Current Term & Registration-Spring 2026

Spring 2026

Documenting Winston-Salem African American Cemeteries

Presented by Terry Brock at Brookstown Campus and site visits
Wednesdays, 5:30 – 7:30pm
March 18- April 22

Please note: Odd Fellows board members, descendants or and anyone who may have a financial barrier should contact the Lifelong Learning Office at 336-758-5232 or email Lifelonglearning@wfu.edu before registering online.

This course is designed for members of the Winston Salem community interested in learning how to document Black cemeteries in Winston Salem and who want to participate in ongoing research being conducted by Wake Forest University’s Cultural Heritage and Archaeology Research Group (CHARG) in partnership with The Friends of Odd Fellows Cemetery. This course will focus specifically on work being conducted at Historic Odd Fellows Cemetery, a 13-acre African American cemetery with over 9,000 marked and unmarked burials. Participants will learn how archaeologists use digital tools to create interactive maps and conduct historical research and will have hands-on opportunities to use those tools as part of this ongoing research project.  

This course will be held both in the classroom and at the Odd Fellows Cemetery. Participants will participate in a number of phases relating to the mapping and historical research of the Cemetery, ranging from using survey equipment, iPads, Geographic Information Systems, and Research Databases. They will also participate in cemetery cleanups and see demonstrations in the use of Ground Penetrating Radar and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (Drones). Participants will also be provided with occasional readings and resources to supplement the course offerings.

Dr. Terry Brock is the Director of CHARG, and is a Part Time Assistant Professor and Research Associate in the Program of African American Studies  , a Research Associate with The Cultural Heritage and Preservation Program, and the Manager of Archaeology and Research at the Wake Forest Historical Museum. He received his PhD in Anthropology from Michigan State University in 2014, and has been working as a public and research archaeologist at national museums such as Historic St. Mary’s City and James Madison’s Montpelier. His research has focused on the study of the African Diaspora, particularly in the contexts of plantation slavery and post-emancipation. He is also an expert on collaborative archaeological heritage and museum work, with an emphasis on community-based archaeology programs, hands-on archaeological learning, and public archaeology. He serves on the board for Archaeology in the Community, a non-profit public archaeology program based in Washington, DC, and MUSEws, a history museum in Winston Salem. At Wake Forest he serves on the Slavery, Race, and Memory Steering Committee and the Campus Memorialization Steering Committee.

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Essential Moral Skills for a Good Life: Working Virtues

Presented by Larry Churchill
Wednesdays, 10am – noon
April 8 – May 13

The most important part of our moral lives is not the occasional big decisions we
have to make but the virtues that shape our daily lives. These routine, practical
virtues of the everyday become traits of character that live and work in us as
personal and interactive skills. It is these skills that both give us our daily
orientation and also shape our occasional big decisions. This course will define and explore those moral skills that are most important for a good and happy life. These skills need to be periodically examined and developed, and like other skills–such as tennis, sewing, cooking or carpentry–can either grow or wither.
We will examine especially those virtues that seem to be out of favor or under criticism at this juncture in our cultural and social life. Presentations will draw from a wide range of sources: religious and secular, humanistic, poetic, literary and scientific. The emphasis will be on how these essential virtues function, this is, the work they do for us. Exercises and practical engagement will be a part of each session.

Larry R. Churchill is Stahlman Professor of Medical Ethics Emeritus, Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He played a major role in developing two bioethics programs: Vanderbilt and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Churchill has been cited for excellent in teaching at both Vanderbilt and UNC. He is a member of National Academy of Medicine and a Fellow of The Hastings Center. He is the author of seven books, including most recently Ethics for Everyone: A Skills-Based Approach, with Nancy King and Gail Henderson, Bioethics Reenvisioned: A Path Toward Health Justice, and a forthing volume with Elizabeth Lanphier, Bioethical Responsibilities in 21 st Century Crises. Churchill’s work has been featured in popular media such as USA Today, The New York Times,Bill Moyers’ Journal, and the Alex Gibney documentary Money-Driven Medicine.

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The Brothers Karamazov-in Translation-Course Completed.

Participants will read and discuss in depth an English language translation of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov.  The class members will explore this novel in the context of the development of Russian fiction. Dostoevsky’s great achievement — atop significant and powerful works such as The Possessed and Crime and Punishment — stands among the most penetrating, powerful, and important works of world fiction.  Since its publication in 1880, the writer’s final work has endured for its profound examination of family life, generational conflict, religious and societal values, the seemingly endless tensions of mind and heart.   In the remote town of Skotoprigonyevsk, three brothers — vastly different in temperaments and ambitions – must contend with and against their debauched father, the crime against whom turns upside down a family already struggling mightily with issues of love and fidelity.   The Brothers Karamazov is at once tenderly, at times humorously, personal, and yet dramatically universal in its exploration of family and faith. Reading it can change a life.

