Story+ Project Archive

Overview: If we understand that “carbon” is only a symptom of the ecological crisis whose root cause is the broken relations between people, the earth, and each other, what stories and histories do we need to tell and illuminate, so that we can imagine ourselves into the future, living otherwise?

Art as Relation and Repair across Disabled Ecologies and Histories will search for how to tell stories of deforestation across the United States as interwoven with the ongoing violence of settler colonialism, while centering environmental and disability justice. The ancient Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the oldest literary texts in the Western world, will serve as a narrative springboard to think through our culture's relationship to consciousness, mortality, and the living world.

The goal is to hone in on seven potent geographic areas across time that reveal the way the colonial imaginary (and the eugenic ableism within it) shaped behaviors and actions towards forest ecologies and human communities, and the way this reverberates into the present.

We will create a digital story-map that will begin to tell these stories to a broader public, and will spend time in local forests (including Duke Forest) with a leading historic-tree arborist so we can learn from, and with, the land. The research we accomplish in Story+ will support the development of a multi-year project of large-scale artistic installations that will tour to endangered forests across the country, and internationally. You can learn more about the long-term project through this article, “Animate Earth,” from the Winter 2021 issue of Orion Magazine, a publication focused on environmental and social justice.

Overview: The Just and Equal Durham Project (JED) at the Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice (PMC) is about history, accountability, and activism motivated by an evolving vision for our home community of Durham. Ten years ago, fifteen Durham community leaders, many of whom are still active social justice advocates, were asked to share their ideas about the power of story, specific and personally impactful stories of fairness and justice, and their vision for a just and equal Durham. This project will revisit those interviews and interviewees, inviting several of them to reflect on how Durham’s has or has not advanced in its journey toward justice and how their vision for a just Durham has changed.

The archival and newly created audio material will be shaped into several short audio documentaries, 2-4 minutes in length, that will be uploaded to the PMC website and shared via social media. This work advances the mission of the Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice documents to lift up stories from historically marginalized communities and puts them in service to advancing justice and equity for all.

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Camera Digita: Portraits of AI’s Role in the Futures of All

 

Overview: This is a project of inclusion, representation, and empowerment. Camera Digita: Portraits of AI’s Role in the Futures of All will address the core issue of how digital technologies—especially emerging artificial intelligence (AI) technologies—are bringing about massive social changes, while at the same time many of the most impacted communities have limited voice in the development of the technologies or related law and policy. This project integrates arts and creative human-centered design principles to listen to traditionally marginalized stakeholders and elevate oft-excluded portraits and voices to help ensure our AI futures empower all.

We will help elevate these voices and portraits of inclusive AI through creative portraits, narratives, and artistic creations. This will be done through:

• Interviews and outreach - Our team will receive training re: careful interview outreach and then conduct a series of interviews with stakeholders identified through various existing networks;
• Artistic pieces that capture the above including videos, portraits, essays, etc.;
• Producing and online ‘Zine exhibit through a platform such as Issuu to share this work with a wider audience.

Outcome: Student Marie Cheng asks: “What can a team of undergraduates do to change the inevitable path of technology?” That feeling of powerlessness is all too common.

Camera Digita: Portraits of AI’s Role in the Futures of All was a project of inclusion, representation, and empowerment. Together we explored ways that digital technologies—especially emerging artificial intelligence (AI) technologies—are bringing about massive social changes, while at the same time many of the communities most impacted by these changes have limited voice in the development of these technologies. We aimed, as student Athena Yao notes, “to ask the difficult questions for which there are no easy answers …[and to] build towards a future in which there is transparency, equity, and intentionality."

