You are invited to participate in Project Wake, Wake Forest’s summer academic project for new students. Project Wake provides faculty and staff an opportunity to engage with new students through discussion that allows reflection on the year’s theme:
Identity & Community
Why do you believe what you believe? Is it an idea you were raised with that you’ve never reconsidered? What if there are ways of understanding yourself and the world that are beyond your current experiences and awareness? College is a chance to step outside your usual circle, explore new communities, and figure out who you are becoming. At Wake Forest, you will find spaces shaped by different interests, backgrounds, values, and worldviews. The point is not just to find people like you, but to be open to people who are not—and to let those experiences expand your thinking, deepen your curiosity, and shape the way you contribute. A liberal arts education asks you not to see yourself as the center of everything, but as part of something larger: a community you help build through the questions you ask, the perspectives you share, and the way you show up for others here, and beyond college.
Discussions will engage with the theme through works from any medium. These include written works (books, plays, op-eds, graphic novels), films, video games, musical compositions, podcasts, and visual art. You can read more about each discussion group below.
Discussion Time: Saturday, August 22nd at 1pm
Deraspe’s retelling of Sophocles’s classic, Antigone, transports the story from the ancient city of Thebes to contemporary Montreal, recasting the titular heroine as a refugee struggling to remain faithful to her family as they navigate the complexities of the immigration system. Using the film as a springboard, we will discuss how we understand identity and community amid increasingly plural and cosmopolitan legal societies. What ties, if any, bind the citizen and migrant? What might it mean for them to live justly together?
Discussion Leader: Dr. Bryan Ellrod
Bryan Ellrod is the Director of Pre-Law and teaches courses on Literature and Ethics and Legal Humanities in the Department of Interdisciplinary Humanities at Wake Forest. His research has appeared in such places as the journals of Law and Humanities, Law and Religion, Literature and Theology, Body and Religion, and The Canopy Forum.
Discussion Time: Sunday, August 23rd at 1pm
As an eclectic, but commonly anxious, group of eight strangers are held hostage by a failed bank robber at an open house, and police and television crews surround the apartment building, all involved are forced to reckon with a life-or-death situation. In the process, they confront both internal and external factors that have driven them to where they are on that day – and in life – and are led to determine a common ground among a group of seemingly very different people.
As a Science Librarian who addresses health literacy and the inequities that can shape the development of literacy skills, acknowledging and embracing differences among various populations are at the forefront of my research. Although Anxious People is a work of fiction, the author acknowledges real life problems that affect a variety of people from a variety of backgrounds and stages in life. This book is very much a survey of human character which leads the reader to not only consider, but also empathize with, the views and positions of their neighbors.
Discussion Leader: Professor Colleen Foy
Colleen Foy is a Research and Instruction Librarian in the ZSR Library and works primarily in the Sciences. She also teaches in the Library Sciences department, which are classes intended to help students build research skills.
Discussion Time: Saturday, August 22nd at 1pm
From apartheid South Africa to the host of the Daily Show, Trevor Noah’s remarkable journey from his “criminal” birth to his celebrity adulthood is told through a series of personal essays that are deeply moving, quietly unsettling, and often hilarious. At the heart of his story is a lifelong negotiation of identity: navigating race, language, culture, and belonging in a country designed to keep people apart. His experiences raise questions that feel just as urgent today about who gets to belong, how community is built across difference, and how the stories we inherit shape who we become. I’m certain we will have a lively and meaningful discussion about this year’s theme: Identity & Community.
Discussion Leader: Dr. Michael Shuman
Michael Shuman is the Director of our Center for Learning, Access, and Student Success (CLASS), where we are committed to providing opportunities for all students to achieve academic success. The CLASS coordinates student success services, including peer tutoring and academic coaching, that new students find invaluable as they navigate their college experiences at WFU. In addition, CLASS coordinates academic accommodations for students with disabilities and works closely with faculty on inclusive teaching practices. Finally, he also teaches a course in the Psychology department aimed at helping students develop the skills and approaches that are associated with success in college.
