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“It’s a piercing shrill that shatters the silence of the already sad, sad experience of working long hours on a weekend night,” senior Rachel White wrote in an email March 23.
While some students hop onto a crowded cruise ship this spring break, 55 members of Duke Chorale will squeeze onto a tour bus to New England for their annual tour.
Students often talk about struggling with the pressure to be the perfect Duke student. They talk about how the competitive environment pushes them to hide their weaknesses, appear put-together yet blasé and avoid vulnerability at all costs.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>As she begins to move, the empty space around her transforms into a blank canvas. With every turn, brush and bourrée, the dancer not only feels and engages with the space around her, but paints a particular experience. Regret is rendered in the arc of her back as she poses; thrill is manifested in her outstretched arms as she twirls. Although movement touches every aspect of our lives, conveying messages just as words and images do, dance is not often considered a required mode of learning in the conversation of liberal arts. It is often sequestered away as something only relevant for those who wish to perform. Yet dance encompasses more than just fine art; it acts as a physical text of culture, history, communication and healing. Duke, compared to other mid-sized research universities, places a strong emphasis on understanding dance through an interdisciplinary major that trains students in artistic performance and the verbal and cultural dialogue around dance. While many of Duke’s peer institutions including Brown University, Stanford University and University of Chicago offer dance classes only within their theater and performance studies departments, the Duke Dance Program offers its own major and minor, as well as opportunities to graduate with distinction and complete senior projects in choreography. “Duke has become the go-to place for students who have a passion for dance but want to be at a rigorous academic institution,” said Barbara Dickinson, director of undergraduate studies and former director of the dance program. “Not very many schools [like Duke] have a rigorous institution for dance, such as a full ballet program or a specialization in African dance.”Ambition ‘beyond just dance’For students who have spent days and nights practicing in the studio and rehearsing for auditions, a college experience without dance is nearly unimaginable. Junior Ellen Brown has been dancing since she was three years old, and said she ultimately chose Duke because she knew the time and training that she invested in her passion would not go to waste.“Sometimes I hear about how much my friends dance at conservatories and wish I had gone to one,” Brown said, comparing Duke to art schools where students train in music, theater or dance. “But I get to dance just as much here at Duke, if not more. We definitely have more opportunities to perform.”Brown is currently the co-president of On Tap, the student tap dance group, and vice president of the Duke Dance Council. Over the years, she has learned ballet, modern, jazz, tap and even Scottish Highland dancing.Not only has Brown been able to perform frequently at Duke, which other schools would probably not have allowed her to do until junior or senior year, but she has also been able to delve into other intellectual interests. Now a double major in dance and psychology, Brown’s curriculum combines concepts of physical movement and the body and mind, which has led her to want to pursue dance therapy after college.Senior Zsofia Solta similarly aspired to become a professional ballerina up until her last year in high school. Routinely commuting more than an hour from Connecticut to New York to take classes and rehearse, Solta deliberately pushed herself to face the competitive nature of dance in the city. Yet when college application season came around, she realized she didn’t want to have the intellectually narrowing college experience that dance schools might offer.After looking into the dance program at Duke, she decided to fly down to Durham and test a few classes.“When I came to visit, I met a bunch of students who would be in a rush to their biology or anthropology class right after dance,” Solta said. “They seemed so ambitious in ways beyond just dance, and the environment was just something that I immediately latched onto.”Duke’s program allows students to pursue academic interests outside of dance, but its relatively small size creates a sense of intimacy. While the classes themselves are open to all students and can range from 20 to 30 people, the actual department only has six declared majors and six minors.