From Staff Reports
The University is embarking on a new effort to revitalize and expand the role of the undergraduate humanities.
The initiative called “Humanities Writ Large” will be funded by a five-year, $6 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and will support new faculty hires, undergraduate research and University-wide interdisciplinary collaboration, according to a Duke News release June 28.
One of the initiative’s objectives is to emphasize the importance of the humanities in the modern world, the release reported. At a time when enrollment in humanities programs is dwindling across the nation, the administration and faculty plan to use the initiative to encourage students to critically analyze global issues. This will counteract the public notion that these problems are solvable only by using science and technology, Srinivas Aravmudan, dean of the humanities and a professor of English, said in the release.
The initiative will also focus on undergraduate education and research and will explore new learning models, focusing on collective efforts among undergraduates, graduate students and faculty members. This is building off of the current humanities laboratory model, which emphasizes multi-school, cross-disciplinary research.
An example of this model is the Haiti Lab—currently the only established humanities laboratory on campus. The lab evaluates health and human rights issues in Haiti and draws on faculty and students from the Duke School of Law as well as the Duke Global Health Institute.
According to the John Hope Franklin Institute website, two additional humanities labs are already going to open this Fall—BorderWork(s) and GreaterThanGames. The former will study the making and dissolution of borders in communities, states and countries. GreaterThanGames is a lab which will bring together virtual and real-world technologies.
It is unclear if these particular labs will be funded by the Mellon grant.
The University also expects to use the grant funding to foster inter-institutional relationships, including a partnership that invites visiting scholars from historically black colleges and universities.
Deborah Jakubs, vice provost for library affairs, said in the press release she anticipates that the “Humanities Writ Initiative” will expand Duke Libraries’ reach across the University. Librarians will be able to use their existing expertise and resources to “capture and preserve new knowledge as it is created, in whatever form it takes.”
This is also not the first time the Mellon Foundation has contributed to the University. The foundation has supported other humanities-based initiatives such as the Nasher Museum of Art, the Visual Studies Initiative and Duke Libraries.
As The Chronicle previously reported, the foundation also funded a $1.6 million endowment for the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies in 2002.
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