Discussion Time: Saturday, August 22nd at 1pm
Conform explores a society where belonging is contingent on sameness, and deviation from the norm is discouraged or even punished. As the main character begins to question the expectations placed on them, the story reveals how powerful social systems—peers, institutions, and cultural norms—shape what people believe and how they behave. This directly reflects the transition students experience in college. At Wake Forest, students will encounter both the pull to “fit in” and the opportunity to define themselves more intentionally. Conform challenges students to ask: Which of my beliefs are truly mine, and which have I adopted to belong? By engaging this story during Project Wake, students are encouraged to think critically about conformity, authenticity, and the kind of community they want to help create, one that values not just belonging, but the courage to engage across difference and contribute perspectives that expand collective understanding.
Discussion Leader: Deb Marke
Deb Marke is the Associate Director of the Office of Civic & Community Enagement. A Wake Forest alumna, Marke graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Health and Exercise Science with double minors in Psychology and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. A gifted facilitator, Marke has developed several trainings on intersectional feminist activism, critical community-building, and leadership development. Before her return to Winston-Salem, Marke served as the Program Coordinator for Leadership and Activism in the Women’s Center at the University of Cincinnati, where she was named Outstanding New Professional and served as the Programming Chair for the LGBTQ Faculty and Staff Association.
Discussion Time: Sunday, August 23rd at 2pm
Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead immerses readers in the heart of Appalachia during the opioid crisis, chronicling a young boy’s coming-of-age journey through broken social systems and the connections he forms along the way. The novel connects to this year’s theme of “Identity and Community” by inviting students to confront how geographic and socioeconomic circumstances shape who we are and our perspectives on the world. The novel challenges readers to look beyond themselves and consider how they might cultivate empathy and kindness to build a compassionate, diverse community, whether on a college campus or elsewhere.
Discussion Leader: Dr. Steve Smith
Steve Smith is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Environmental Studies. He serves as a Faculty Fellow for Bostwick Hall.
Discussion Time: Sunday, August 23rd at 2pm
This is an interview with Stuart Kauffman a theoretical biologist who focuses on self-organization within systems. In this interview, he talks a lot about evolving biospheres and how they self-organize. A quote from the article pretty much sums up the most important idea and how it relates to community, since this campus could be considered “an evolving biosphere”: There is no ultimate insurer of the total future. That doesn’t mean chaos. It means something more unsettling: Order exists, but it is partly made. Therefore, we are participants rather than spectators, co-creators rather than controllers.
Discussion Leader: Dr. Jes Bolduc
Jes Bolduc is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Wake Forest. They are interested in studying how embodied learning theories and Montessori-inspired practices can be applied in chemical education to improve student conceptual understanding, scientific interest, self-motivation, and creativity. They are a Faculty Fellow in Bostwick Hall.
Discussion Time: Saturday, August 22nd at 1pm
- Ethan Mollick, “Choosing to Stay Human”
- Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor, “A guide to understanding AI as normal technology”
- Wolfgang Blau, Vinton G. Cerf, Juan Enriquez, et al., “Protecting Scientific Integrity in an Age of Generative AI”
- Deacs.AI podcast episode “Quick Dive: From Draft Boards to Dashboards — What the NFL Draft Teaches Us About AI in Higher Education.”
This set of short-form media asks first-year students to consider how to remain thoughtful, responsible, and human in a world where generative AI is becoming ordinary. They hopefully will consider issues of judgement, trust and responsibility in the liberal arts & sciences.
Discussion Leader: Dr. Fred Salsbury
Fred Salsbury is the Graduate Director and Professor in the Department of Physics. He serves as the Pre-Health Advisor for First year Students and First-Generation students all four years. He is a Faculty Fellow in Angelou Hall.
Discussion Time: Saturday, August 22nd at 1pm
A course in policy, taught by Katie Harriger and Mike Ford, introduced me to Jonathan Kozol’s groundbreaking, journalistic chronicling of socioeconomic and racial inequities in the U.S. This newer Kozol piece is a story of new beginnings, discovery and hope — how children in one family somehow survive a broken school and drug-ravaged community to make their way to college. The piece shows how they maintain their identity and dignity as they navigate a new world, learning how to relate to their new peers, just as we all must do. I love this part: “Her letters and phone calls were mostly optimistic, sparked with funny anecdotes and interesting insights into the dynamics of relationships among the different ethnic groups within the student body. In the spring, for instance, when she took a course in urban studies, she told me something that she said surprised her—“and, to tell the truth, it kind of annoys me”—about the way the other students, who were mostly white, tended to defer to her when it came to questions about race.
