From Durham Herald-Sun, November 12, 2009

Pauli Murray Project Expands
BY DAWN BAUMGARTNER VAUGHAN
dvaughan@heraldsun.com; 419-6563

DURHAM -- An interactive Google map of historic civil and human rights sites around Durham is one part of the Pauli Murray Project that honors the late interracial lawyer, activist, poet and Episcopal priest from Durham.

The project of the Duke Human Rights Center was launched in March, and aims to "activate history for social change" by engaging the community, acknowledging the past and working together for positive change.

Director Barbara Lau gave a project update Wednesday at the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke along with students working on the project through a Center for Documentary Studies class. The Pauli Murray Project recently launched its Web site, http://paulimurrayproject.org, and will link to the Google map when that goes public on Dec. 1. The map will include sites like the Royal Ice Cream Parlor, St. Joseph's Historic Foundation at the Hayti Heritage Center, White Rock Baptist Church, N.C. Mutual Life Insurance, the Durham Armory, law office of Floyd McKissick Sr., and Murray's childhood home on Carroll Street in the West End.

See the rest of the article here

From This Month at Duke: Political scientist Samuel Huntington, who was well-known for his theory of the “clash of civilizations,” argued that post-Cold War conflicts are fueled primarily by competing cultural and religious identities. His theory resonated beyond the academic world among Americans concerned about terrorism or immigration. But they didn’t resonate with Sucheta Mazumdar, associate professor of history at Duke. From an East Campus office crammed with books in several languages, she challenges the very premise that civilizations are clashing. “We are eating, breathing global beings,” she says. “It makes no sense to cling to a 19th century view of clashing civilizations.” Mazumdar, a historian whose interests range from Chinese and Asian-American history to the global flow of commodities and people, says “the ‘clash of civilizations’ is often a way of saying we really think we’re better than they are. It’s a kind of shorthand for the superpowers’ game.” In a new book of essays, she looks at the evolution of the modern concept of “civilization.” Continue reading article here.

Read full article at Carolina Newswire

Durham, NC – North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company, the nation’s largest and oldest life insurance company with roots in the African-American community, will sign an agreement to transfer its archival collection to North Carolina Central University and Duke University on Friday, September 25. The agreement will be signed at 11 a.m. in the Heritage Room on the 12th floor of the North Carolina Mutual offices, 411 West Chapel Hill Street in Durham. The event is open to the public and the Heritage Room will remain open until 3 p.m. for public tours.

The collection of materials highlights the historic role the company has played locally and nationally in African-American commerce. The documents will be housed in Duke’s Library Service Center, an off-site location that serves both institutions. The collection will be referred to as “The North Carolina Mutual Collection.”

The North Carolina Mutual Collection will be administered by the NCCU Archives, Records and History Center and the Duke University Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library in conjunction with the John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture.

Continue reading article here.

See full article on the Duke Arts website: http://arts.duke.edu/sun-ra-meets-mingus/

The double bill in Duke’s Page Auditorium on September 26 is split between two big bands with deep historical roots, though neither of the nominal leaders is with us anymore. The Charles Mingus Big Band takes the stage first, followed by the Arkestra created by Sun Ra, one of the few contemporaries who could make even Mingus seem conventional. Sun Ra is also the subject of an art installation hosted by the Durham Arts Guild, a public conversation at the John Hope Franklin center on September 25, and several other events.

DURHAM, N.C. -- The way the mainstream media tells the stories of communicable disease outbreaks, such as the H1N1 virus, will be among the topics discussed during a live webcast with Duke English professor Priscilla Wald. This latest installment of Duke’s new online "office hours” series will run live on Duke’s Ustream channel beginning at noon EDT Friday, Sept. 25.

Viewers can submit questions in advance or during the session by email to live@duke.edu, on the Duke University Live Ustream page on Facebook or via Twitter with the tag #dukelive.

Wald is the author of the book Contagious (Duke University Press, 2008), which looks at the appeal of the media’s formulaic “outbreak” narrative. She specializes in seeing how science, specifically genetics, is represented in popular culture, such as movies like X-Men, and sci fi books like Darwin’s Radio. She also has studied the representation of disease and contagion (including typhoid, SARS and AIDS) and its interaction with culture. She was co-convener of the 2006-07 FHI Annual Seminar Interface and a faculty fellow in the 2001-02 Seminar Historicizing Identities.

To see original web article from Duke's Office of News and Communications and for more information, click here.

