History
The Franklin Humanities Institute was founded in 1999 by Cathy Davidson, then Vice Provost for interdisciplinary Studies, and Karla F.C. Holloway, former Dean of the Humanities and Social Sciences. In 2002, the institute received a three-year grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for a project entitled "Making the Humanities Central." The grant was renewed for a second three-year cycle in 2005.
In Spring 2007, the FHI became the new administrative headquarters of the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI), an international organization that supports interdisciplinary humanities scholarship and institution-building. Prior to moving to Duke, the CHCI was based at Harvard University.
Srinivas Aravamudan was the director of the FHI before he took the position as Dean of Humanities at Duke University in 2009. Ian Baucom was the director of the FHI before he took the position of Buckner W. Clay Dean of Arts and Sciences at the University of Virginia in 2014. David Bell served as the interim director of the FHI in 2014–15.
In Fall 2010 the FHI moved to the renovated Smith Warehouse on Duke's East Campus, near the heart of Durham's historic Downtown district. The Warehouse is home to the Humanities Laboratories initiative, which aims to contribute to Duke's research and pedagogical missions by convening groups of faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates around discipline-crossing projects, in spaces designed specifically to facilitate collaborative work. Complementing historic strengths in supporting faculty and graduate scholarship (notably through the twelve Annual Seminars they hosted between 1999 and 2011), the Labs invite undergraduates to participate as researchers themselves, helping to define emerging and future areas of humanistic inquiry. Since 2011–12, the Lab initiative became a key element of Humanities Writ Large, a major university-wide Mellon Foundation grant. In 2012-13 the undergraduate-focused Labs were joined by the PhD Lab in Digital Knowledge.
In 2014-15 the FHI inaugurates the Seminars in Historical, Global, and Emerging Humanities, a major new initiative generously funded by the Mellon Foundation. The grant explores the states and directions of humanities disciplines in light of the interdisciplinary developments in recent decades, through an expansive set of partnerships with Duke's humanities and interpretive social sciences departments and non-departmental units.
Programs
The Franklin Humanities Institute sponsors an annual residential seminar consisting of Duke faculty, graduate research fellows, a post-doctoral fellow, and professional staff at the university (e.g. librarians, IT specialist). Conceived as a "laboratory" for humanists from diverse disciplines, each annual seminar focuses on a theme or problem with broad historical, philosophical, or geographical scope. To date, there have been seminars organized around two general areas: "Race" (1999–2003) and "Art, Ideas, and Information" (2004–08). The 2007-08 seminar, Recycle, explored the appropriation of cultural products in different contexts. This seminar was co-convened by Neil De Marchi (Professor of Economics), Mark Anthony Neal (Associate Professor or African and African American Studies), and Annabel J. Wharton (William B. Hamilton Professor of Art, Art History and Visual Studies).
In 2011 The Franklin Humanities Institute began sponsoring Interdisciplinary Humanities Labs, with later support from the Mellon Foundation's Humanities Writ Large grant. These limited-term labs include dedicated space in the historic Smith Warehouse home of the FHI, and are organized around a research area and specific projects and promote vertical integration among undergraduates, graduates, and faculty. These have included the Haiti Lab, the GreaterThanGames: Transmedia Applications, Virtual Worlds, and Digital Storytelling Lab, the BorderWorks Lab, the Global Brazil Lab, the AudioVisualities Lab, and the PhD Lab in Digital Knowledge.
In addition to the Annual Seminar, the Franklin Humanities Institute also runs a dissertation working group for graduate students. FHI also includes other long-standing "signature" programs, including the Faculty Book Manuscript Workshops. The Annual Lecture and Short-term Residencies bring world-renowned scholars to Duke for public engagements with the university community. The Faculty Bookwatch series, presented in conjunction with the Duke University Libraries, highlights notable recent books by faculty in the humanities and interpretive social sciences.
The FHI's public programs have also included Wednesdays at the Center, a popular lunchtime conversation series open to the general public. Since 2002, series speakers have included the Harvard historian Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, the Ciompi Quartet violinist Hsiao-mei Ku, Radio France Internationale Correspondent Dominique Roch, the writer and human rights activist Ariel Dorfman, as well as John Hope Franklin himself.
