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by Shelly Ferraraccio |
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Most of the departments will offer classes focusing on rivers or use the river as a theme throughout many of their classes. In the Appalachian Regional Studies Center for example, headed by Dr. Grace Toney Edwards, courses are still a work in progress for the Year of the River. Ideas are being formulated and while there are no plans currently to design a specific course on the river, it will be a component in all the Appalachian Studies courses offered in 2002-2003. Because of where the Selu Conservancy is situated, the Appalachian Studies Department has a unique opportunity to involve the Little River in courses offered. The Little River is accessible from Selu and the Little River empties in to the New River below the Little River Dam. The Appalachian Regional Studies Center is hoping the living history museum at Selu, which will present the importance on the river to an Appalachian farm in the 1930s, will be up and running by the time these courses are offered. Dr. Edwards she and the other instructors will be able to take their Appalachian Studies classes to Selu to discuss the works they will read and view. Some of the authors and works that are being considered are Robert Morgan’s Gap Creek, Wilma Dykeman’s The French Broad, James Thom’s Follow the River, and Gurney Norman’s documentaries. Dr. Edwards would like to extend invitations to authors to visit the Appalachian Literature, Folklore and Media classes during the semesters they are offered. Authors such as Marilou Awiakta, Wilma Dykeman, and Robert Morgan and others would be invited to Radford to discuss their works about rivers. Also, the Appalachian Studies Department would like to draw connections between American rivers and rivers in Scotland and Ireland, and the relative importance of rivers in the respective cultures. For more information about the Appalachian Studies Department and their courses contact the Appalachian Regional Studies Center at 831-5366. In the English Department, Dr. Rick Van Noy will offer a course on River Literature. This course will offer an opportunity to read about the New River and other great American Rivers and to take a canoe trip on either the New River or the Little River. Students in River Literature will also study works written about other great rivers like the Concord and Merrimack, the Colorado, Mississippi, and Ohio as well as others. Authors such as Henry David Thoreau, Mark Twain, will be featured. The course will be broken into sections on Exploration, Escape, Reunification and Renewal, and on Preservation and Loss. Using these sections Dr. Van Noy will use this course on the literature of American rivers to examine how rivers have been important to us historically, culturally, environmentally, and spiritually. To get to know one American River well, students will choose an American River to study in depth. They will examine their river’s exploration; settlement; flood history; ecology; recreation; artistic, literary, or musical responses; dams; and pollution or preservation. Students will shape their projects in the area that most interests them. For more information on the River Literature course contact Dr. Rick Van Noy.
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River Home
URL: http://www.radford.edu/~engl-web/river |