unicode char on command line

I have a folder that contains a non-ASCII character, "registered sign" (®), which can be typed in Terminal using option-r.

It's U+00AE, and as an 8-bit character it's decimal 174. I want to be able to enter that character on the command line without

typing Option, because I need to build a Terminal command using an application that

isn't Unicode-friendly. Thus option-r doesn't help me create a string containing that character.

For example, in Terminal I made a folder in ~ with <option-r> as its entire name (I typed an r while holding the option key):

> mkdir ~/<option-r>

I can list it using

> ls ~/<option-r>

but I need to be able to do that *without using any modifier keys* (like option).

I thought I could use something like (after cd ~)

> ls \302\256

or

> ls \u00AE

or

> ls \xc2\xae

but I haven't been able to make the shell interpret what I type as the registered r symbol. Whatever I enter is interpreted

literally as individual characters instead of, e.g., \xC2 being taken as a single character. I've also tried various combinations

of quotation marks as well as doubling the backslash, but I keep getting "No such file or directory".

How can I represent this character on the command line without modifier keys? I'm using El Capitan, OS X 10.11.2, running bash 3.2.