“The intimacy of our program allows our faculty to spend a lot of time with students,” Dance Program Director Keval Khalsa said. “We’re invested in helping students develop their own personal voice in dance and that’s really unique to the program here.”Senior Matt Jones, for example, chose to major in psychology and minor in visual studies, yet his involvement in the program inspired and influenced his identity and confidence in dance. Jones had always been self-conscious about his skills and performance, partly due to his tall six-foot-five height, and doubted his potential career.“Duke has definitely helped my self-esteem in dance,” Jones said. ”It’s such a small community of dancers here, and we all know that we could have chosen a dance school and pursued that. We’re always encouraging each other and lifting each other up to reach our highest goals.”The dance program here differs from conservatories in that their overarching objectives for students transcends just performance. Rather than focusing on the competition, body type or technique, the program allows students the freedom to feel comfortable about struggle, vulnerability and development.“We look at the dancer as a whole person, body and mind, and really focus on individual growth,” Dickinson said. “At a dance company, they might not even take a second glance at you if they know you won’t make it as a professional dancer. That’s what makes our program different and unique and really, quite intimate.”Physical and academic rigorWhile the program continues to foster these relationships and atmosphere of closeness, it has also maintained the same academic rigor that other Trinity College of Arts and Sciences majors require. Through different lecture-based and studio courses, the major aims to shape students into flexible, creative thinkers who can critically evaluate multiple perspectives, according to the Duke Dance Program’s mission statement. Not only are students expected to understand the principles of performance and choreography, but they are also expected to use research methodology to discuss and analyze dance theory and cultural history.“We want students to know and learn dance in its cultural context, really understand where physical behavior is derived,” Dickinson said. “Dance is a step to something much larger—it’s a deep communication that paints a deeper message.”Cultural context for dance lies at the heart of courses like West African Rootholds in Dance, taught by Associate Professor Ava LaVonne Vinesett. The lecture and laboratory course examines the aesthetics and traditions for African dance forms and their connections with culture, health, politics and spirituality.“You gain another perspective of the world by actually studying the movement of the body,” Vinesett said. “When we’re composing dances and choreographing pieces and talking to students about their bodies in space as this expressive tool, you have to have a wide pool of knowledge to pull from.”Students have found that learning the more theoretical components of dance also enhances their sense of artistry, as they begin to learn the context of the movement they are experimenting with.“Coming out of high school, it is difficult to get dancers to actually sit down and talk about dance,” Solta said. “There’s this obsession for perfection in dance, and the idea is that perfection comes with rehearsal, sweat and practice. At college, I’ve realized that you also need to sit down and think a little about what you’re doing.”Engaging in this cross-cultural dialogue of dance histories offers a dual experience for students, allowing a time for both self-discovery and exploration in newer, unconventional spaces. Associate Professor of the Practice Andrea Woods Valdés draws her inspiration for modern dance from the African Diaspora, African and Caribbean music, social dance forms and literature, and aims to bring this sensibility into the classroom.“I don’t present my work as a sort of dogma or propaganda,” Woods Valdés said. “I hope that students can reflect on who they are themselves through my work. As much as I love the specific, intense study of what I do, it has to ripple out and I have to be in other spaces other than my cultural heritage or gender.”