^{Click to view presentation}

To explore these issues, we sought to hear different voices and to use non-traditional techniques, and we found special power in storytelling and the visual arts. Over six weeks, our team integrated technology desk research with artistic creation, stories of community members’ particular experiences, and tools of design justice. We listened to traditionally marginalized stakeholders through free-form interviews and then elevated their concerns and their visions for a better AI future through artistic works to help ensure our AI futures empower all. In the end, we empowered ourselves, too, as student Amber Park makes clear in her curatorial statement that accompanies our web gallery:

Ultimately, we are the creators of our own destiny with AI. From implementing smart AI gadgets in our homes to fighting for privacy rights against non-consensual facial recognition, we determine how we engage with evolving technology.

You can take a walk through the interactive website and art gallery, here https://dukecameradigita.wixsite.com/story. We created both to document our journey and to invite you to reflect on your own experiences with artificial intelligence and emerging technologies.

Project Sponsor(s): Jeff Ward, Director of the Duke Center on Law & Tech, Associate Dean for Technology & Innovation, and Clinical Professor of Law, Duke School of Law

Project Manager: Dr. Ariana Eily, a science communication expert, a Fellow of the Duke Center on Law & Tech, and a former postdoctoral fellow of the Duke Initiative for Science & Society.

Undergraduates: Marie Cheng, Amber Park, Athena Yao

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Choose Your Words Carefully: Storytelling, Duke Magazine, and the University’s Black Community

 

Overview: Duke Magazine has been around in several iterations since 1917 and has sought to engage alumni in the life of the university through storytelling. President Price’s recent goal of Duke becoming an anti-racist university raises new (and yet perhaps, old) questions: What story has the magazine been telling? Whose story has the magazine been sharing? How has that story changed over time? The aim of this project is to use textual analysis and oral history to examine the magazine through the prism of marketing, journalism, language, and race. We hope the data gleaned from this project will inform the magazine’s language and approach going forward in terms of story selection and scope.

Outcome: In six weeks, the Choose Your Words Carefully team examined the storytelling in Duke Magazine and analyzed how it reflects the university’s perception of the Black community. In the research, this team focuses on three questions: what story has the magazine been telling, whose story has the magazine been telling, and how has the story changed over time. This team combines the history of Duke University fighting for racial justice narrated in Theodore D. Segal's book Point of Reckoning, and selects three time periods as the analysis objects: 1967-1980 featured with civil rights movement, desegregation, silent vigil and the takeover of Allen Building, 2000- 2010 with Duke lacrosse case, 2016-2020 with the presidency of Donald Trump, COVID-19 Pandemic and Black Lives Matter movement, and extracted some necessary nuance. The team concluded that Duke Magazine’s narrative voice is still largely dominated by white power and suggested that the magazine can improve this situation through oral history and Black-led publication.

 

Project Sponsor: Adrienne Johnson Martin, Managing Editor, Duke Magazine

Graduate Mentor: Lacie Chen, Graduate Liberal Studies

Undergraduates: James Ndung'u, Arial Strode, Lynne Wang

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Geer Cemetery: Labor, Dignity, and Practices of Freedom in an African American Burial Ground

 

Overview: Durham’s Geer Cemetery, just two miles from Duke’s East Campus, was founded in 1877 by African Americans who were born enslaved. In active use for over 60 years, it became the burial place of Black people who built this city and many of its most important institutions, but also a place of institutional neglect and indignity inflicted upon the dead and their descendants. It stands as an example of the broader “preservation crisis” for African American cemeteries nationwide. A diverse, community-based group of volunteers called the Friends of Geer Cemetery is working to reclaim the cemetery, addressing its physical state as well as its buried histories. The goals of this Story+ project are:

1. Grapple together with what efforts to reclaim a neglected African American cemetery contribute to reckoning with race and white supremacy in Durham and beyond, and where digital storytelling fits into those efforts;
2. Research the lives of specific individuals buried at Geer and their families, with an emphasis on ties to the Duke family and the university, especially through overlooked and invisible labor;
3. Look more broadly at how these individuals, and the people who buried and mourned them in this cemetery, advanced the dignity of the dead and crafted visions of resistance and freedom;
4. Contribute mini-essays, timelines, archival images and other materials—and new ideas!—to a website that will chronicle the histories of the cemetery and educate the public.

