WRC 1104. 101 Investigations Global: Before Columbus: Power, Difference, and Resistance from the Earliest Hominids to the Printing Press
- Gen Ed Designation: Liberal Studies Experience and Literary Studies Designation
- Instructor: Dr. Joseph Gonzalez
- Time: TR 11:00 am - 1:45 pm & TR 2:00 pm - 3:15 pm
In 1492, many different “worlds” existed on our planet. Though sophisticated and powerful on their own, most of these worlds knew little or nothing of each other.
In this course, we will explore the separate “worlds” that existed in 1492, specifically the empires of Asia, Mughal India, the Islamic world, Europe, and what became known as the “Americas.”
More specifically, we will examine how these societies organized themselves around ideas of power, legitimacy, and difference. As we will see, these ideas in particular had deep roots in human prehistory, periods known as the Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages.
In order to understand what these societies thought of themselves and others, we will read history texts, fiction, traveler’s accounts, sacred scriptures, and epic poetry. Over the course of the semester, we will also learn how to create knowledge collaboratively: In the course’s second half, students will research a “world” of their choice and present their findings in podcasts with the support of library faculty and staff.
*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 and Literary Studies Designation
- 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: Liberal Studies Experience and Literary Studies Designation
- 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: Investigations Global: America's Original Sin: Race and Religion in America
- Gen Ed Designation: Liberal Studies Experience and Literary Studies Designation
- 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: Professor 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 2001.102 28607: DAYS IN THE LIFE
Gen Ed Attribute: Sophomore Writing, Fills ENG/RC 2001 requirements
Instructor: Professor Cary Curlee
Time: TR 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: The Dark Places: Southern and Appalachian Gothic
- Gen Ed Designation: Lit Studies and ILE-Experiencing Inquiry
- Instructor: Dr. Clark Maddux
- Time: TR 9:30 am - 10:45 pm
Psalm 74 vividly contrasts the collapse of community with unspeakable violence when it warns the people of Israel to "have respect unto the covenant: for the dark places of the earth are full of the habitation of cruelty." In this course, we'll look into the void that swallows us when we lose something fundamental to who we are in relation to others. We'll explore this pervasive emptiness from south of the Fall Line in Georgia through greater Appalachia with a body of literature that has come to be called “Southern Gothic,” a genre characterized by a relentless sense of unspeakable horror and pervasive evil lurking in the next room, or just around a corner. We’ll read and write about four works that take as their subject the often-perverse application of religious belief and community identities, and explore how these texts relate to economic, social, cultural, and historical circumstance: Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood, Carson McCullers's Reflections in a Golden Eye, Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God, and Donald Ray Pollock’s “Hillbilly Gothic” novel, The Devil All the Time.
READER ADVISORY: These narratives are soaked in blood and boiled in bigotry. They use language that is reprehensible and now even taboo, and they unflinchingly examine the most brutal elements of who we are as human beings. Reading these novels, and discussing them, will not be easy. Encountering any of these can feel like being forced into an abattoir. There is a reason for this nightmarish quality, but you should not come into this class expecting that it will begin or end in sweetness and light.
*Honors students interested in this course should register for WRC 2201.410
WRC 2403.101 The Practice of Poetry
Gen Ed Attribute: Liberal Studies Experience, Literary Studies Designation
Instructor: Professor Joseph Bathanti
Time: TR 12:30 pm-1:45 pm
"A creative-writing class may be one of the last places you can go where your life still matters," claims the great Northwest poet, Richard Hugo. This course introduces the basics of poetry writing. It tackles poetry through a “writerly eye” (reading like a writer) and pays careful attention to the kinds of craft (a protean word we’ll use regularly and seek to define contextually) choices that influence the emotional impact and meaning of a given poem.
The class will also provide students with an overall context for poetry: its scope; trends; its development, especially during the last decades of 20th Century to the present, with a decided lean toward American poetry (of a narrative vein), but with a keen eye on diversity and burgeoning voices, multiculturalism and various “kinds” of poetry, including formalism and free verse.