The Mellon Annual Distinguished Lecture in Humanities has featured well-known scholars from many fields and from across the globe, including the philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah, the British filmmaker Isaac Julien, the Dutch cultural theorist and video artist Mieke Bal, the Indian historian Romila Thapar, and the US literary critic Emory Elliott.
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The university is the result of a merger of the Carnegie Institute of Technology and the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research. The predecessor was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools, and it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1912 and began granting four-year degrees. In 1967, the Carnegie Institute of Technology merged with the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research, founded in 1913 by Andrew Mellon and Richard B. Mellon and formerly a part of the University of Pittsburgh. Carnegie Mellon has operated as a single institution since the merger.
The Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York is a public research institution and post-graduate university in New York City. Serving as the principal doctorate-granting institution of the City University of New York (CUNY) system, The CUNY Graduate Center is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very High Research Activity". The school is situated in the landmark B. Altman and Company Building at 365 Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, opposite the Empire State Building. The CUNY Graduate Center has 4,600 students, 31 doctoral programs, 14 master's programs, and 30 research centers and institutes. A core faculty of approximately 140 is supplemented by over 1,800 additional faculty members drawn from throughout CUNY's eleven senior colleges and New York City's cultural and scientific institutions.
Trinity College of Arts and Sciences is the undergraduate liberal arts college of Duke University. Founded in 1838, it is the original school of the university. Currently, Trinity is one of two undergraduate colleges at Duke, the other being the Edmund T. Pratt School of Engineering.
The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) is a public research university in Huntsville, Alabama. The university is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools to award baccalaureate, master's, and doctoral degrees, and comprises nine colleges: arts, humanities & social sciences; business; education; engineering; honors; nursing; professional & continuing studies; science; and graduate. The university's enrollment is approximately 10,000. It is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities: Very High Research Activity".
The Marianna Brown Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences is the liberal and professional studies college and the second-largest academic unit by enrollment at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. The college emphasizes study through rigorous analysis and technology of the behaviors, institutions, and beliefs that constitute the human experience, describing itself as “not an ordinary liberal arts school.” The college was named for Marianna Brown Dietrich, the mother of philanthropist William S. Dietrich IIafter his donation of $265 million to the university in 2011 – the largest single donation in Carnegie Mellon history.
The Department of Social and Decision Sciences (SDS) is an interdisciplinary academic department within the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University. The Department of Social and Decision Sciences is headquartered in Porter Hall in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and is led by Department Head Gretchen Chapman. SDS has a world-class reputation for research and education programs in decision-making in public policy, economics, management, and the behavioral social sciences.
The University of Virginia College of Arts & Sciences is the largest of the University of Virginia's ten schools. Consisting of both a graduate and an undergraduate program, the College comprises the liberal arts and humanities section of the University.
HASTAC (/ˈhāˌstak/'), also known as the Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory, is a virtual organization and platform of more than 18,000 individuals and 400+ affiliate-institutions dedicated to innovative new modes of learning and research. HASTAC network members contribute to the community by sharing work and ideas with others via the open-access website, by hosting HASTAC conferences and workshops online or in their region by initiating conversations, or by working collaboratively with others in the HASTAC network.
Established in 1988, the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes serves as a site for the discussion of issues germane to the fostering of cross-disciplinary activity and as a network for the circulation of information and the sharing of resources within the humanities and interpretive social sciences. CHCI has a membership of over 200 centers and institutes that are remarkably diverse in size and scope and are located in the United States, Australia, Canada, China, Korea, Finland, Taiwan, Ireland, United Kingdom, and other countries.
The John Hope Franklin Center for Interdisciplinary and International Studies (JHFC) is located at Duke University in the United States. It is a consortium of programs dedicated to studying and revitalizing theories of how knowledge is gained and exchanged. The more than twenty participants come from a broad range of disciplines, converging to explore intellectual, social, and political issues, including race and race relations, the legacy of the African-American Experience, equality and opportunity amongst populations, and the implications of globalization. In essence, the Center's mission is to facilitate the interactions of humanists and others involved in the social sciences in an intellectual setting amenable to diverse partnerships.