Amid newer developments on campus, students still encounter traces of Duke’s long-established history each day. Familiar spectacles include the grandiose and breathtaking Chapel, completed in 1935, and the Sarah P. Duke Gardens, which will celebrate its 75th anniversary next April.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>All she could make out were small, outstretched arms, open hands and a chorus of impatient giggles. After ripping paper after paper from her spiral notebook in order to meet all of the eager children’s demands, junior Sammie Truong folded the edges of paper in and out as quickly as her fingers permitted.It was her fifth day in the parish of Naama, Uganda. She had been waiting outside a primary school, where local health workers were meeting with parents to receive informed consent to run anemia tests on their children. A few students, also waiting, had approached her with eyes full of cautious curiosity. Truong, however, could not speak the language and didn’t know how to respond.So she turned to an old babysitting gimmick she knew—origami cranes.As soon as she fumbled together two or three cranes, students flooded the bench she was sitting on. Even though she was making them as quickly as she could, she knew that for every one student that received the origami bird, there would be five or six other students who would go home disappointed.Although she had barely completed her first week on a Duke Global Health Institute program in Naama, Truong couldn’t help but relate the crane-making frenzy to the various global health issues she had been working on that week and would continue to work on for that entire summer.“The hardest thing for me was to see the great needs in the community in Naama and accept the fact that we couldn’t help everybody,” Truong said. “Every person that we offered HIV testing meant that there was another person out there who couldn’t have it.”Since its establishment in 2006, DGHI has aimed to open students’ eyes to similar dilemmas like Truong’s, not only in Uganda, but also in several locations across the globe. A sense of unanimity emerges when discussing issues of global health. Scholars, physicians, policymakers and even economists will acknowledge that effectively preventing malaria or providing HIV testing for a community are justified, if not necessary, concerns for the global-minded citizen.Duke students are no exception. More and more service-oriented students have turned to programs and curricula that give them an opportunity to translate their academic experiences into tangible assistance.Since the institute first opened, more than 150 students have earned certificates in global health, and 37 new members have been added to the faculty and staff. In a little more than five years, about 300 students have participated in DGHI-sponsored field research projects in 24 different countries.Yet since 2006, the only structured academic pathway available for these students passionate about global health has been a certificate.In response to this rising interest in global health, DGHI will offer a major and minor through the Trinity College of Arts and Sciences beginning this Fall, allowing students to delve more deeply into the issues of global health while still pursuing a more traditional discipline. Although the institute will no longer offer the certificate, students who already began the process will have the option of keeping their certificate, changing to a minor, or adding classes to pursue a major.“Faculty groups have discussed the creation of a major from the very beginning,” said Gary Bennett, director of undergraduate studies for global health. “The view then was that we needed more resources, faculty and student interest in place and right now the institute has progressed to that point.”Growing interest and demand for first-hand experience in general international development can also be seen through the popularity of programs such as DukeEngage or DukeImmerse. DukeEngage, since its birth in 2007, has funded civic engagement programs for more than 2,400 students, who often focused on global health issues.Students who desired a more fully fleshed academic curriculum in global health often had to look for other options not available through DGHI because there was not yet a major.“Many people focus their Program II in global health because they want a more robust curriculum about the topic, but there wasn’t anything to give them other than the certificate,” said Program II senior Emily Jorgens, who worked with HIV and addiction patients in Durham two summers ago.Jorgens created her own major through Program II, combining biology and economics to look at global health, sustainability and environmental studies.In a similar vein, Truong constructed a Program II titled “Global Health: Determinants, Behaviors and Interventions.”Now students can attain a co-major in global health, which would require students to pair global health with another major. The global health curriculum includes core, foundation, seminar and statistics courses, in addition to an experiential learning activity. A range of experiences, like research, DukeEngage and fieldwork qualify as experiential learning.While the requirement of complementing global health studies to a major of another discipline may seem arduous and unnecessary, both faculty and students have asserted the significance of an interdisciplinary approach.