From Duke News & Communications: Pop icon Michael Jackson, diversity in baseball and why this is an exciting time for scholars of black culture will be among the topics discussed during a live webcast with Mark Anthony Neal, a Duke professor of African and African American Studies. This latest installment of Duke’s new online "office hours” series will begin at noon EDT Friday, Aug. 28. Neal is the author of the book “New Black Man: Rethinking Black Masculinity” and wrote the main essay for “Hello World - The Complete Motown Solo Collection,” a 3-CD box collection of Michael Jackson solo recordings released between 1971 and 1975. He is currently writing album notes for a collection of unreleased Jackson 5 master recordings. (Jackson would have celebrated his 51st birthday on Aug. 29.) Viewers can submit questions in advance or during the session by email to live@duke.edu, on the Duke University Live Ustream page on Facebook or via Twitter with the tag #dukelive. The program will run live on Duke’s Ustream channel.

In December 2009, Duke University Press (DUP) will publish Surviving Against the Odds: Village Industry in Indonesia by S. Ann Dunham, late mother of President Barack Obama. The book is based upon the dissertation Dunham, an economic anthropologist, completed at the University of Hawaii in 1992. For more information about the book and to view the official press release about the publication, please visit the DUP website.

The FHI is pleased to announce that Surviving Against the Odds will be published as a John Hope Franklin Center book. Franklin Center books are selected jointly by the Duke University Press faculty Board of Advisors and FHI Seminar Fellows. More on the imprint and a listing of JHFC books here).

Not as simple as black and white By Dawn Baumgartner Vaughan, Herald-Sun, 9 Aug 2009

Pauli Murray's life story can be an example for many facets of our community -- white, African-American, women, men, the faithful. The woman who grew up in Durham and affected society well beyond it is the subject of a local project to educate people about her legacy. She was a poet, a lawyer, civil rights and women's rights activist, and a priest. Murray's heritage was white, black and Native American. She became the first female African-American to be ordained to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church. And her 1956 family history, "Proud Shoes: The Story of an American Family" discussed issues of identity that are uncomfortable for some even today. A public art project in Durham this past February featuring murals of Murray was the catalyst for The Pauli Murray Project. Fourteen colorful murals representing Murray were painted at six sites by "Face Up: Telling Stories of Community Life," sponsored by the Duke Center for Documentary Studies. Barbara Lau, director of the Pauli Murray Project, said there are a lot of people in Durham who don't know about Murray. "We want to introduce her and her ideas to Durham," she said. The project is part of the Duke Human Rights Center at the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute, and aims to use Murray's legacy to explore Durham history and promote reconciliation and dialogue that may lay the foundation of the proposed Durham History Museum. Lau said they hope the project will spark a grassroots effort to read and discuss "Proud Shoes." The Durham County Library has a book club pack of "Proud Shoes," providing several copies to check out at once, plus a reading guide. A public discussion will be held Wednesday night at St. Joseph's Episcopal Church, facilitated by Courtney Reid-Eaton and the Rev. Brooks Graebner, who both serve on the steering committee. Murray's family history is also local Episcopalian history, said Graebner, rector of St. Matthew's Episcopal Church in Hillsborough. Murray's great-grandmother Cornelia Fitzgerald was born into slavery in Orange County to her mother, Harriet, and a white slave-owning father in the Smith family. As a child, she was brought to church by the woman who owned her -- and was also her aunt -- at The Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill. Murray discussed her ancestry in "Proud Shoes," which has been reprinted multiple times. Cornelia Fitzgerald married a biracial schoolteacher in Orange County who was a Union veteran that came South during Reconstruction to teach. The couple lived in Hillsborough at first, attending St. Matthew's Episcopal and baptizing their children there, including Pauline Fitzgerald Dame. Dame was Murray's aunt and a founding member of St. Titus Episcopal Church in Durham. Dame also raised Murray after her parents died. After Murray was ordained an Episcopal priest, she celebrated Eucharist at The Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill. July 1, the date of her death in 1985, is being considered as a feast day in the Episcopal Church. Proposed at the General Convention this summer, it was moved to committee for a process that could take a few years to complete. Graebner, diocese historiographer, said Murray's nomination as a saint also helps the predominantly white Episcopal Church to examine its own racial history and grapple with its complicity in slavery. The balcony at St. Matthew's was once the slave section. After the Civil War, St. Titus was founded by African-Americans in Durham and remains the only predominantly African-American Episcopal congregation in the area, Graebner said. "It is important for us to be talking about this -- that we remember what this racial history is. 'Proud Shoes' opens very interesting windows into that complex, painful history," he said. For Reid-Eaton, a member of St. Joseph's, which is hosting the book discussion Wednesday, "Proud Shoes" showed her that Murray was a visionary thinker to talk about race and incendiary issues in the 1950s. "She strove to be a fully integrated human being, proud of all her identities -- African-American and part white, Irish and Native American," Reid-Eaton said. She said that like Murray, she too is a person of mixed heritage as most African-Americans are. Her husband is white, and it is important to them to raise their children in a world where they can embrace all that they are. "People tend to be pretty single-minded about race. I think it's hard for people to accept that people can be both black and white, not have to choose one or the other. For example, our president," she said. She said that while the term African-American is used to describe black people, but not all black people are African-American. Her own ancestry is Caribbean. "Race is very complicated and we try to simplify that, making things black and white," Reid-Eaton said. "Pauli Murray is someone who was talking like this, like I'm talking now, in 1956. That's amazing. Her writings have been an incredible gift to me." To join the Pauli Murray Project mailing list, e-mail https://lists.duke.edu/sympa/subscribe/paulimurrayproject.