The College of Arts and Sciences of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, is the oldest school of Case Western Reserve University. The school houses educational and research programs in the arts, humanities, social sciences, physical and biological sciences, and mathematical sciences. The college is organized into 21 academic departments and several interdisciplinary programs and centers. Students can choose a major or minor from almost 60 unique undergraduate programs, design their own courses of study, or enroll in integrated bachelor's/master's degree programs.
University of Florida Center for African Studies (CAS) is a center within of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS) at the University of Florida (UF). The Center provides teaching and research into issues of African languages, humanities, social sciences, agriculture, business, engineering, education, fine arts, environmental studies, conservation, journalism, and law.
Stanford University has many centers and institutes dedicated to the study of various specific topics. These centers and institutes may be within a department, within a school but across departments, an independent laboratory, institute or center reporting directly to the dean of research and outside any school, or semi-independent of the university itself.
College of the Pacific is the liberal arts core of the University of the Pacific and offers degrees in the natural sciences, social sciences, humanities, and the fine and performing arts. The College houses 18 academic departments in addition to special programs such as gender studies, ethnic studies and film studies. A total of 31 majors and 36 minors are offered, and students may self-design a major or minor. In all, over 80 undergraduate majors are available across the University of the Pacific's schools and colleges. The College of the Pacific is located on the Stockton, California campus. Dr. Rena Fraden is the current Dean of the College.
Nazarbayev University (NU) is an autonomous research university in Nur-Sultan, the capital of Kazakhstan. Founded as a result of the initiative of the first President of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev in 2010 (June), it is an English-medium institution, with an international faculty and staff.
The Center for 21st Century Studies (C21) is an interdisciplinary postdoctoral research institute and University of Wisconsin Center of Excellence located on the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee (UWM) campus. C21 is dedicated to supporting the study of contemporary culture within the arts, humanities, and social sciences of all fields, and it also sponsors and supports the creation and deployment of 21st-century modes of research, analysis, and representation.
The Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities, located in Seattle, Washington, is one of the largest and most comprehensive humanities centers in the United States. Housed in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington (UW), it offers UW scholars a spectrum of local opportunities for intellectual community and grant support that advances crossdisciplinarity, collaboration, and research while networking them nationally and internationally.
William Pannapacker is a professor emeritus of English and a higher education journalist, consultant, administrator, and fundraiser. He is the author of Revised Lives: Walt Whitman and Nineteenth-Century Authorship, and numerous articles on literature, higher education, and the Digital Humanities published by Cambridge University Press, Duke, Harvard, Princeton, and Routledge. He was a regular columnist for The Chronicle of Higher Education from 1998 to 2014, and he has been a contributor to The New York Times, The North American Review and Slate Magazine. Pannapacker has received $2.3 million in grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. He was the founding director of the Mellon Scholars Program in the Arts and Humanities at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, from 2009 to 2016; the director of the Digital Liberal Arts Initiative of the Great Lakes Colleges Association, from 2013 to 2015; the DuMez Professor of English, from 2015 to 2019; senior director of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Grand Challenges Presidential Initiative, from 2016 to 2019, and Professor and Senior Director of Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Programs and Initiatives at Hope College, from 2019-2022. He is currently a development officer for Chicago Jesuit Academy.
Duke Kunshan University(DKU) is a Chinese-American partnership of Duke University and Wuhan University to create a liberal arts and research university offering academic programs for students from China and throughout the world. DKU received approval from the Chinese Ministry of Education in 2013 and its curricula are also approved by the Jiangsu Provincial Education Bureau.
Angel G. Jordan was a Spanish-born American electronics and computer engineer known as the founder of the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) and co-founder of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and served on its faculty for 55 years, since 2003 as Emeritus. He was instrumental in the formation of the School of Computer Science (SCS) at Carnegie Mellon. He has made contributions to technology transfer and institutional development. He served as Dean of Carnegie Mellon College of Engineering and later as the provost of Carnegie Mellon University.