“Global health is inherently an interdisciplinary field,” Bennett said. “These problems are complex by definition, which requires multiple disciplines to be brought to face these challenges.”The interdisciplinary goals of the new major also mesh well with the Trinity College curriculum of liberal arts, which calls for students to “make meaning of complex information,” “apply knowledge in the service of society” and “engage a wide variety of subjects,” according to the website.Some faculty members, like Assistant Professor of the Practice Sumi Ariely, argue that by having an additional primary major, students will have substantial knowledge from their other major that shapes their critical and analytical perspective on global health issues.“A practical reason for the co-major is to make sure our students have core training in a traditional major, one that’s been around for years, tested and true, as well as training in global health,” Ariely said.***After senior Joy Liu spent the summer of 2011 researching HIV/AIDS in Muhuru Bay, Kenya in 2011 with DukeEngage WISER, she realized that simple patient-to-patient communication was too limited in scope to make the substantial changes in health disparities that she wanted.Because of this Liu argued that having training in a specific expertise is essential to being useful and effective in the global health field.While researching reasons why children were not getting properly vaccinated, Liu realized that embedded in a simple question was a larger systemic problem. One of the key problems she discovered was that while the vaccination was free, clinics often charged a service fee that many families could not afford.“It was more a policy issue and a socioeconomic issue,” Liu said. “There was also the issue of women having to get money from their husbands. The problem exists in how the system works, the fact that they are subjected to this fee they shouldn’t be and that men aren’t engaged in their children’s health.”After realizing the significance of being able to bring systemic change and wanting to learn a top-down policy approach for health situations like in Muhuru Bay, Liu declared public policy as her first major.“I felt like I didn’t have any expertise in international development or global health to bring to the table,” Liu said. “Global health is not something you can go in without any expertise and do very well.”After her second global health experience in Jamkhed, India in 2012, Liu struggled with feeling less useful for the community once again. She encountered issues that seemed irresolvable without actual medical aid, influencing her later decision to drop her global health certificate and pursue biology as a double major instead.“If I do go to medical school, that’s a breadth of knowledge that is very specific and applicable anywhere that no one can take from you,” she said. “All of my choices at Duke have been framed by what I think I can do for global health.”Junior Ben Ramsey, who also participated in the same Naama, Uganda project with Truong, was initially drawn to global health issues in high school through initiatives like Doctors Without Borders. But at the time, he believed that these issues were strictly medical and in need of only that type of expertise. It was not until he took the Introduction to Global Health course as a sophomore at Duke that he realized it enveloped so many more disciplinary approaches.“In a team, you’re going to need to have different opinions based on what you’re knowledgeable about,” Ramsey said. “As a public policy major, I would always come in with a policy perspective that these issues need.”Even if students decide to pursue careers not directly linked to global health, Ariely argued that experiencing and witnessing global health issues teaches students something essentially humane and powerful about the world.“Some people might argue that a career like investment banking might be the opposite of global health—that it’s hurting the globe, rather,” Ariely said. “But their training in global health enhances their understanding of how to be a global citizen and offers a unique perspective of the world in that industry.”***Duke has long prioritized helping students understand their global citizenship and use their privilege and education to bridge the gap in health disparities. Taking on these responsibilities has pushed DGHI to organize and develop adequate preparation and reflection processes for its students.For example, the Student Research Training Program, a DGHI experiential learning component, dedicates an entire year to preparing participants. Not only do students have to attend bi-weekly meetings with their faculty director, but they also engage in workshops and meetings to familiarize themselves with their on-site community’s culture, as well as communicate with their local partners.DGHI’s long-standing relationships with community partners are often what draw many students to their programs. Through the ongoing collaboration of research, programs and service in the community, Duke students are assured that the researchers, health workers and families can play a larger role in whatever effort is at hand.“What I thought was great about the Naama project was that it was a group effort and not just Duke coming in, playing our part, and then leaving,” Ramsey said. “The community definitely had ownership in what we were doing.”DGHI faculty and staff also stress the importance of preparing students emotionally before the summer. Programs like DukeEngage and DukeImmerse have similarly agreed with these priorities. While the rapidly increasing interest in global issues is both significant and exciting for faculty, this calls for an equally evolving and available infrastructure for reflection.