Discussion Leader: Kelly Greene
Kelly Greene (’91) joined Wake Forest Magazine as managing editor in 2023. Before that, she was senior director of executive communications for TIAA and a director of marketing for BlackRock in New York. In her 25 years as a journalist, Greene was a staff writer and columnist at The Wall Street Journal, where she contributed to the Journal’s Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and co-authored a New York Times bestselling book about retirement planning. She was a Carswell Scholar at Wake Forest with majors in History with Honors and Politics.
Discussion Time: Saturday, August 22nd at 2pm
In the novel “Klara and the Sun,” Nobel prize winning author Kazuo Ishiguro challenges us to explore what it means to be truly human in a rapidly changing and increasingly divided society. Just what is it about our identity – if anything – that is truly unique? And how can we maintain a sense of self while also building community with others? In the end, what makes each of us worthy of love? The story takes place in the near future and is narrated by Klara, an “AF” (Artificial Friend) whose remarkable observational abilities help us to see the world – and especially the potential impact of artificial intelligence, machine learning, climate change and genetic engineering – from many different perspectives. According to Klara herself, “I could see that people were using technology to try to improve themselves, but I wondered if they were losing something in the process. Maybe there was more to being human than just being smart or beautiful or strong.”
Discussion Leader: Dr. Christa Colyer
Christa Colyer is a Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Wake Forest. Her research interests include analytical chemistry, electrokinetic separations method development, aptamer discovery, carbon nanoparticles in analysis, and biomolecule and drug analysis.
Discussion Time: Sunday, August 23rd at 2pm
This book deals with Iran from the 1950 through the early 21st Century. It deals with community identity in Iran during the protests of 1979 and the rise of the Ayatollah. It then delves into Iranian identity & community in NYC among Iranians who fled to NYC. The book is especially timely given the US war with Iran.
Discussion Leader: Dr. Simone M. Caron
Simone M. Caron is a Professor in the Department of History at Wake Forest. Their research interests span from 1830 to the present and center on American medical history. Their publications include Who Chooses? American Reproductive History since 1830 (2008) and numerous articles midwifery, infanticide, women and alcoholic addiction, public health nursing, and encephalitis lethargica. Their current research project centers on women with Rheumatoid Arthritis. Their teaching interests center on gender and medical history; race, gender and the law; the Great Depression; the long decade of the Sixties; and American political, social, economic and cultural history since 1865.
Discussion Time: Saturday, August 22nd at 1pm
Local Hero deals with major decisions as a community, who is allowed to make those decisions, and what influence a place has on how a life is spent.
Discussion Leader: Professor Elka Staley
Elka Staley teaches in the Writing Department at Wake Forest and is a Senior Academic Advisor in the Office of Academic Advising. She currently serves as the STEM and Engineering Department Liaison.
Discussion Time: Saturday, August 22nd at 1pm
Throughout our lives we will find ourselves communicating with (or at least trying to) individuals who are different from us. Effective communication is always a challenge, even when we are speaking the same language. In this fun outer-space adventure, a small band of travelers are forced to react and adapt to new situations where interspecies norms and expectations challenge their ability to communicate. At times the differences the travelers encounter lead to violence, but sometimes it leads to positive connections and an opening into the expanse of experience. I have chosen The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet because it is a fun book, but also because it presents many wonderful examples of the good that can come from letting yourself be changed by interactions with difference.
Discussion Leader: Dr. Amanda Jones
Amanda Jones is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry. Her research interests include Homogeneous Gold Catalysis and NMR Spectroscopy.
Discussion Time: Saturday, August 22nd at 2pm
Loving Day is about a son who inherits a haunted mansion…and learns, to his great surprise, that he is the father of a teenage daughter. As they attempt to make sense of their unexpected circumstances, they wrestle with what it means to accept themselves, become a family, and build the community they didn’t know they needed.
Discussion Leader: Dr. Erica Still
Erica Still is an Associate Professor in the Department of English. Her areas of scholarly interest include African American Literature, Trauma Studies, Religion and Literature, and Critical Theory.