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Authoring Action! – Creative Writing-Course Completed.

Nathan Ross Freeman will work with Participants to explore and celebrate the
5 prompts of Equality, Culture, Resilience, Citizen and Courage, tooled with Authoring Action’s First Ink Discussion and Freeman’s Creative Writing processes. Through a totally Socratic process participants will discuss each prompt. Participants will then each formulate a ‘school-of-thought’ theme at the discussions’ end. Participant’s individual themes, exercised via signature creative writing exercises will generate 1 Monologue for each prompt.  Participants will write then read their monologues to their ensemble and formulate a collection: Lifelong Learning Monologues of 2026  **No experience is necessary. No special supplies other than paper and pencil needed.

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Behind the Score: Art and Insight of Conducting-Course in Session.

Have you ever wondered what a conductor really does? Or how a score becomes a powerful performance? Join international conductor J. Aaron Hardwick in 
Behind the Score: The Art and Insight of Conducting and explore how conductors shape music, interpret composers’ intentions, and bring orchestral masterpieces to life.

In collaboration with the Winston Salem Symphony students will have the opportunity to attend a rehearsal and go behind the scenes of our local symphony. More information will be provided at a later date.

James “Aaron” Hardwick has established a reputation as an outstanding conductor, artist, and collaborator—setting himself apart with his engaging, charismatic, and musically precise approach on and off the podium. Highly versatile and musically insightful, his artistic collaborations span multiple genres including classical repertoire, musical theater, opera, video game music, popular music, and new works. Hardwick received his Doctor of Musical Arts in Performance (Conducting) at Shenandoah Conservatory. He earned a master’s degree in Orchestral Conducting from the University of South Carolina and a bachelor’s degree in Music with honors from East Carolina University. He also holds a Graduate Certificate in Esports Management from Shenandoah University. He is a free-lance professional conductor and is the Orchestra Director and an Assistant Teaching Professor of Music at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, NC.

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Vienna Modernism-The Making of the Modern Age– Course in Session.

Vienna Course is Passport Program eligible.

Step into the vibrant world of Vienna Modernism, where innovations in the arts, sciences and politics came together to forge the modern age. This course invites you to explore the dazzling cultural ferment of fin-de-siècle Vienna: a city poised between a collapsing empire and the birth of modernity. Through art, architecture, and the ideas of innovators such as Gustav Klimt, Sigmund Freud, Arnold Schoenberg and Otto Wagner, we’ll trace how the city became a laboratory of modernism, shaping everything from modern art and urban life to the way we understand the self. We will explore Vienna’s extraordinary, and often controversial, innovations in science, art, music, and design alongside the deep social tensions, embodied in figures such as populist mayor Karl Lueger, whose politics foreshadowed the conflicts of the century to come.

Perfect for lifelong learners, this course blends history, culture, and creative inquiry to illuminate how this extraordinary moment in Vienna’s history shaped the intellectual and cultural foundations of the 20th century—and why it still matters today.

Rebecca Thomas, PhD, Professor Emerita of German at Wake Forest University, also taught at and directed the Wake Forest Flow House study abroad program in Vienna, Austria. She is a passionate teacher of German and Austrian language, literature and culture. Her research and publications are primarily in contemporary Austrian literature as well as German and Austrian post-war and Holocaust studies. She has also published English translations of contemporary Austrian and German fiction and short film. Her secondary research area is in cultural adaptation studies for students studying abroad. In addition to teaching German Studies at Wake Forest since 1993, Rebecca has also taught German regularly at the American Institute of Musical Studies in Graz, Austria since 1988. Having contrived a way to remain in semi-permanent residence in the state of Austria for much of her adult life, Rebecca gives back by enticing all willing visitors to her home away from home and by keeping the hills alive with the sound of her hiking boots.

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Fall 2025-Courses Completed

The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly becoming a part of everyday life and a consequent set of debates are taking place in the public sphere. However, the debates engage in conversations about the technologies of AI and their possible consequences without necessarily arriving at the dialogues via the theories related to human intelligence (HI). This course will look at the long-standing scholarship on HI beginning with the work of Greek thinkers. It will also examine HI during the twentieth century as it moved within the disciplines of psychology and communication. The students will traverse through this history of scholarship to find a grounding principle to think of how AI fits in with the overall notion of HI. The course will examine the principles that have driven the research developed in the twenty-first century and the connections between HI and “intelligence” of machines, within the domain of human communication, concluding with the discussion of the benefits and burdens of AI grounded within theories of intelligence, the technologies of AI, and the manner in which AI is being adopted.