We are seeking to form a research team with members from both Duke and NCCU. All team members will be trained in genealogical research and other relevant methods, and will be considered co-creators not only of the content but also the thematic design, visual format, and other key aspects of this project. We welcome applications from undergraduates with some exposure to archival research, library-based or otherwise, nonfiction writing for a wide audience, and skills in web design, graphic design, or other tools of digital storytelling. That said, more than any particular skill area or prior experience, we are interested to hear about your interests in public history, genealogy, racial justice, death and burial, and/or public space. We are looking for team members who value collaboration, are willing to take initiative but also listen carefully to others, and want exposure to models of community-engaged, public scholarship. To learn more about the project, take a look at this “Histories of Dignity” event (April 2020), which includes (from about mins 20-31) an overview of the cemetery’s history, with images, delivered by Debra Taylor Gonzalez-Garcia. The video is here on vimeo, vimeo.com/409810044, and the password is 'dignity'.

Outcome: For six weeks, our team worked to explore the history of Geer Cemetery, a historic cemetery with deep connections to the foundations of Durham. Located in the Duke Park neighborhood, Geer Cemetery was the first public non denominational cemetery for African Americans in Durham. However, even as a public cemetery, Geer Cemetery did not enjoy public funding while it was an active cemetery. The cemetery was closed in 1944 by the city due to overcrowding and it is estimated that over 3,000 people are interred in Geer. Due to being a public non denominational cemetery, this city of the dead represents not only prominent founders but everyday citizens who contributed their lives to extraordinary works. Working in partnership with the Friends of Geer Cemetery, Duke University archivists, North Carolina Central University faculty, and descendants of those interred in the cemetery, our researchers worked to study the cemetery in detail, uncover the stories of ordinary citizens and add these stories back into the historic narrative about Geer. Each researcher explored themes of invisibilized labor, Black institution building in the city of Durham, African American burial practices and the connections between Geer Cemetery and Duke University. The result was three distinct and interactive digital research projects that will contribute to the growing digital presence the Friends of Geer Cemetery is developing to showcase the history of the space. Over the six weeks, our team engaged with case studies of cemetery preservation projects, learned about the intricacies of working with community stakeholders, practiced archival research and primary source analysis, and communicated with descendants of those buried in Geer Cemetery. The first half of our time together was spent learning key context about Geer and Durham itself, and about preservation projects of cemeteries across the United States. We also practiced research skills such as conducting oral history interviews, developing life histories, and engaging with genealogy. We explored much in such a truncated time together and while engaging in research, we struggled through questions of how systems of oppression impact historic preservation of life histories, making sense of archival silence (when marginalized people are not represented, or represented only through the gaze of the powerful, in the archives), and the role of physical land as a historical actor with its own unique voice and contributions. Alongside our research on the physical place itself, we spent time analyzing our own individual lives--charting connections between burial practices and traditions at Geer and in our own cultural contexts, charting our own lineages through research, and sharing our own stories of stewarding the dead, engaging with the land and searching for hidden histories in our families and communities.Together, our team sought to explore these questions and more as they supported each other in developing their projects. Their curiosity, analytical skills, and creativity came to the forefront as they worked to develop their projects over the six-week period. Each researcher has given a brief overview of their project in our video. To explore their projects in more depth, please click the links below.