Discussion Time: Saturday, August 22nd at 2pm
The mask is the classic disguise. But as alter ego, it reveals as much as it conceals. Why are masks so often creepy, even outside of horror movies? Can a mask change expression while you’re wearing it? How much of someone’s self can inhabit a mask? Why would anyone make a plaster cast of a dead person’s face? And, really, who was that masked man? MASKS unmasks the answers to these frequently (m)asked questions and more. Masks are the materials for a world of make-believe, from the theater to Halloween, from masquerades to Scooby-Doo. Masks can take on magic or ritual powers. They can preserve and transmit memory. Masks are a makeover tool for appearance and identity, from spa treatments to drag to superheroes. What all these different functions have in common is the mask as physical metaphor, a mirror of the self and society. In another layer of metaphor, our words for ourselves as individuals (“person”) and for our self-presentation to society (“persona”) both derive directly from the Latin word for mask. MASKS explores one of humanity’s oldest cultural objects, traveling from prehistoric remains to ancient Roman funeral processions to Mardi Gras to masked doppelgangers on stage and screen. Its examination of masks across time and the globe sheds new light on the totemic power masks have developed, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Two chapters of the book (“Mirror” and “Metamorphosis”) focus directly on the issues of identity & community, examining issues ranging from gender expression to political protest, and every other chapter connects to identity and community in some form or fashion (e.g., the play with identity at Halloween in “Make-Believe,” communities of care during pandemic in “Medicine,” Greek life in “Magic,” and relationships to race and to the dead in “Memory”).
Discussion Leader: Dr. T. H. M. Gellar-Goad
T. H. M. Gellar-Goad is Professor of Classics and Denton Fellow at Wake Forest. He serves as Faculty Fellow for Angelou Hall.
Discussion Time: Sunday, August 23rd at 1pm
Welcome to Wake Forest! As you get ready to begin college, the choices are seemingly limitless. Imagine stepping into a library where every book on the shelf lets you instantly try on a different version of your life based on the choices you could have made. In Matt Haig’s novel The Midnight Library, protagonist Nora Seed gets to explore an infinite multiverse of her own “what-ifs.” It might seem like you have to make the perfect choices, but The Midnight Library is a fast-paced, relatable story that dismantles the myth of a flawless path and challenges you to rethink what success actually looks like. If you’ve ever stressed about picking the right major, finding your people, or figuring out who you are supposed to be, this discussion will give you the permission to drop the pressure of perfectionism, embrace the clean slate of Wake Forest, and discover how true fulfillment comes from the small, profound ways we step outside ourselves to show up for the community around us.
Discussion Leader: Dr. Matt Clifford
I’ve worked at Wake Forest for fifteen years and currently serve as Dean of Students. That doesn’t mean I’m the principal! I work closely with students, faculty, and staff to help make the Wake Forest student experience vibrant and enriching. Alongside colleagues across the University, I create programs that support learning, leadership development, and student wellbeing. I love attending Wake Forest sporting events with my family, having lunch with students at the Pit, and participating in campus traditions (Lovefeast is wonderful!). You may see me on campus with my golden retriever, Cash (he loves people!).
Discussion Time: Saturday, August 22nd at 1pm
In this TED Talk, Hwang reveals the endless benefits of embracing our complex identities (diversity) — and shares her hopes for creating a world where identities aren’t used to alienate but to bring people together instead.
Discussion Leader: Professor Encarna Turner
Encarna Turner is an Associate Professor of the Practice in the Spanish Department at Wake Forest. Her primary scholarly interests include Spanish Language Acquisition, Translation, and Linguistics. She serves as a Faculty Fellow in Kitchin Hall.
Discussion Time: Saturday, August 22nd at 1pm
Pride & Prejudice explores the process of developing self-knowledge inside a small, enclosed community. How do you find friends and assess other people? How do you figure out what you really think in a loud chorus of others’ opinions? How much should you trust first impressions? How can you try to grow while also remaining true to yourself? What role does love play in all this? Pride & Prejudice asks all of these questions (and more) in the context of a small 19th-century English village that bears more likeness to a college campus community in the 21st-century than you might expect.
Discussion Leader: Dr. Jessica Richard
Jessica Richard is an Associate Professor in the Department of English. She specializes in eighteenth-century British fiction. She has published on gambling in eighteenth-century British culture, Jane Austen, Samuel Johnson, and polar exploration. Her current book project is on forms of knowledge in Jane Austen’s works.