Ananda Mitra is a professor at Wake Forest University, renowned for his pioneering work in the fields of communication and media studies. With a Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Mitra’s research focuses on the intersection of technology and human interaction, particularly in the realm of social media and digital narratives. 

In addition to his academic pursuits, Mitra is actively involved in mentoring students and young researchers, emphasizing the ethical implications of technology in society.

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If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around, does it still make a sound? Why does blue cheese smell bad but taste good? This class on the senses will answer questions like these as we explore how we detect the world around us. Participants will learn that there are many more than the traditional five senses (sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell). The non-traditional senses include proprioception, balance, and chemesthesis. We will also discuss senses present in animals that are not found in humans, including vomeronasal chemoreception, electroreception and infrared detection. The course will also touch on how aging and environmental factors may affect sensory systems.

Wayne L. Silver is Emeritus Professor of Biology at Wake Forest University. He taught at Wake for 38 years. Dr. Silver is a neuroscientist whose research involved the chemical senses. He taught courses in Physiology, Neurobiology and Sensory Biology while at Wake Forest

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A great conductor of the 19th Century coined the term “The Three B’s”, referring to three giants of classical music: Bach, the master of the Baroque, whose music is filled with great humanity and intellectual rigor; Beethoven, who changed the direction of music and the role of the creative artist with his powerfully expressive symphonies and sonatas; and Brahms, whose music in a way can be seen as a synthesis of the earlier “B’s”, infused with his own expressive and nostalgic stamp. As we listen to their beautiful and inspiring compositions, in disparate styles written decades apart, we will uncover some remarkable connections between these three towering figures of the western classical tradition.

Born in Los Angeles, Peter Kairoff received Master’s and Doctoral degrees in music performance from the University of Southern California. He also studied in Italy for two years as a Fulbright Scholar and Rotary International Fellow. He is a retired Professor of piano of Wake Forest University. He has performed as pianist and harpsichordist in Berlin, Rio de Janeiro, Venice, New York, Los Angeles, Shanghai and many other musical centers. Critics have noted his “Meticulous accuracy and profound musicality. One of America’s finest keyboard performers.” (Oxford MAIL, England). His eight published CD recordings, on the Albany and Centaur labels, including works of Bach, Schubert and late-19th Century American composers, have all received enthusiastic reviews from the Washington Post, American Record Guide, and many others. He is a Steinway Artist.

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In this course we’ll look at how paintings and prints were made and marketed in the 17^th century, the “Golden Age” of Dutch painting. We’ll look closely at the works of the most famous artists, Rembrandt and Vermeer, as well as at the paintings of some less well-known, but equally fascinating artists, like Judith Leyster and Caral Fabritius. 

Bernadine Barnes is a retired professor of Renaissance art history from Wake Forest University for more than 30 years. Her interests include  how contemporary audiences of differing genders or social groups gain access to works of art and how contemporary viewers respond to images. She has a special interest in the history of prints, and has contributed essays to exhibition catalogs published by the National Gallery in Washington and Stanford University; she has also worked with students to curate nine exhibits at Wake Forest’s Hanes Art Gallery. She has written four books including, Michelangelo in Print (Ashgate, 2010) and, Michelangelo and the Viewer in his Time (Reaktion, 2018).  

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In “Revolutionary America” we will explore Benjamin Franklin‘s world of the eighteenth century. Born in 1706, dying in 1790, Franklin will be our lens. His life and writings will focus our inquiry. Across six weeks of lectures, conversations, short readings (and optional book suggestions!) we will track the maturation of the first British empire and the diverse communities of immigrants and indigenous peoples that ostensibly lived under its sovereignty. We will consider the acceleration of slavery’s importance, as well as new antislavery objections and actions. Then we will weigh the ideologies and actions of American Revolutionaries as they articulated new visions of liberty and constitutional order in their new republic.  Come learn more about the deep foundations of our American story!

Early America draws Jake Ruddiman as a teacher and historian because it stands as a hinge between eras. It mixes the familiar and foreign, mythic and controversial, foundational and revolutionary. The era’s actors point us towards questions of human experience: how did people build lives, communities, and meaning? And the American Revolution – boldly begun but never quite finished – pushes us to engage with its triumphs and failures, demanding we challenge ourselves to seek what still remains to be done.

Jake’s current research examines soldiers’ travel writing during the War of American Independence to explore the place of slavery and race in the Revolution. These texts from white and black Americans, Britons, Hessians, and French aristocrats illustrate diverse and changing relationships among enslaved people and American and European combatants.