Column: What will Murray's legacy be? By Dawn Baumgartner Vaughan, Herald-Sun, 10 Aug 2009
Whooo ... Are ... You? The caterpillar in "Alice in Wonderland" poses the question in fantastical puffs of smoke, but the question is a sober one. A thoughtful one. We can all give a quick answer: our name. I'm Dawn. Americans like identifying ourselves by our occupations, too. I'm a journalist. We move on to parenthood, where we live, where we're from, where we went to school, our political persuasions, our social activities, our religion -- really the list is endless. Somewhere in there is race. Some people, like me, don't usually mention it because it's not significant to them. I'm not reminded daily of being white. It's something I take for granted, in that any discrimination I feel would be based on gender, not race. If I were a Duke professor breaking into my own house, police probably wouldn't be very suspicious of me. While our president and events in the news lately have brought to light our national reaction to America's racial relations, reconciliation and history, someone raised here in Durham brought up the subject half a century ago. That would be Pauli Murray. Perhaps you've seen her face splashed in bright colors of paint on buildings around the city. I wrote the story that ran Sunday about the latest developments in The Pauli Murray Project, started at Duke earlier this year. Murray's accomplished life spanned much of the 20th century. She was the first African-American Episcopal priest. She broke gender and racial barriers and was a lawyer and a poet. I think we can all find a way to identify with her on some level. She called people out. That's what I like best about her. She questioned authority. She literally would not sit at the back of the bus. Murray also showed us that not everyone is just white or just black. At a time when any black heritage at all meant that you were black, period, Murray wrote about her multiracial family history in "Proud Shoes: The Story of an American Family." It was published in 1956. Pause and think about that for a minute. That was way before I was born, but I know enough U.S. history to know that our country was just waking up to stamping out the injustice white Americans shoved onto African Americans. We certainly weren't a cross-racial nation joining in a round of beers together at the White House. I wrote my column last week about a Durham man who went out of his way to return a found laptop computer because it was the right thing to do. Murray called out her ancestors and discussed her family history publicly because it was the right thing to do. She questioned the admissions policy at UNC and Harvard because it was the right thing to do. Doing the right thing can present itself in myriad ways. The right thing for us to do in Durham, as the city that raised Murray, is to recognize what she has done for us as a city and a country. How the Pauli Murray Project takes shape may be guided by its steering committee, but the result will be completed by you. What will Pauli Murray do in Durham, now 24 years after her death? Will she spark conversation? Will her image grace more public art space than the murals? Will her legacy inspire fellow Hillside High graduates to succeed? Will she inspire women to become priests or lawyers? Will Durham spread the word about one of its own? I don't have the answer. You do. Now, Pauli Murray wasn't the first and won't be the last person who grew up in Durham and went on to do great things. If you think a Durhamite that has been forgotten or overlooked deserves some attention, let me know.


Editorial: Murray's legacy valuable to city Herald-Sun, 11 Aug 2009
Durham's complex racial history is a key part of the nature of our community today. We have struggled with the effects of centuries of slavery and Jim Crow laws, yet we have benefited with a unique blend of circumstances that have resulted in an African-American middle and upper class that has energized the community in important ways. That's not to say our path through change has been smooth -- anything but. Nonetheless, our struggles have produced some truly remarkable leaders in the realm of politics, civic endeavor and social change. One of these was Pauli Murray, who grew up in Durham as the great-grandchild of slaves and the progeny of a family that reflected the racial mixture more common than often acknowledged in our region. Murray was the first African American female to graduate from Howard University's School of Law. Rejected at Harvard Law despite impeccable credentials, she earned a masters of law degree at UC-Berkeley. Rejected at Cornell University, she went on to get a doctorate from Yale. Her personal memoir, "Proud Shoes: The Story of an American Family," published in 1956, helped to illuminate the South's demographic changes while helping outsiders understand the debilitating nature of racism. The resistance to change, the idealization of the past, is not a new phenomenon for North Carolina and the South. But it does help to define us. But so, frankly, does the embrace of change and the willingness to risk much to jettison the legacy of the "peculiar institution" that stunted our region for decades. Murray's legacy is getting considerable local attention thanks to the Pauli Murray Project, part of the Duke Human Rights Center at the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute. The Pauli Murray project aims, in the words of documentary studies leader Barbara Lau, "to introduce her and her ideas to Durham." Lau is director of the project and hopes it will inspire Durhamites to read and discuss "Proud Shoes.". Murray is a favorite daughter who, while occupying a special place in our history, is too little known and appreciated for all that she accomplished. We'll all benefit from the effort to bring those accomplishments to greater light.

