Calendar

Wednesday, March 4

Hours: 7:30AM - 1AM

  • CAT Book Discussion: Joy-Centered Pedagogy in Higher Education
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    ZSR Library, ZSR 665 (Faculty Commons Classroom)
    Joy-Centered Pedagogy in Higher Education (2025) features a collection of 15 essays about the role that joy, playfulness, curiosity, laughter, and fun play in the college classroom. Focusing on topics as diverse as joyful silence, embodied learning, unlearning failure, and student-authored stand-up comedy, the volume offers inspiration and practical guidance for reorienting teaching around joy in order to become more welcoming, inclusive, effective, and fulfilled instructors.

    Let’s meet to discuss and experiment with joy as a unique lens for understanding teaching and learning.

    This book group will meet six times this semester on Wednesdays (1/28, 2/11, 2/18, 2/25, 3/4, & 3/18) from 3:30-4:30 pm in ZSR 665 (Faculty Commons Classroom inside the Faculty Commons space in the ZSR Wilson Wing). We will provide the book for the first 15 registrants. These discussions are very popular so we ask that you register only if you are available to attend all sessions.

  • Exploring the Life and Legacy of Lunsford Lane: A Two-Day Lecture Series with Craig Thompson Friend
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    ZSR Library
    Join historian Craig Thompson Friend, Alumni Distinguished Graduate Professor of History and Public History at North Carolina State University and a Wake Forest University alumnus (’83), for a special two-day exploration of the remarkable life of Lunsford Lane, the self-emancipated entrepreneur and author whose story challenges and enriches our understanding of freedom, identity, and resilience in nineteenth-century North Carolina.

    These programs celebrate Friend’s acclaimed new book, Becoming Lunsford Lane (University of North Carolina Press), and are presented in partnership between the Wake Forest Historical Museum and the Z. Smith Reynolds Library Special Collections & Archives at Wake Forest University.

    Please register for these events here.

    Event 1: Lunsford Lane in Wake CountyTuesday, March 3, 2026, 6:00 p.m.Wake Forest Historical Museum, 414 N. Main Street, Wake Forest, NCIn this lecture, Dr. Craig Thompson Friend will focus on Lunsford Lane’s early life and experiences in Wake County, exploring how local communities, institutions, and racial hierarchies shaped his journey toward self-emancipation. Drawing on years of archival research, Friend will illuminate how Lane’s story reflects both the constraints and possibilities of life for enslaved North Carolinians in the early 19th century.

    This event is free and open to the public. A book signing will follow the presentation.

    Event 2: Becoming Lunsford Lane — Rewriting a LifeWednesday, March 4, 2026, 4:00 p.m.Z. Smith Reynolds Library, Special Collections & Archives (Room 625)At this campus lecture, Dr. Friend will present a broader discussion of Becoming Lunsford Lane, highlighting how he reconstructed Lane’s life and legacy through historical detective work and critical engagement with older narratives. He will discuss the process of separating myth from memory and the challenges of writing biography within the context of race, freedom, and authorship in the antebellum South.

    Presented by the ZSR Library’s Special Collections & Archives in partnership with the Wake Forest Historical Museum. Free and open to the public.

    Livestream available here.