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Prepare to Experience the Unexpected
Prepare to Experience the Unexpected
Winter session at Virginia Wesleyan offers unique opportunities inside the classroom, in the community and around the world
By Leona Baker | January 12, 2011
It’s shortly before 9 a.m. on a Wednesday during the first week of January. While many college students are still convalescing before the start of spring semester, a group of 17 winter session enrollees at Virginia Wesleyan have gathered in the multimedia classroom in Clarke Hall.
At 9 o’clock on the dot, Dr. Craig Wansink, professor of religious studies, bustles in with an armful of papers, talking as if he were in mid-sentence before he walked through the door.
“So, so, so…here’s the question,” he says breathlessly, gesturing toward a list already scrawled on the board. “A knife has just gone through your arm. Explain the pain using the following models: juridical, medical, military, athletic, magical, psychotropic…”
After a brief discussion on the day’s required reading, Wansink introduces a guest speaker—a Navy psychologist and expert on the topics of captivity and torture.
Welcome to “Extreme Religion,” an unusual class whose provocative subtitle, “The Body, Pain, Sex and Martyrdom in the Religious Experience,” only hints at the breadth of thought-provoking material covered therein.
Winter session courses such as this one run for three weeks each January at VWC. In addition to allowing students to get ahead or complete a requirement, these classes offer intensive opportunities for them to explore atypical subject matter, delve deeper into a particular area of study or even travel abroad for an immersive learning adventure.
During the current winter session, travel courses include trips to New Zealand, Costa Rica, Berlin, and Maui as well as sites around Virginia and Maryland to study a variety of topics from art and biology to history and recreation.
The topic of homelessness is one that is addressed in depth here on campus and in the community during winter session. This year, there are two courses being offered on the subject. One is an integrative experience for seniors focusing on the history of homelessness and poverty and society’s response to these issues. The other is a class that stresses the importance of civic consciousness and engaged citizenship and includes participation in the homeless shelter that is established on campus over a week period each January.
Some other events taking place during the current winter session include an exhibit by New York-based sculptor Linda Stein, a series of concerts associated with a history class called “Music and Folk Culture of the Southern Appalachians” and two speakers.
The first speaker is Dr. Allen Shelton, associate professor of sociology at Buffalo State College. His talk, “Dreamworlds of Alabama,” takes place Jan. 13 and explores the speaker’s unique evocations of memory, space, and place in what he has termed “ethnographic dreamworlds.”
The second speaker Dr. Hiroshi Kitamura, assistant professor of history at the College of William and Mary, will be on the Wesleyan campus Jan. 18 for a talk titled "Fountains of Culture: Hollywood and the Formation of U.S-Japan Relations after World War II," which will be drawn from his recently published book Screening Enlightenment: Hollywood and the Cultural Reconstruction of Defeated Japan (Cornell University Press, 2010).
Both speakers will appear in Blocker Hall at 7 p.m. All of these events are free and open to the campus community and the public.