An extremely important component of the course will be careful readings and analyses of poems from a number of realms and “schools.” Approximately 1/3 of the class time will be spent workshopping student-generated poems, and each student will have the opportunity to workshop two poems – and the subject matter is totally up to you. We’ll also engage occasionally in in-class writing assignments and hopefully do a bit of writing out of the classroom. Our ultimate aim, by the end of the semester, is to acquire an understanding of, and instinct for, various elements and strategies – all revolving around craft choices – employed by writers in building/composing poems, elements and strategies you can then employ in your own poetry.
Regardless of whether you consider yourself primarily a poet, fiction writer, or creative nonfiction writer – and even if you’ve never attempted to write a poem before – this course is the right place for you.
*Honors students interested in this course should register for WRC 2403.410
WRC 2403.102 The Practice of Poetry
Gen Ed Attribute: Liberal Studies Experience, Literary Studies Designation
Instructor: Professor Joseph Bathanti
Time: TR 2:00 pm-3:15 pm
"A creative-writing class may be one of the last places you can go where your life still matters," claims the great Northwest poet, Richard Hugo. This course introduces the basics of poetry writing. It tackles poetry through a “writerly eye” (reading like a writer) and pays careful attention to the kinds of craft (a protean word we’ll use regularly and seek to define contextually) choices that influence the emotional impact and meaning of a given poem.
The class will also provide students with an overall context for poetry: its scope; trends; its development, especially during the last decades of 20th Century to the present, with a decided lean toward American poetry (of a narrative vein), but with a keen eye on diversity and burgeoning voices, multiculturalism and various “kinds” of poetry, including formalism and free verse.
An extremely important component of the course will be careful readings and analyses of poems from a number of realms and “schools.” Approximately 1/3 of the class time will be spent workshopping student-generated poems, and each student will have the opportunity to workshop two poems – and the subject matter is totally up to you. We’ll also engage occasionally in in-class writing assignments and hopefully do a bit of writing out of the classroom. Our ultimate aim, by the end of the semester, is to acquire an understanding of, and instinct for, various elements and strategies – all revolving around craft choices – employed by writers in building/composing poems, elements and strategies you can then employ in your own poetry.
Regardless of whether you consider yourself primarily a poet, fiction writer, or creative nonfiction writer – and even if you’ve never attempted to write a poem before – this course is the right place for you.
*Honors students interested in this course should register for WRC 2403.411
WRC 3000 Interrogating Popular Culture
- Gen Ed Designation: Social Science designation and ILE-Experiencing Inquiry
- Instructor: Dr. Maria Pramaggiore
- Time: TR 12:30pm - 1:45pm
WRC 3203.101 WHY ART? WAYS OF RESPONDING TO THE WORLD AROUND US
- Gen Ed Designation: Fine Arts and ILE-Experiencing Inquiry
- Instructor: Professor Mel Falck
- Time: W 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 designation and Liberal Studies Experience
- Instructor: Dr. Laura Ammon
- Time: TR 3:30 pm - 4:45 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 3535 101 The Practice of Fiction: The Uncanny
- Instructor: Professor Joseph Bathanti
- Time: TR 3:30 pm - 4:45 pm
This course is designed to provide students with the opportunity and fundamentals to practice the art of writing short fiction that features the uncanny. We’ll read, as examples of craft, short fiction in the following genres: science fiction, Afrofuturism, fabulism, magical realism, horror and a few genres that perhaps defy categorization. Some of the authors we’ll read are Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Shirley Jackson, Joyce Carol Oates, and William Faulkner; but also Stephen King, Octavia Butler, Julio Cortazar, Ursula K. Le Guin, Carmen Machado, Michele Tracy Berger, & others.
The course utilizes exercises and a range of assignments designed to allow student writers to explore strategies for generating material and experimenting with technical conventions. Students will complete a number of short stories, two of which will be presented (workshopped) to the class), submit formal critiques of their peers' workshopped stories and occasionally submit reading responses.
Regardless of whether you consider yourself primarily a poet, fiction writer, or creative nonfiction writer – and even if you’ve never attempted to write fiction before – this course is the right place for you.
WRC 4001.101 SEMINAR IN EXPERIENTIAL INTEGRATIVE LEARNING
- Instructor: Dr. Laura Ammon
- Time: MW 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.