Breaking Down Walls

Yesterday we posted a Duke News video feature with BorderWork(s) Lab faculty Robin Kirk talking about her "At Home/On the Wall" independent study. Today we bring you a full story on the BW Lab!

People sometimes ask us what we mean by a "humanities lab." This article by Camille Jackson offers a good starting point:

Duke's Franklin Humanities Institute (FHI) launched the lab concept last spring with its Haiti Lab, and expanded it this fall with BorderWork(s) and Greater Than Games, a lab on digital storytelling. As in the sciences, all of the labs are experimental and collaborative. Students develop their own projects, pursue their own readings and work in teams. 

As in any laboratory, they also learn from their mistakes, said Philip Stern, BorderWork(s)' co-director. 

"Students are learning in a non-conventional way and there is lots of room for experimentation. Sometimes not all the questions get answered. Not every project produces what you might expect at the beginning. But there's no need for them to scale down a grandiose idea. They can form a team. Five heads are better than one," Stern said. "Part of the goal is to let natural intellectual curiosity grow organically."

The students, therefore, learn from each other, he said.

"The lab brings people together from different disciplines to ask questions in different ways with interaction, which is really the key," said Kirk, who added that humanities researchers often work in silos. "Group experiences enhance our research," she said. 

The piece also highlights the varied and ambitious projects of undergraduates affiliated with the Lab:

The students come to the lab from a variety of majors including English, engineering and biology, examining the divisions around the world through multiple disciplines. Their end project may be a research paper or something else, perhaps requiring more than one semester to complete.

For example, sophomore Stefani Jones, focused her project on conflict minerals and is working to raise awareness about how Duke and other universities may buy products that use minerals from war-torn areas. She wrote an essay about her efforts that was published in the Huffington Post. Senior Hillary Martinez is working on a book-length series of poems about borders. [Be sure to check out the original article to hear Hillary read two of her poems!]

"It's an experience that is maybe off the beaten path a bit, but it will encourage me in my artistic pursuits in ways that typical classes do not," Martinez said. "I hope I can continue to explore artistic projects when I get out in the real world, but it's so accessible right now."

Patrick Oathout, a sophomore studying philosophy and public policy, presented his independent study project, "Uhuru Mobile," last fall. He proposed a free, mobile phone application that allows users to communicate with refugees and aid workers in English, Arabic and Kiswahili. The service is designed to track drought conditions, report malnutrition or connect resettled refugees with their families.   

Here's the rest of the article.

You can also find out more about the Lab's on-going research and teaching projects at http://sites.duke.edu/borderworks/.