• Nyrobi Manuel: “Scarborough and Hargett Funeral Home: Dignified Death and Compassion in the Black Community”
• Kerry Rork: “African American Burial Networks and Practices”
• Huiyin Zhou: “Uncovering Invisible African American Labors in Durham”

Project Sponsor(s): Adam Rosenblatt, Associate Professor of the Practice in International Comparative Studies and board member, Friends of Geer Cemetery; Debra Taylor Gonzalez-Garcia, President of the Friends of Geer Cemetery, genealogist, and instructor at Durham Technical Community College; Nicholas Levy, PhD Candidate in History, Stanford University, and board member, Friends of Geer Cemetery; Carissa Trotta, Counselor at North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics and board member, Friends of Geer Cemetery

Graduate Mentor: Orilonise D. Yarborough, M.A. Student of Public History, North Carolina Central University

Undergraduates: Nyrobi Manuel, Kerry Rork, Huiyin Zhou

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Hardship and Resilience: Experiences of International Students During COVID-19

 

Overview: In light of anti-immigrant and “America First” policies, the last four years have been incredibly difficult for international students.  The COVID-19 pandemic further exposed the racial and socio-economic inequality on our campuses.  While the majority of the international students returned to their home countries or otherwise found safe accommodations with close friends or extended family in the U.S., a small number of students remained in residence on campus because of travel restrictions, limited financial resources, lack of reliable internet access back home, or health and safety concerns.  Students who remained on campus had to adjust quickly to online learning and social support available under conditions of lockdown, social distancing, and a limited student affairs presence – all of which was different from what the international students expected when they made the decision to study in the U.S. 

While these students faced difficult personal and educational circumstances, they also showed remarkable resilience.  The proposed project is to research, document, and tell the stories of 15 international undergraduates who remained in campus residence in North Carolina during the pandemic.  The goals of the proposed project are: 1) to learn more about the curricular and co-curricular experiences of international undergraduates who remained at institutions with a strong residence life component in North Carolina during the pandemic; 2) to find out what strategies these students used to respond and cope with the pandemic; 3) to document the student experiences for our institutional records; and 4) to learn how we can better support our most vulnerable international students.

Outcome: Through reviewing the history of international students in the U.S. and current government regulations affecting students in nonimmigrant status, and interviewing undergraduates with various cultural backgrounds, the undergraduate and graduate students participating on this research team worked toward an understanding of international student experiences in the U.S. higher education context. The website they created together, at https://sites.duke.edu/hardshipandresilience/, documents student experiences during this unprecedented time for our institutional records.

 

Project Sponsor(s): Li-Chen Chin, Assistant Vice President for Intercultural Programs, Duke University; Lisa Giragosian, Director of International House, Duke University

Graduate Mentor: Ellie Vilakazi, PhD Student, English

Undergraduates: Priya Meesa and Justin Zhang

Undergraduate Collaborators from Project Partner Schools: Helen Zhang, Davidson College and Teboho Motselekatse, Methodist University

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Mapping Roots with Migrant Roots Media

 

Overview: Migrant Roots Media (MRM) is a digital platform which amplifies the voices of migrants, children of migrants, and those struggling to thrive in their homelands to unearth the root causes of global migration. We strategically position intersectional voices to advance narratives and political analyses concerning migration and other social issues. Through investigative and first-person articles, media workshops, and campus collaborations, we work to reframe discourses around migration and human mobility.   Our project will involve working with students, preferably migrants or children of migrants,  to conduct research on the different social, political, economic, and/or environmental forces that destabilize communities and produce forced migration. Students will choose a country to investigate, and it is highly encouraged that the student make their decision based on a personal connection to this country (for example, it could be their own or their parents’ country of origin). Inspired by decolonizing scholars like Linda Tuhiwai Smith, we ask that students consider their personal and ancestral connections as a corrective to an extractive and exploitative history of “objective” and “detached” research that facilitates colonization and imperialism. Each student will create a timeline of historical events for their chosen country which will be published in our website, write a narrative that highlights the main topics they encounter and which may include a personal story-telling component, and create a visual that will be presented to an audience in a digital gallery-style format. This project will employ (auto)ethnographic approaches, oral history methods, and archival research. Keeping in mind Story+ emphasis on intertwining systems of oppression, our students’ research will consider how Indigeneity, race, gender, class, sexuality, and physical ability shape a community’s lived experience and factors into migratory journeys. An intersectional analysis is key to our goals and will be central to students’ Story+ projects.  