Discussion Time: Saturday, August 22nd at 2pm
Who are you without everything that makes you the “you” you are? Dan Erickson’s Severance imagines a world in which employees can choose to undergo a surgical procedure that splits their memories between work and personal life, creating two separate selves: an “innie,” who exists only within the four walls of the workplace, and an “outie,” who experiences life only outside of it. The outie exists solely during non-working hours, entirely unaware of what happens at work, while the innie must find a way to construct an identity and community without any knowledge of life beyond the workplace. Episode 2, “Half Loop,” provides the best introduction to how innies navigate questions of identity and belonging, immersing the viewer in the soon-to-be-familiar atmosphere of Lumon Industries—a workplace defined by an unsettling blend of corporate cheer and quiet dread. The world of Severance serves as a powerful meditation on the relationship between identity and memory while also offering a poignant critique of a contemporary work culture that encourages us to compartmentalize our lives and sacrifice parts of our humanity on the altar of progress, productivity, and the bright, shiny, new.
Discussion Leader: Dr. John Welsh
John Welsh is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Italian Studies Department. At Wake Forest, John teaches beginning and intermediate Italian language courses and is the founder of the Business Italian program. He also organizes a yearly Italian music night with live student performances. Scholarly interests include online pedagogy, language for special purposes, and arts-enhanced foreign language instruction.
Discussion Time: Sunday, August 23rd at 1pm
Smoke Signals is the story of two young Native American men who go on a road trip with a practical goal in mind and end up finding more. It explores how people define themselves in terms of different stories that may not be completely accurate. It speaks to the question of why we believe what we believe and how it shapes our self-image. It also includes includes how new experiences shape who we become.
Discussion Leader: Dr. Daniel Kim-Shapiro
Daniel Kim-Shapiro is a Professor in the Department of Physics at Wake Forest. He is also the Harbert Family Distinguished Chair for Excellence in Teaching and Scholarship. His research focuses on understanding how blood flow is regulated, particularly by nitric oxide, nitrite and other nitrogen oxides. He relies on various forms of spectroscopy, so he uses light (including polarized light) to learn about biological structure and function.
Discussion Time: Sunday, August 23rd at 1pm
Twenty Feet from Stardom examines the lives of the backup singers whose voices helped shape popular music while their stories remained largely untold. Through themes of belonging, recognition, ambition, and collaboration, the film invites students to consider how identity is formed within communities and challenges conventional ideas about success, leadership, and contribution.
Discussion Leader: Meghan Webb
Meghan Webb is a Social Sciences Librarian at the Z. Smith Reynolds Library. In addition to teaching credit-bearing information literacy courses, she serves as a liaison to the Communications, Journalism, Film Studies, and Environment and Sustainability Studies departments.
Discussion Time: Saturday, August 22nd at 2pm
The Women’s Center Mixtape is a collaboratively curated Spotify playlist created by Women’s Center staff and student workers that explores themes of identity, belonging, resilience, gender, growth, and community through music. The playlist will feature songs across genres and generations, reflecting the diverse experiences, emotions, and perspectives that shape how we understand ourselves and connect with others.
Music has a unique ability to help people feel seen, understood, and connected, even across differences. Through lyrics, storytelling, memory, and emotion, the mixtape invites new students to reflect on the people, experiences, and communities that have influenced who they are, while also encouraging openness to new perspectives and relationships during their time at Wake Forest. The collaborative nature of the playlist also reflects the spirit of the 2026 Project Wake theme, emphasizing that community is not something we simply enter, but something we actively build together through listening, sharing, and showing up for one another.
Discussion Time: Sunday, August 23rd at 1pm
In this hilarious and thought-provoking book, Montell challenges popular ideas about the English language and how we talk about gender. She makes a case for coming to terms with the inherent prejudices and attitudes in how English is used while at the same time showing the reader how talking about language can be fun, compelling, and (occasionally) even shocking. She proposes a new approach to thinking about English as a varied, historied language that both reflects and contributes to our shared human experiences and how we see ourselves.
Discussion Leader: Dr. Jonathan Smart
Jonathan Smart is an Associate Teaching Professor in Writing and Linguistics at Wake Forest. His areas of interest include Second Language Writing, Corpus Linguistics, and Data-Driven Learning. He serves as a Faculty Fellow in Luter Hall.