Watauga Residential College

WRC 1104-101 INVESTIGATIONS GLOBAL: J.M. COETZEE AND THE LIVES OF ANIMALS

• Michael Dale
• MW 2:00pm-3:15pm & TR 11:00am-1:45pm
• LLR 321

We do not live alone. We share the world and its resources with a wonderful variety of flora and fauna, including other intelligent creatures, beings capable of living dignified lives. What should be the nature of our relationships with the non-human animals with which we share this world? What, if any, are the moral demands that non-human animals make upon us? Beginning with two works by the South African novelist J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace and The Lives of Animals, we will explore and thoughtfully examine the lives of animals – human and non-human. Drawing upon additional novels (e.g. Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, J.M. Ledgard’s Giraffe, Tania James’s The Tusk That Did The Damage, Cynan Jones’s The Dig), philosophical works (e.g. from Philosophy and Animal Life), essays, poems, and narrative non-fiction, particularly Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals, we will be attentive to and engaged with questions and issues concerning our intimate and complex relations to, and at times our callous disregard for and cruelty towards the lives and deaths of animals.

WRC 1104-102 INVESTIGATIONS GLOBAL: WITCH HUNTS IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

• Marjon Ames
• TR 11:00am-12:15pm & 1:45pm-3:15
• LLR 365

Throughout history, thousands of people have been persecuted and executed as witches. While this phenomenon has persisted all over the world and from the ancient to modern periods, it reached a terrible peak in early modern Europe forcing scholars since then to ask how and why these movements happen. This course will explore the witch hunts in comparative perspective by looking at both European persecutions in contrast to the Salem witch craze, as well as examining ancient, modern, and non-Western examples, thus allowing for in depth investigations of comparative local histories. This approach will allow us to explore the role of shaming and persecution more broadly. The class structure will incorporate lectures, examination of primary and secondary source readings, multimedia exercises, and most of all class discussions that encourage critical thinking.

WRC 1104-103 INVESTIGATIONS GLOBAL: THE GREATEST LOVE STORIES YOU'LL EVER READ: REPRESENTATIONS OF LOVE,LUST, AND LOSS

• Johnna Reisner
• TR 11:00am-12:15pm & 1:45pm-3:15
• LLR 263

What is love? How do we define desire? In what ways is loss expressed? How are love, lust, and loss written about in various cultures and contexts across time and place? This course will examine complex relationships between cultural expectations and individuality, and how this connection shapes expressions of love. We will also explore how our own culture regulates depictions of love—taking a critical look at the complications and successes of this representation. In this course we will read a range of novels, short stories, poetry, and nonfiction ranging from ancient Egypt to the Appalachians. By employing both a close reading strategy and a global comparative stance our class will move in and out of regions and texts. Specifically designed to highlight the similarities and differences between these texts, the course will take a critical approach to writing and reading about love. Some of the major questions we will ask in this course include:

· How does translations impact the meaning of texts?

· How does comedy and obscenity work with or against texts of love and lust?

· Can language appropriately capture feelings of love, lust, or loss?

· What happens to a text when it is adopted and adapted into a new culture, format, time or place?

WRC 1104-104 INVESTIGATIONS GLOBAL: TALES OF SURVIVAL: OLD AND NEW SKILLS FOR EARTH DWELLING

• Patience Perry
• TR 11:00am-12:15pm & 1:45pm-3:15
• LLR 221

This course reviews anthropological, historical, contemporary, and fictional tales of human survival.  Utilizing an Interdisciplinary approach, this course incorporates aspects of Physiology, Recreation Management, Anthropology, Geography, Philosophy, Biology, and Psychology.  Students read text, watch films, and discuss diverse environments and multicultural realities where humans problem-solve, perish, or persist.  Critical of anthropocentric and colonial language such as “primitive,” “underdeveloped,” or “uneducated,” students gain insight and sensitivity to realities and belief systems which motivate human experience and vital success.  Daily outdoor workshops and weekend forays in wilderness settings provide opportunities for hands-on Earth-skills development and understanding culture through social practice.  Assessment of course objectives occurs through journal entries, integrated response papers, multi-media skills portfolio, and workshop facilitation with an accompanying annotated bibliography.  Ultimately, students design an inquiry-based project with implications related to our Earth and human survival.  Remember to dress in layers appropriate for the weather as a portion of class occurs outside every day.  A $75 fee is required to fund archery equipment & instruction and food & transportation costs associated with our weekend wilderness (Date: TBD).