Preference will be given to students who are migrants or children of migrants. There are no essential skills required, but a strong willingness to learn, communicate openly, share opinions, be responsive, and collaborate with others is desired.

Outcome: The Mapping Roots team is a partnership between Story+ and Migrant Roots Media (MRM), a digital platform founded by Durham-based activist Roxana Bendezú. With its mission to unearth the root causes of migration, MRM strives to amplify the voices of migrants, children of migrants, and those struggling to stay and thrive in their homelands. Through MRM’s collaboration with Story+, student researchers are encouraged to select a country and conduct in-depth research on the complex matrix of push and pull factors that compel some citizens to leave and build lives elsewhere. Drawing on the methodological interventions of Chicana scholar Gloria E. Anzaldúa, the program is designed as autohistoria‐teoría, an approach that sees the personal and political as entwined and inextricable from one another. Students are encouraged to select their research site based on a personal connection, for example, their parents’ homeland(s). The Mapping Roots project was led by Dr Barbara Sostaita, Higher Education Director for MRM.

As migrants and children of migrants - with strong bonds to those whose existence in their homelands is indelibly shaped by global migration - the Mapping Roots team worked together and apart over six weeks to identify the root causes of migration from our homelands to the West. We worked to map the interconnections between the geopolitical, socio-economic, cultural, environmental, and personal. Our weekly meetings were shaped by a rich blend of foundational theoretical readings on migration, hybridity, and challenging normative ideas around border politics and citizenship. Workshops on conducting ethnographic research as a community member, poetry, archival research practice, and oral history equipped our team members with interdisciplinary and multimodal research skills.

The Mapping Roots researchers respectively explored root causes of migration from China over the past 60 years, internal displacement and forced migration in Colombia, and voluntary migration from India with a focus on gender. Each student mapped a timeline of historical and political events for their chosen country, observing the relation between (trans)national happenings with their family migration stories. Based on their findings, each researcher built a website that brought together the scholarly, narrative-poetic, visual art-based works they produced throughout the program and may continue to work in the future. The team created an audio-visual work of poetry for the Story+ 2021 Research Symposium, which draws on the overlapping themes that emerged throughout our research process.

Links to student researcher's websites:

• Cat Xia duke.edu/storymrm2021cx
• Shreya Joshi https://sites.duke.edu/indiasemigrants
• Juanita Vargas https://sites.duke.edu/mrmvirs/colombias-story/

Project Sponsor(s): Roxana Bendezú, Founder and Director, Migrant Roots Media; Bárbara Sostaita, Higher Education Director, Migrant Roots Media

Graduate Mentor(s): Dubie Toa-Kwapong, PhD student, Cultural Anthropology

Undergraduates: Cat Xia, Shreya Joshi, Juanita Vargas

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Public Art As Public Health: Moving Messages of Dementia Inclusion

 

Overview: Physical distancing regulations linked to the COVID-10 pandemic have produced social isolation on a truly global scale. For persons living with Dementia and cognitive health disorders in Durham, the need to combat social isolation and restore human connection and wellbeing today is particularly urgent. Public Art as Public Health: Moving Messages of Dementia Inclusion casts Duke students as an interdisciplinary arts research team engaged in the co-creation of environmental, digital, and participatory art and public storytelling alongside community organizational partners from Dementia Inclusive Durham (DID). Working alongside Duke Professor Sarah Wilbur (Dance), interdisciplinary artist Brittany J. Green and facilitators from TimeSlips Creative Storytelling (www.timeslips.org), students spend six weeks investigating how interdisciplinary art and creative engagement can support Dementia-awareness education and creative care for persons living with Dementia as a city-wide responsibility. After receiving training in Dementia literacy and interdisciplinary arts processes including TimeSlips creative storytelling facilitation methods, members of our team will join weekly creative care gatherings (hosted by phone and/or ZOOM) and build connections with persons with Dementia and their care partners. Archived stories and creative contributions from consenting creative storytelling participants will serve as source material for virtually disseminated art work designed to raise awareness of DID among the Durham public at large. Through direct engagement with persons living with Dementia and their care partners, our Story+ team joins this ambitious city-wide effort to build a Creative Community of Care and to declare Durham a Dementia-friendly, Dementia-capable city by 2023.

