NCC Professor Continues Summer Lecture Series

Dr. Mary Wayne Watson, Professor of Humanities at Nash Community College (NCC), will offer the second in a summer series of scholarly lectures from 10:00 until 11:00 a.m. on June 24, 2013. The public is invited to attend free of charge. Watson’s subject will be “The Sandhills: The Comfort of Tradition and Ritual.”  Dr. Watson will be introduced by Dean of Instruction, Mike Latham.  The presentation will be held as part of Mr. Bill O’Boyle’s mythology and folklore class in Room 2101, Building B, on the NCC campus.

It has been said that Riverton, (near Wagram in Scotland County, North Carolina), ancestral home of poet John Charles McNeill and historian Gerald Johnson, is not a “place but a state of mind.” Certainly tradition abounds in this tiny Scottish settlement on the banks of the Lumbee River. Riverton Nights, held regularly, resemble the original ceilidhs of the Scottish Highlands, where everyone has an opportunity to perform.  Dr. Hudson McMillan, serving as a Baptist missionary to China, was imprisoned in a Japanese internment camp prior to World War II. From his confinement, he wrote journal accounts of Riverton Nights in Scotland County. The format for these gatherings remains unchanged to this day!  This presentation will focus on folklore associated with the “old country” of Scotland also seen in Scotland County and surrounding counties.

Dr. Watson, a North Carolina Humanities Council “Road Scholar,” currently teaches English composition, literature-based research, film, and British and American literature at NCC.  Now a Knightdale resident, she received her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from UNC at Chapel Hill, and her Ph.D. from the University of Virginia.