WRC 1104-105 INVESTIGATIONS GLOBAL: FANTASIES OF EMPIRE AND IDENTITY IN BRITISH LITERATURE AND CULTURE

• Julia Callander
• MW 2:00pm-3:15pm & TR 11:00am-1:45pm
• LLA 205 

In the centuries that Britain was an imperial power, British identity underwent constant transformation. Due to the country’s contact with—and sustained domination of—other peoples and nations, Britons learned about different ways of living that challenged their own. They also attempted to justify slavery and empire in ways that required rethinking their own national and racial identities. On top of this, other titanic economic and political changes (the American and French revolutions, industrialization, abolition, suffrage movements) further impacted how Britons thought about gender, race, and class, as well as the very definitions of words like “human,” “self,” and “normal." In order to understand how these issues were being worked out in popular culture, this class will examine literature from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century, prioritizing texts that feature encounters with various “Others,” such as Gulliver’s Travels, Frankenstein, Dracula, and War of the Worlds. We will also employ other methods and media, delving into journalism, visual culture, political theory, and historical writing. Finally, we will also consider post-imperial film and television adaptations of earlier texts in order to gauge how the British have looked back on their complicated history.

WRC 2001-101 28607: DAYS IN THE LIFE

• Johnna Reisner
• MWF 11:00am-11:50AM
• LLR 321

This 2001 writing course will be particularly concerned with thinking about the writing process and reflecting on how writing is used in the world every day to convey meaning. In alignment with the vertical writing model our course will explore a plethora of genres and disciplines and how the conventions of these types of writing serve to support the message each genre produces. We will pay close attention to locating and navigating resources to support our own learning and writing. In this way, this course is invested in cultivating tools necessary for self-regulated learning strategies that will help create life-long learners and transferable writing skills.

WRC 2001-102 28607: DAYS IN THE LIFE

• Audrey Fessler
• TR 2:00pm-3:15pm
• LLR 321

Writing is about making choices. We will read texts from a variety of academic disciplines, including analyses of disciplinary writing per se, in order to identify other writers’ rhetorical choices and discipline-specific writing strategies and conventions. Several writing projects, some of which will entail independent research, will provide students opportunities to make effective choices in their own writing for specific purposes and academic communities, and in various media. Learning to assess different writing situations and make effective context-specific rhetorical choices should prepare students to meet all kinds of writing challenges in the future, whether it be for another college course, on the job, or for civic or personal reasons.

WRC 2100/HON 2515-101 THE LIVES OF ANIMALS

• Michael Dale
• TR 9:30am-10:45am
• LLR 321
• NOTE: saving 6 seats for Honors

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?

WRC 2201-101 HEARING VOICES: INQUIRY IN LITERATURE- MONSTROUS MIRRORS

• Audrey Fessler
• TR 3:30pm-4:45pm
• LLR 321

Holly Baumgartner and Roger Davis observe that the “horror, the scariness of the monster, arises from confronting the alienated, from facing the absolute other” (Hosting the Monster, 1). This course will explore how, in their radical ‘otherness,’ the monsters featured in Victorian popular literature challenge long-established categories of social and self-understanding, and induce readers to confront states of being beyond hierarchical, binary logic— that is, beyond such fundamental either/or conceptions as male/female, self/other, alive/dead, human/animal, etc. We will be especially attentive to the racialization, sexualization, nationalization, gendering, and other means that 19th-century British writers used to mark and to destabilize the notion of ‘otherness.’  Readings will include, as time permits, some of the following novels:  C. Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Conrad’s The Secret Sharer, M. Shelley’s Frankenstein; Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Stoker’s Dracula, and Wilde’s Portrait of Dorian Gray; poems by R. Browning, M. E. Coleridge, S.T. Coleridge, C. Rossetti, D. G. Rossetti, Tennyson, and others; sundry short stories; medical and political writings of the day; and theories of monstrosity by current thinkers in a variety of academic disciplines.