Our project partners embrace the fundamental creativity and cultural values of all students as assets for arts based research. Given the social distancing challenges of the proposed public engagement, we are particularly excited to enlist students with skills or interests in learning and applying visual arts and design, performing arts and writing in the virtual realm. This Story+ project is particularly suited for students whose research interests and experiences span the arts, US health policy, and cross-sector community-based public health and cultural development.

Outcome: Our arts-based research team spent six weeks generating multiple narratives of dementia inclusion and stitching them together in the form of a digital workbook prototype focused on hailing people who do not live with dementia or cognitive challenges to consider their role in destigmatizing this condition and fostering cultures of inclusion in Durham and North Carolina through critical acts of listening, learning, and care. To contend with our guiding research question—how can artistic and creative expression contribute to messages of widespread inclusion and cultural change for persons living with dementia and their care partners?--we built a shared vocabulary grounded in a disability justice framework. We drew from public health archives, dementia inclusion and education literatures put forth by our community partners (TimeSlips and Dementia Inclusive Durham/DID), and—crucially—testimony and creative ideas contributed by persons living with dementia in Durham and the triangle area. These latter contributors are, in our view, the true “experts.” Our resulting workbook sought to highlight their creativity, experiences and wisdom as  foundational to the kind of widespread cultural and structural change that DID currently envisions. With our artistic methodologies sequestered to the virtual realm, we chose to compile our prototype in the format of a GoogleSlides presentation. Team members each applied their creative assets to the charge, producing visual art, collage, poetry, music and sound compositions, and video performance works that hail workbook readers to consider how they might speak, move, or otherwise commit to widespread dementia support. Our multi-talented and critically empathetic research team members did not set out to “answer” the question of how to make Durham a “Dementia-Inclusive City.” In true humanistic form, we insisted, instead, that the answers to how to live a full and flourishing life in Durham are multiple and unstandardizeable, and are best represented multi-vocally. Our workbook, thus, is structured like a song, with verses and choruses that provoke anyone who encounters the prototype to see themselves as critical listeners and co-learners in this community-wide project.

About TimeSlips Creative Engagement and Storytelling Methodologies (nonprofit arts organization committed to bringing meaning and purpose to the lives of elders through arts participation and creative engagement): https://timeslips.org. All student and grad mentors received online training in TimeSlips creative storytelling methods to participate in this project. Sourced responses to open ended “beautiful” questions formed the inspiration for some of the messages in our resultant workbook prototype.

 

About Dementia Inclusive Durham— DID was our community partner organization, organizers united by the vision of Durham as a place where persons living with dementia are fully valued and supported in their full flourishing. DID volunteers are working with a wide range of local organizations (senior centers, museums, faith based communities, dementia-service organizations, and universities) to make Durham a Dementia-Inclusive city by 2023 by uniting different community sectors and stakeholders and educating them about how to participate in creating cultural understanding around dementia and dismantling its stigmatizing impacts on families. https://www.didnc.org

 

Project Sponsor(s): Sarah Wilbur, Ph.D., M.F.A., Assistant Professor of the Practice, Duke Dance Program

Graduate Mentor: Brittany J. Green, PhD Candidate Music

Undergraduates: Arthi Kozhumam, Maria Oliva Santos, Sanjana Jha

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The Seat of Fascism: Narratives of Repression and Resistance in North Carolina

 

