Currently Funded

Duke University recognizes the need for citizens and leaders to be able to obtain knowledge, to analyze it, and to think and act collaboratively in innovative ways to address growing interdisciplinary and global challenges. The humanities are vital to providing the training and skills necessary to understand cultural similarities and differences, to sift through the daily fire hose of incoming information, and to make the imaginative leaps in research, scholarship, business, and policy to address the very many complex issues arising around us in our global world. Humanities Writ Large is a 5-year initiative that bring people together on projects to facilitate this new and innovative research and knowledge production.

Projects

"Humanities at Large" Visiting Faculty Fellows Conference March 23-24, 2017
Visiting Faculty Fellow
Starting in 2011, with the support of the Mellon Humanities Writ Large Grant, Duke University has hosted resident fellows from Liberal Arts Colleges and Historically Black Colleges and Universities to pursue their research and teaching projects....Read More about "Humanities at Large" Conference
Arab Refugee Oral History
Emerging Networks
The US invasion of Iraq in 2003 launched a mass migration of Arabs out of their homes in order to escape violence. This has been exacerbated by foreign occupation, political instability and revolution, civil war, and Islamic extremism. Never before...Read More about Arab Refugee Oral History
Chinese Public Health Posters - National Library of Medicine Archival Research
Undergraduate Research
Assistant Professor of History Nicole Barnes brings archival research into her first-year seminar, Chinese Medical Beliefs and Practices.  Starting in Spring 2015, and now funded again for Spring 2016, she led a trip to the National Library of...Read More about Chinese Public Health Posters
Cinéma Numérique Ambulant and Social Change in Francophone West Africa
Emerging Networks
The history of filmmaking in Africa is rooted in the tradition of ethnographic representation of the peoples and cultures of the continent by Europeans. When sound came to film in 1927 or so, the French recognized the power of cinema to work both...Read More about Cinéma Numérique Ambulant
Creation and Re-Creation
Emerging Networks
Creation and Re-Creation: Great Works through a Prism (MUSIC 290S) will develop a class in which students study a dramatic work in its original form and then study reinterpretations of the work in other media. In the initial Spring 2016 offering of...Read More about Creation and Re-Creation
Culture and Conflict: Asia Writ Large II
Emerging Networks
Of the 34 Level-1 Conflict Scenarios highlighted by a 2015 Council on Foreign Relations study, a staggering 32 are in Asia. Why do these conflicts persist despite seemingly endless and repeated interventions and negotiations? How do we educate...Read More about Culture and Conflict: Asia Writ Large II
Dante's Library: Rebuilding a Medieval Network of Knowledge
Emerging Networks
Although one would think that simple questions such as “What did Dante’s copies of Virgil and Aristotle look like?” and “What images of the Crucifixion had he seen?” have already been answered, they remain surprisingly unresolved. Indeed, how Dante...Read More about Dante's Library
Environmental Arts & Humanities Network
Emerging Networks
Environmental Humanities (EnHu) is a cross-disciplinary approach that brings skills, methods, and theories from several humanities disciplines to the analysis of problems and issues of high relevance for society in the context of new science and...Read More about Environmental Arts & Humanities Network
Lee D. Baker Scholars Program
Undergraduate Research
The Lee D. Baker Scholars Program offers a select group of outstanding Duke undergraduates the opportunity to extend and deepen their Writing 101 work in the form of an enhanced, intensively mentored research and writing project, especially in the...Read More about Lee D. Baker Scholars Program
Mass Incarceration and the Carceral State
Emerging Networks
The United States has by far the highest incarceration rates in the world, with approximately 1 in every 108 American adults (2.3 million) currently in jail or prison. It is deeply divided by race: 1 in 15 African American men are currently...Read More about Mass Incarceration

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