WRC 2202-101 WHAT IF? ASKING HISTORICAL QUESTIONS- CUBA LIBRE: PERSPECTIVES ON THE CUBAN REVOLUTION

• Joseph Gonzalez
• MW 2:00pm-3:15pm
• LLR 221

For five hundred years, the Cubans have been part of other peoples’ empires. In this course, we will not only explore Cuba's historic search for freedom--from the Spanish, the Americans, and the Soviets--but also the consequences of the independence Cuba now enjoys. Along the way, we will also consider how the Cubans created a culture that celebrated democracy, community, racial egalitarianism, creativity, and pleasure, the culture of Cuba Libre. Our approach will be interdisciplinary: You will read history, fiction, memoirs, and some social science. Toward the end of the semester, you will design and undertake a research project that draws on at least two disciplines.

WRC 3000-101 INTERROGATING POPULAR CULTURE: SHERLOCK THROUGH SUPERMAN TO BUFFY AND BEYOND 

• Linda Jencson
• MW 3:30pm-4:45pm
• LLR 263

This course investigates the social contexts and meanings of popular culture grounded in various times and places around the globe. It does so by utilizing a social science approach informed by a variety of other arts and sciences disciplines. Students will read, view, listen to, and share scholarly analyses as well as the products of popular culture themselves. Various ways of knowing a pop culture production or franchise will be explored, including fandom, artistic values, scholar-fandom, social science content analyses and participant observation in fan subcultures. Students will learn that nothing is “just a story,” “only a song,” “merely a game,” but will instead explore the products of popular culture as reflecting and influencing human relations in the spheres of gender, family, ethnicity, nation, international relations, and socio-economic class. Projects include: mutual interviews to enhance awareness of personal engagement with favorite pop culture products, a web and scholarly journal-based exploration of the social values and societal impact of chosen pop culture narratives, and a group participant / observation project in which students will “infiltrate,” establish rapport, and write an ethnographic of their direct engagement with a local or on-line fandom. 

WRC 3210-101 POVERTY: THEORY & PRACTICE

• Jeffrey Bortz
• TR 11:00am-12:15pm
• BH 103
• Cross-listed with HIS 3210

Poverty is one of the great afflictions of humanity.  Half the world’s population lives on less than $2.50 a day.  22,000 children die from poverty every day.  Poverty is also an immense problem in the U.S., affecting 43 million Americans, about 14% of the population, and 17% in North Carolina.  The poor suffer from food insecurity, inadequate or no housing, and lack of access to medical care.  Children from poor families perform worse in school, with permanent damage to their ability to survive and prosper in society. About 2,500,000 million Americans are in jail or prison, almost 1% of the population, and most of them suffered poverty before doing time. The goal of this class is for students to learn about poverty and the poor through a practical, service-learning component, and through reading of theory.  The former consists of working with local poor at Boone’s homeless shelter, the Hospitality House, 21 hours during the semester.  The theory we will get from reading Karl Marx, a controversial theorist of social stratification.  The work at the Hospitality House and the readings and discussions are equally important in contributing to a full understanding of poverty and the poor in society.

 WRC 3403-101 A WALK IN BEAUTY: NATIVES OF THE SOUTHWEST

• Patience Perry
• TR 9:30am-10:45am
• LLR 365
• A study away trip will be required from 5/15-5/26

In this course, students explore the art, philosophy, history, geography, and heritage of the Navajo, Hopi, and Zuni tribes in the American Southwest.  Students discover firsthand the myths, religion, films, foods, and art of these unique tribes which inhabit a desert landscape.  Classes employ oral tradition in practice and as a field of study.  Conceptually, this course seeks to challenge assumptions, stereotypes, and subtle (or overt) prejudices toward Indigenous Americans which permeate the dominant culture. Participants reflect upon the ways in which the histories of American Indians have been portrayed and their behavior interpreted. Vast examples of Indigenous Art including Zuni Fetishes and Pottery, Navajo Silversmithing and Rug Weaving, Hopi Basketry and Katsina Doll Carvings are introduced.  The pedagogical approach cultivates a vibrant class community, empowers students through a rotation of leadership for class discussions, requires student initiative in planning and conducting service-learning, and aligns with culturally appropriate etiquette necessary for artist homestays and meetings with tribal representatives. Students also visit Ruins, Petroglyphs, National Parks, and Heritage Sites. Therefore, this class structures intensive preparation during initial coursework for a study-away field experience in Arizona and New Mexico May 15-26th (after the academic spring semester ends and before summer session begins).  This course concludes with a  substantial take-home final exam.

