Arts and humanities at Wake Forest

Arts and humanities offer opportunities to learn about life through a variety of lenses. A new interdisciplinary program offering a less-traveled pathway to medical school, a study on whether we are born with or learn our character traits, and a class where theatre students help train counseling students are just a few of the ways the Wake Forest community combines imagination and insight.

So your doctor majored in history?prohumanitate

A new, rigorous Interdisciplinary Humanities Pathway to Medicine Program offers guaranteed admission to Wake Forest Medical School for up to five undergraduates majoring in the humanities or fine arts.

Moral compassCharacter study stands out

From discovering how text messages can help build empathy to figuring out how character and personality affect ethical behavior on the job, the Character Project has led to remarkable advances in the study of human nature. The next step? Sharing what scholars have learned about character with the public.

Sharon Raynor and her class examine letters from the Civil War and World Wars I and II.When writing goes to war

English professor Sharon Raynor’s students sift through acid-free folders looking at letters that soldiers sent home during the Civil War and World War I and II. Pulling out folders and reading the words, it’s an experience unlike looking at a digitized copy.

Still life vs. real life

Biology professor Kathy Kron and the 11 students enrolled in Biology 105: Plants & People met at Reynolda House Museum of American Art to learn firsthand how biology is incorporated in the current exhibition, “Things Wondrous and Humble: American Still Life.”

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Afternoon at the improv

The theatre and counseling departments have partnered, through an IPLACe-funded initiative led by Phil Clarke and Sharon Andrews, so undergraduate theatre students can sharpen their improvisational acting and counseling students can gain realistic counseling experience.

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Life in prehistoric rural communities

Carrying shovels, screens and other equipment, 12 students trekked across a tobacco field along the Yadkin River to reach an archaeological site where they began finding artifacts more than 500 years old.
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Basketball and books

Talking about sports on Thursday afternoons is helping a group of high school students become better readers. Education professor Alan Brown and graduate student Jordan Daniels (’14) started a sports and literacy group for students at Southwest Guilford High School.

Seniors Nayan Hussain and Elizabeth Law work on creating visual maps that will help them think about possible career paths.

Visual maps provide career direction

Students are learning to better navigate their career paths by creating vision maps that capture the patterns and themes in life’s most significant moments and connect them to possible choices after graduation.

Photo credit: Charles Ommanney for MSNBCMelissa Harris-Perry to join faculty

MSNBC television host, political thought leader and Wake Forest University alumna Melissa Harris-Perry (‘94) will return this summer to her alma mater as a chaired professor.

 

Categories: Admissions, Arts & Culture, For Alumni, For Parents, Humanities, Humanities Highlights 2013-2014, Top Stories