In this report, Cathy Davidson (John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, Duke) and David Theo Goldberg (Director, University of California Humanities Research Institute) focus on the potential for shared and interactive learning made possible by the Internet. They argue that the single most important characteristic of the Internet is its capacity for world-wide community and the limitless exchange of ideas. The Internet brings about a way of learning that is not new or revolutionary but is now the norm for today’s graduating high school and college classes. It is for this reason that Davidson and Goldberg call on us to examine potential new models of digital learning and rethink our virtually enabled and enhanced learning institutions. Davidson and Goldberg are co-founders of HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science, Technology Advanced Collaboratory), an affiliate of the FHI. This report is available in a free digital edition on the MIT Press website here.

Durham, NC -- Scholars and students who once had to travel to museums or libraries to view collections of historic images can now do so by clicking on their mobile device instead.

With the launch of DukeMobile 1.1, the Duke University Libraries now offers the most comprehensive university digital image collection specifically formatted for an iPhone or iTouch device. It includes thousands of photos and other artifacts that range from early beer advertisements to materials on San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury scene in the 1960s. Although a growing number of scholarly institutions offer images and other material online, Duke is the first to offer collections that take advantage of the iPhone’s design, navigation and other features. Read complete article here.

DURHAM, N.C. -- Duke University will host “A Celebration of the Lives of John Hope and Aurelia Whittington Franklin,” on Thursday, June 11, to honor the late historian and his late wife, who were married on June 11, 1940. Featured speakers at the event include former U.S. President Bill Clinton, who in 1997 appointed John Hope Franklin to chair a national task force on race, and attorney and civil rights leader Vernon Jordan, Franklin’s longtime friend. Duke trustee emerita Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans and Duke President Richard H. Brodhead will also give remarks. The celebration is open to the public, and begins at 11 a.m. in Duke Chapel. Please see more information here.

June 4, 2009 - President Obama intends to nominate Jim Leach, a former Republican congressman from Iowa who is now a professor at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, as the next chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the White House said on Wednesday. Read complete New York Times article here.

Thavolia Glymph, Associate Professor of African and African American Studies and History at Duke, has won the Philip Taft Prize for the best book in labor and working-class history published in 2008.  She is co-winner of the award along with Jana K. Lipman of Tulane University.  Prof. Glymph was a fellow in the FHI's 2002-03 Annual Seminar Race, Justice, and the Politics of Memory.

The Taft prize committee defines "labor history" in a broad sense to include the history of workers (free and unfree, organized and unorganized), their institutions, and their workplaces, as well as the broader historical trends that have shaped working-class life, including but not limited to: immigration, slavery, community, the state, race, gender, and ethnicity. Glymph's Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household (Cambridge University Press) reconceptualizes the planter household as a workplace with labor and class as well as gender and race relations. Detailing the day-to-day relations between black and white women and how those relations changed, Glymph offers a telling critique of the limits of such notions as patriarchy, domesticity, and private versus public spheres.  Click here for more information about the award.

On April 24, a group of students and faculty from the fine arts department at Winston-Salem State University (WSSU) enjoyed a day-long art tour at Duke University. Multimedia artist Fatimah Tuggar (pictured), one of three faculty members from a historically black college and university (HBCU) in residence at Duke’s John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute this year, organized the trip. Tuggar recently taught art at WSSU where she worked with a number of the visiting students. Read the rest of the story here.

As part of her residency here at the FHI, South African Constitutional Court Justice Yvonne Mokgoro met with lawyers and judges from the Durham area to discuss law and social justice. The event was organized by the Duke Human Rights Center. Here is a story about the meeting and a related interview in The Durham News.

DURHAM, N.C. -- Duke University’s John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute (FHI) is hosting several upcoming events paying tribute to the scholarship and academic tradition of John Hope Franklin, who died last month.  Click here for the full story from Duke's Office of News and Communications.