Field Experience Info: Average-to-Moderate fitness is suggested for the hiking and backpacking which accompanies the field experience.  Camping equipment may be reserved through ASU Outdoor Programs in advance. Service-Learning typically includes agricultural and pastoral physical labor such as planning 4 acres of corn and mucking sheep corrals.  Total trip costs are $1260, airfare, food, lodging, admission fees, and lecture honorariums inclusive.  A Non-Refundable $60 deposit is due to secure your participation at Early Registration.  A second payment of $400 for airfare will be due in December.  The remaining $800 can be paid in installments or lump sum prior to March 15th. 

WRC 3665-101 BLACK MOUNTAIN COLLEGE

• Joseph Bathanti
• TR 3:30pm-4:45pm
• LLR 221

This course will tackle the phenomenon of Black Mountain College. In early 1933, John Andrew Rice, an outspoken firebrand educator, founded a revolutionary new college deep in the mountains of North Carolina’s Buncombe County, just a few miles from the village of Black Mountain. Rice, an outspoken, free-thinking professor at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, held that traditional lockstep academia, and its often anemic curricula, allowed little in the way of independent thought and engagement in the pluralistic tradition of John Dewey: the holistic conflation of living and intellect. Consequently, he led a band of fellow academic dissidents – as well as a number of Rollins students loyal to him – away from Rollins in a quest to launch a new college. Rice had nothing in the way of a plan, much less dollars or even a building. America was in the early throes of the Great Depression. Europe was entering the cataclysmic swoon that eventually resulted in Hitler’s takeover of Czechoslovakia. The College’s very first catalogue stated that it had been founded “to provide a place where free use might be made of tested and proved methods of education and new methods tried in a purely experimental spirit. . .” Black Mountain College closed its doors in 1957, yet to this day remains the greatest experimental academic adventure ever launched on American soil. During its shimmering, stormy history, many of the world’s greatest thinkers and artists were in residence or paid visits at Black Mountain: Albert Einstein, Anni Albers, Josef Albers, Hazel Larsen Archer, Ruth Asawa, John Cage, Harry Callahan, Robert Creeley, Merce Cunningham, Fielding Dawson, John Dewey, Robert Duncan, Aldous Huxley, Alfred Kazin, Willem de Kooning, Buckminster Fuller, Paul Goodman, Walter Gropius, Zora Neale Hurston, Robert Duncan, Franz Kline, Jacob Lawrence, Henry Miller, Robert Motherwell, Charles Olson, Arthur Penn, Francine du Plessix-Gray, Robert Rauschenburg, Mary Caroline Richards, Ben Shahn, Aaron Siskind, Cy Twombly, Thornton Wilder, and countless others. As Martin Duberman points out in Black Mountain: An Exploration in Community: "It was the forerunner and exemplar of much that is currently considered innovative in art, education and lifestyle."

 WRC 4001-101 SEMINAR IN EXPERIENTIAL INTEGRATIVE LEARNING

• Clark Maddux
• MWF 9:00am-9:50am
• LLA 124

This is the culminating course for the Watauga minor. In this class, we'll compare the history and organization of Watauga Residential College with other residential colleges. Students will draft and revise a written reflection on their own experience in WRC; draft and revise a seminar paper on the history of WRC; compose an annotated bibliography related to residential colleges; develop an original policy or procedure designed to improve the work of the College and present research, findings, and recommendations to the faculty of the College. Students will also compile a final portfolio containing evidence of their work in the minor during this class and submit it on Aportfolio.