The John Hope Franklin Center for Interdisciplinary and International Studies is off the beaten path--at the corner of Trent Drive and Erwin Road, most students are not entirely sure where it is.
But Friday the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute, housed at the Franklin Center, moved one step further into the University's intellectual community as it became established under a director independent of the administration.
Srinivas Aravamudan, associate professor of English, took the reins as the center's first faculty director. He replaces inaugural directors Cathy Davidson, vice provost for interdisciplinary study, and Karla Holloway, dean of humanities and social sciences.
"This is the first year the Institute has gone to a faculty director who is responsible for the intellectual leadership of the center, coordinating the seminar, administrative duties, all kinds of programming, as well as programs with other departments," said Aravamudan, who has been teaching at Duke since the fall of 2000. "[I will] have the task of trying to create intellectual focus--trying to put the various aspects into one cohesive theme [and] also coordinating with other departments to bring them to the Center."
For the Humanities Institute, this new autonomy marks its evolution from an infant department on the fringe of campus to a vital center for intellectual discourse.
"This was an outpost..., [but] now there's 100 events a semester, 14 to 16 classes a semester [and] we have the best telecommunications equipment on campus," said Davidson, who founded the Center with Holloway in 2001. "The problem now is that we don't have staff and space for everything we want to do here. We're bigger, busier and better than we ever imagined."
Faculty and administrators said that the Center's location near the Medical Center has not helped it gain prominence within the University community, but that the Humanities Institute's work has brought professors and fellows together to form a unique intellectual community.
"People at first said, 'I can't believe I have to go all the way over there,'" Davidson said. "Now they say, 'This is the center of my intellectual life at the University.'"
Holloway compared the Center to an "adult FOCUS program" because of the similar interdisciplinary approach it has taken to creating a community while exploring the humanities. "Knowing the material we were working with and the inspiration of Professor Franklin's life and work, we knew we wanted a community space, where people who didn't usually talk to each other could share a community of ideas," she said.
President Nan Keohane, who was also present at Friday's ceremony, remembered the Center's beginnings fondly and expressed confidence that its work would continue into the future.
"After my sabbatical, if I do come back to Duke, I expect to be working on the theme of inequality and I expect to be spending a lot of time here," she told attendees.
Franklin, a James B. Duke professor emeritus of history and prominent civil rights activist, also spoke of his pride in the Center's work and its important place within the University community.
"If I spend a lot of time in my autobiography talking about problems in India and Costa Rica, it's because I wanted to justify that there was a center for international relations," Franklin said.
"[Davidson and Holloway] are the great architects and implementers of this effort. As each day passes I am more and more thrilled that my name is associated with it, and I can only hope that I can continue to be worthy."
In addition to the passing of the baton Friday, the Institute welcomed its new class of fellows. Each year, members of the University community, from faculty to graduate and postdoctoral students to professional librarians, participate in year-long residential interdisciplinary seminars, which Aravamudan calls the Institute's "crown jewel." This year's seminar theme is "Monument, Document: From Archive to Performance."
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