, that can be called bunkum, balderdash, nonsense, or more vulgarly, bullshit. We'll examine one of the lesser known, but positively brilliant works of episodic storytelling, the brief series, "Wayne." We'll also read the famous work of moral philosophy by Harry Frankfurt called "On Bullshit." Finally, we'll read three novels that centrally ask the question of what we can trust from the narrators of Julian Barnes's "The Sense of an Ending," Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita," and Ford Madox Ford's "The Good Soldier."
*Honors students interested in this course should register for WRC 2201.411
WRC 2202.101 WHAT IF? ASKING HIST QUESTIONS: Transatlantic Ireland: Crosscurrents
- Gen Ed Designation: His Studies and ILE-Experiencing Inquiry
- Instructor: Dr. Jessica Martell
- Time: TR 11:00 am - 12:15 pm
How do we know what we think we know? What informs our understanding of the past? In this course, students will study the history, literature, and culture of Ireland and its influence on the US. Irish history is ancient, but interpreting it in the present is highly controversial: as famous Irish novelist James Joyce wrote, “History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.” As students explore this legendary culture, they examine different storytelling techniques used in historical accounts, question the accuracy of historical backdrops, and observe how different approaches to narrative can result in profoundly–sometimes violently—different accounts of the past.
WRC 2202.102 WHAT IF? ASKING HIST QUESTIONS: Transatlantic Ireland: Crosscurrents
- Gen Ed Designation: His Studies and ILE-Experiencing Inquiry
- Instructor: Dr. Jessica Martell
- Time: TR 2:00 pm - 3:15 pm
How do we know what we think we know? What informs our understanding of the past? In this course, students will study the history, literature, and culture of Ireland and its influence on the US. Irish history is ancient, but interpreting it in the present is highly controversial: as famous Irish novelist James Joyce wrote, “History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.” As students explore this legendary culture, they examine different storytelling techniques used in historical accounts, question the accuracy of historical backdrops, and observe how different approaches to narrative can result in profoundly–sometimes violently—different accounts of the past.
WRC 3203.101 WHY ART? WAYS OF RESPONDING TO THE WORLD AROUND US
- Gen Ed Designation: Fine Arts and Aesthetic-Creat Exp of Culture and ILE-Experiencing Inquiry
- Instructor: Professor Jody Servon
- Time: T 5:00 pm - 7:30 pm
Through creative and collaborative exercises, we will engage in art making as an experimental practice. By developing an awareness of contemporary art and visual culture, we will explore the ways that art impacts our lives and those around us. In Why Art? we will create projects that contend with social, political, environmental, economic and/or culturally-relevant topics.
*Honors students interested in this course should register for WRC 3203.410
WRC 3401.101 MYTH AND MEANING
- Gen Ed Designation: Lit Studies and Liberal Studies Experience
- Instructor: Dr. Laura Ammon
- Time: MW 2:00 pm - 3:15 pm
WRC 3401 Myths are the stories we tell about the world, exploring and explaining humanity's place in the past, the present and the future offering insights on what it means to be human. This course will explore various expressions of myth, from the real world examples such as the Aztecs to contemporary mythic tales like Spirited Away and Black Panther. We will explore how these myths construct meaningful imaginative worlds within specific historical, cultural, and literary contexts. We will cover an assortment of myths, rituals, symbols that construct the worldviews of various communities, investigating conflict, syncretism, and hybridity in differing global encounters, and how that conflict impacts the stories humans tell about their place in the world. This investigation is necessarily an interpretive journey involving theoretical approaches to the role of mythology in human cultures and religions.
*Honors students interested in this course should register for WRC 3401.410
WRC 3530: Watauga Writers Workshop
- Instructor: Professor Joseph Bathanti
- Time: TR 3:30-4:45 pm
The precursor for this actual class was launched early in the pandemic, and is also called the Watauga Writers Workshop. In this 3-credit class, however, students will receive grades; and the class will serve as a “kind” of introductory course in creative writing that will focus on poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction (memoir and the personal essay). We’ll carefully read and discuss texts that model these genres and spend considerable time examining issues of craft. Students will also showcase their writing, in front of classmates, in the traditional roundtable workshop format and each student will also curate a class. Each student will design an individual final project that will result in a chapbook-length (about 20-25 pages) manuscript. We’ll conclude the course with a staged reading delivered by members of the class.
*Honors students interested in this course should register for WRC 3530.410
WRC 4001.101 SEMINAR IN EXPERIENTIAL INTEGRATIVE LEARNING
- Instructor: Dr. Laura Ammon
- Time: TR 2:00 pm - 3:15 pm
WRC 4001 What does it mean to create and sustain a residential college such as Watauga? This class will explore WRC's past, present, and future, working on creative ways to take integrative, experiential education into the future through appreciation of its past. We will talk with former directors, faculty and alumni as well as connect with other residential colleges.