“Students carry so much of their experience in different ways,” Student Projects Coordinator Lysa MacKeen said. “Re-entry is enormously stressful. Students come back and struggle with understanding why they’re here when they were providing free health screenings in Uganda just a few weeks ago.”In years prior, DGHI held four mandatory workshops over the course of two months for students who returned from their summer programs. While the workshops were effective to a certain extent, schedule conflicts led DGHI to experiment with a different post-fieldwork processing method.This year, the institute has decided to host a mandatory one-day retreat. Having this structured environment for assessing every part of their experience—ethical, emotional, social, political or academic—allows students to begin their re-entry process back at Duke. Weaving the lessons learned from their new relationships and fieldwork experiences into their interdisciplinary studies forms the foundation of an ongoing reflection process.“We want students to be able to take all they learned into this more practical realm and enrich the education they have here,” MacKeen said.This type of investment in undergraduate students interested in global health is unique to Duke, say some people involved with DGHI.“We have put very serious resources in advising, classrooms and experiential learning,” Bennett said. “We have chosen to make the investment in the undergraduate side, and now we have this type of infrastructure ready for our students.”Through the emphasis on interdisciplinary collaboration with diverse faculty members, DGHI has been able to venture to what some would call a new frontier of academia. Moreover, DGHI also remains unique in that it couples students’ academic experiences with intensive and extensive experiential fieldwork programs.While this experiential learning requirement offers students the opportunity to help communities in need, their contribution is, in reality, limited. Repairing a broken health system or finding the cure to a certain disease is not the heart of the mission for the program itself. At the end of the day, students are not doctors, nor are they legitimate policy makers just yet.“We want to make sure that participants are learning and serving in a way that helps and enhances them, and provides them with the educational structure they need,” Ariely said. "Our first mission is to educate our students.”
Duke Chapel organist David Arcus calls his audience an almost “cultish” following.
“Can I get a cup of water with that?”
The hustle and bustle at Alpine Bagels every morning says it all—we love our bagels.
Nothing takes Caitlin Shaw’s breath away more than a riveting rendition of Shakespeare. Once a communications major and theatre Studies minor at Northwestern University, Shaw has loved the arts, especially theatre, since middle school.
Conventional wisdom says that a guaranteed method to ruin a second date is to start talking about marriage. There’s nothing more intimidating than for either party to jump from talking about his or her insatiable love for Greek food to what type of decent spouse he or she is ready to become.
There’s a dilemma that every Duke freshman faces when they first move to campus: if you spy a C-1 resting at the circle, should you book it? Should you risk the humiliation of sprinting after a departing bus?
Once used toward political and revolutionary ends, Western classical music in China has been redefined on its own terms.
This spring, the Center for Documentary Studies will present two film festivals, Home Movie Day and Alice Fest, highlighting the preservation of home movies and the role of women in media, respectively.
This weekend, Choreolab, Duke’s dance program’s mainstage spring production, will feature a diverse selection of choreography ranging from pieces inspired by modern-day typography to a nine-piece salsa influenced by Cuban Casino dance. Performances include contemporary ballet, modern and jazz dance choreographed by dance faculty Julie Walters, Andrea Woods Valdes and Nina Wheeler, respectively.
Asian American students are reclaiming Perkins Library as a space for displaying diversity and subverting stereotypes.
Unlike typical visual art exhibitions at Duke, the 15 works presented in the Kenan Institute for Ethics’ student-run exhibition What is Good Art? set out to confront the ethical questions that arise from the works rather than their technical qualities. The exhibition, which opens next Monday in the West Duke building, aims to initiate dialogue specific to contemporary social, cultural and political issues within an ethical framework.
In 2006, Canadian playwright David Yee typed a furious e-mail to leaders of Parliament regarding its refusal to acknowledge past discriminatory issues facing Chinese-Canadian communities. When it came to the crucial moment, however, he decided not to click “send.”
Grammy award-winning string band Carolina Chocolate Drops returned this week with their latest album Leaving Eden, singing old-time folk melodies reminiscent of songs like Johnny Cash’s “Jackson.” Leaving Eden delivers a similar spirit of authenticity and emotion that won people’s love in their previous album Genuine Negro Jig but appeals to a selective audience.
Last January, revolution tore across the Middle East during what has come to be known as the Arab Spring. This widespread spirit of social unrest permeated as far as Wall Street, inspiring the eventually international Occupy movements.
