Humanities Laboratories
* Audiovisualities, the newest FHI Lab, will launch in Fall 2013 - find out more *
The FHI Humanities Laboratories initiative began in the 2010-11 academic year with the Haiti Lab. After a successful pilot year, we are launching two new Labs - BorderWork(s) and GreaterThanGames - in Fall 2011. The FHI Labs are a key component of Humanities Writ Large, a five-year campus-wide initiative generously supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Each Humanities Lab (which can run for a period of 1 to 3 years) is built around a theme or broadly defined idea as articulated by a core team of four to five faculty members from the humanities, interpretive social sciences, and other Duke schools and research units. Each Lab also encompasses an expanded, "vertically integrated" group of faculty members, graduate assistants, and undergraduate students working on shared research projects. Undergraduates will be able to align their participation in the labs to their independent study projects or in relation to honors projects. In each year of each lab, participating faculty members will design and teach undergraduate courses that build on or relate to the lab's research project. >> See courses and independent study projects for BorderWork(s), GreaterThanGames, and the Haiti Lab
The Humanities Labs will actively employ technology as a tool for research, research dissemination, pedagogy, and collection/archive development. The labs will also draw heavily on the unique strengths of the Duke faculty in order to ensure that media and technology are objects of critical study in the course of each lab. >> See examples of digital projects from the Haiti Lab
In simultaneously focusing the work of the labs on research and pedagogy, we are seeking to bring the innovative, interdisciplinary research the FHI has long supported more fully into the undergraduate experience of students at Duke and, indeed, to invite undergraduates to participate as researchers themselves, helping to define emerging and future areas of humanities scholarship. By drawing on faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates from across the disciplines and schools, the labs seek to vitally supplement the humanities-driven research opportunities and pedagogical experiences of faculty and students across the full landscape of the university. >> See how three recent graduates integrated the Humanities Lab into their study at Duke