Overview: In the 1970s, the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (NAARPR) selected North Carolina to be the focus of its inaugural campaign. On July 4, 1974, an estimated 10,000 people from over twenty-five states traveled to Raleigh to participate in a protest organized by the NAARPR and sponsored by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. From the steps of the Capitol building, keynote speaker Angela Davis suggested “racism and political repression is more severe in North Carolina than in any other state in this country.” ‘The Seat of Fascism’: Narratives of Repression and Resistance in North Carolina, offers students the opportunity to examine this unique and important moment in history. What can the constellation of social movement campaigns from 1970s North Carolina tell us about the role of the carceral state in stifling democracy and suppressing meaningful social change? Students that join our Story+ team will investigate whether and how the state uses incarceration as a tool of repression in the post-Civil Rights era by collecting, analyzing, and interpreting archival materials focusing on the NAARPR, including documents from the Duke student chapter of the organization, as well as the North Carolina Political Prisoners Committee. With the materials they collect from Rubenstein’s archival collections - such as protest ephemera, meeting notes, legal documents, legislative records, images, zine articles, and personal correspondence - students will excavate the past in an effort to contextualize the present, inviting audiences to consider how these histories might align with or inform contemporary movements in Durham and across North Carolina that are fighting against political repression, mass incarceration, and police violence. By the end of the six week term, student researchers will create a digital database focusing on collection items that will help us tell the story of political repression and resistance in North Carolina. 

Outcome: The Seat of Fascism team spent our six weeks together exploring digitized archives from local and national repositories for sources that illustrated both the tactics of repression the North Carolina state government used against Black Liberation movements and BIPOC individuals in the 1970s, and the modes of resistance these communities cultivated to dream their own futures. Though North Carolina at this time sought to project itself as a bastion of post-racial New South stability to the rest of the nation and the world, the reality on the ground looked much more like a laboratory for repression, where strategies to continue inequality and violence that are still recognizable in the U.S. today were tested and developed. As a response, the NAARPR deemed coordinated resistance efforts in the state with the idea that if state repression could be stopped in North Carolina, it might be stopped anywhere. Our project sits in this moment of contradiction. During our meetings as a group, we read and discussed a variety of sources that illuminate this history in North Carolina and the U.S., learning extensively about political prisoners, prison abolition movements, COINTELPRO, labor movements, and police violence throughout North Carolina. In particular we came to conclude that the most important thread our story must tell is that there is no story of repression without stories of resistance. Alongside this work, our team studied the potentials of and powers of digital exhibit cultivation while building an Omeka site.

This digital exhibit [Link coming soon!] is the culmination of our work, containing the larger narratives we explored and the three stories within it that each student researcher felt passionately about telling: Incarceration as a Tool of Repression, The Black Panther Party of Winston-Salem, and Political Prisoners and Self Defense Campaigns. Students collected photographs, news clippings, pamphlets, letters, sketches, and community news bulletins that allowed them to weave together these twinned stories of repression and resistance both across North Carolina and locally in Duke’s own history.

Project Sponsor(s): Kimber Heinz of Scaffold Exhibits and Consulting; Meghan McDowell, 2020 - 2021 Humanities Unbounded Visiting Faculty Fellow at Duke 

Graduate Mentor: Melissa Karp, PhD student, Literature

Undergraduates: Makee Anderson, Kamdon Early, Sophie Johnson

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What This Land Has Seen: The Past and Future of the Duke Campus Farm

 

Overview: More than ten years ago, Duke undergraduate students founded the Duke Campus Farm (DCF) in a rural area seven miles from main campus, in the Duke Forest. Their primary aim was to provide themselves and others with direct experience of the joys and hard work of growing real food. Over the last decade, the farm has evolved from a student-led interest group into a more fully-fledged university program with a broader mission: to catalyze positive change in the food system. As we imagine a (mostly likely virtual) celebration of the ten-year anniversary of our program, we want to mark the evolution of DCF and its impact on students, and offer appreciation to all those in the Duke and Durham communities whose brains and brawn built our current operation. In telling the story of the farm, we also want to honor the endurance of the land itself and the suffering of enslavement and displacement it and its communities have witnessed - like much of the South, the land that is now DCF also has a darker history of plantation enslavement, indigenous extermination, and extractive agriculture.