Ian Baucom, professor and chair of Duke’s English department, has been named director of the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute (FHI), effective July 1. Baucom will succeed Professor Srinivas Aravamudan, who will become dean of the humanities in Arts & Sciences. Read press release from Duke News and Communications here.

New Project Promotes Local Community Conversation and Reconciliation http://news.duke.edu/2009/03/pauli_murray.html

The 2009 FHI Annual Distinguished Lecture by Homi Bhabha was recently featured in the Duke Research Blog.  As noted in the post, Prof. Bhabha argued that a "major factor in [the Rwandan] genocide is the apparatus of 'neighborly power,'whereby neighbors become enemies, and ordinary things become instruments of evil."  The very ordinariness of the neighbor made the violence of the mass killings all the more grotesque and excessive - yet, paradoxically, neighborly relations also hold the promise of redress and reconciliation in post-genocide Rwanda, through the community-based gacaca trials.

http://neh.gov/news/archive/20090210.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/books/25human.html?_r=1&em

As part of her residency at the FHI, Prof. Wendy Brown will be available to meet with interested faculty and students at the following times in Room 204, Franklin Center:
* Friday, February 27, 4:00-5:30pm
* Tuesday, March 3, 4:00-5:30pm
* Tuesday, March 17, 4:00-5:30pm
* Friday, March 20, 4:00-5:30pm
For more information, contact FHI Assistant Director Chris Chia.

Srinivas Aravamudan will be moving on from his position at the helm of the FHI to a new level of responsibility as Duke's next Dean of Humanities, effective July 1, 2009. The complete story, which has just been released to the public, can be found here.

On November 10, more than 150 faculty and students from Duke and beyond attended "World Literature," a lecture by Prof. Fred Jameson, 2008 winner of the prestigious Holberg International Memorial Prize.  The event was co-hosted by the FHI with the Program in Literature, the Department of Romance Studies, and the College of Arts and Sciences.  The Duke Chronicle covered the event: read the whole thing here.

Fredric Jameson is honored by Norway's Ludvig Holberg Memorial Fund

DURHAM, NC -- Duke University’s Fredric R. Jameson will receive the fifth annual Holberg International Memorial Prize, the Board of the Ludvig Holberg Memorial Fund announced Tuesday in Norway. The professor of literature was cited for his many contributions, grounded in literary studies, to cultural theory and cultural studies, hermeneutics, architectural and postcolonial theory, aesthetics, film and television studies, and history. Click here to read the complete story at the Duke News and Communications site.

On Monday, November 10, 4:30pm, the FHI and the Program in Literature will host a talk by Prof. Jameson entitled "World Literature." Duke President Richard Brodhead will introduce Prof. Jameson, and a distinguished panel will respond to the lecture. The event will be followed by a public reception in honor of the award of the Holberg Prize to Prof. Jameson.

Exploring the intersection of race, gender and art

Adam Hochschild, author of the acclaimed King Leopold's Ghost and Bury the Chains, will speak at Duke on October 6, 2008, as part of the FHI and Duke Human Rights Center's In the Name of Humanity event series. Read his interview with Duke Today's Geoffrey Mock here.

FHI Director Srinivas Aravamudan will appear in a panel on "The Use and Abuse of Ethics," along with National Humanities Center Director Geoffrey Harpham and Duke Dean of Chapel Sam Wells, on Friday, September 26, 2008 (2:30pm, Breedlove Room, Perkins Library). For more information on the program, click here.

Welcome! We've created a new site using a "dashboard" approach, new content, and new ways of finding information. Please click around and let us know what you think! FHI Director Srinivas Aravamudan introduces the new site and our 2008-09 program year here. We hope to see you often in the coming year.

Our colleagues at DISC (the Duke Islamic Studies Center) have launched an information-rich website, which can be viewed here. Congratulations to faculty director Bruce Lawrence and Senior Program Coordinator Kelly Jarrett for this great addition to Duke's digital realm.

Faculty member, DukeEngage program get cited in foreign press A Duke faculty member and a Duke program are getting attention in the foreign press this month. Both art historian Richard Powell (co-convener of the 2003-04 FHI Annual Seminar, Monument, Document) and the DukeEngage program in Colombia are subjects of major articles. Read more...

Mark Anthony Neal, who co-convened the FHI seminar Recycle last year, has a great post up on his blog on Venus and Serena Williams.  Read the whole thing here. On a related note, Orin Starn, also an FHI seminar alum, will be teaching his popular anthropology of sports course again in Fall 08.