While the form of the final product will be determined by the group, we hope that what comes out of this summer will offer one way to address a question that we’re grappling with as people living in the United States - can we tell these stories as part of a cohesive whole and if so, how? How can we celebrate what has been achieved and acknowledge what has been sacrificed for this achievement, in order to work collectively toward repair? Drawing on the presences and absences in the farm’s existing archive, we hope to tell the story of the past and future of the Duke Campus Farm, both as a vibrant space of learning and ecological repair, and as a site of mourning, enslavement, extraction and displacement.

Outcome: “What This Land Has Seen” brought our team together around a central question: how can we tell the multiple histories of the Duke Campus Farm? The researchers brought their diverse experience with food studies, cultural anthropology, documentary studies, environmental science, science communication, agriculture, and community care to their exploration of DCF’s archive. They crafted research questions probing three central aspects of the land’s history: first, its original Indigenous occupants, the Couch family whose plantation displaced them, the African Americans whom the Couches enslaved to work the land, and its nonhuman cohabitants; second, DCF’s heritage garden, the Cackalacky Plot, and its usage to discuss land history through plants like okra, cowpeas, colored cotton, corn, squash, and tobacco; finally, the decade of student projects and student-facing programs which continue to engage Duke undergraduates through interdisciplinary experiential learning and embodied knowledge of the food system.

Our team produced a Miro board to share their research. They chose this format because it allowed them to show the connections between their three categories of inquiry. Through five themes, they were able to demonstrate the circular, intertwined nature of the land’s multiple histories, its present work, and its future aspirations. These themes were: community, interpretation and representation; memorializing and erasure; nonhuman subjects; and embodied knowledge. They linked them under the overarching concept of biocultural restoration.

They wrote a land acknowledgement for DCF to acknowledge the Indigenous nations who stewarded the land prior to colonization, introduce audiences to the local Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation, and highlight at least thirty-six enslaved people whose lives on the Couch plantation were erased from historical memory.

They conducted interviews with past and present DCF crew members, undergraduate Duke Immerse alumni and DCF student volunteers, and experts like soil scientist Dan Richter.

Finally, they pointed to potential next steps based on their research findings this summer, including: more hands-on programming; a centralized location for student projects; and relationship-building with community history holders, the Occaneechi Saponi, and migrant farmworkers.

To learn more about DCF and associated organizations/communities:

• Duke Campus Farm: https://sustainability.duke.edu/farm
• Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation: https://obsn.org/
• Student Action with Farmworkers: https://saf-unite.org/
  • see the SAF Story+ 2018 project here!
• Root Causes: https://www.rootcauseshealth.org/

Project Sponsor: Saskia Cornes, Program Director, Duke Campus Farm//Assistant Professor of the Practice, Franklin Humanities Institute

Graduate Mentor: Nikki Locklear, PhD candidate, History

Undergraduates: Ella Dunham, Tyler Edwards, Sierra Winters

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What's Past is Prologue: Exploring the intersectionality between race, justice, and disability in North Carolina

Overview: In this Story+ project, we will explore the intersection of health, disability and race on social justice and the expression of human rights among North Carolinians.  Even though the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) celebrated its 30th year of existence in July 2020, there remains much work to be done to achieve the aspirational goal of equal rights for all.  In many ways the COVID19 pandemic has shown America that we may not all be equal, and in this Story+ project we will hear the voices and share the stories of people from Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities who live with a disability across North Carolina. We set out on this explorative and investigative journey with 2 overarching aims, but declare our humility and recognize that these may change over time; (1) To explore the interaction of race, justice and disability among the BIPOC community in North Carolina.  Here, we will interview North Carolinians with disabilities, hear and document their lived experiences, and then work and collaborate to creatively share their stories and experiences, and (2) To provide unique opportunities for Duke graduate and undergraduate students to deepen their own personal journey of developing humility, knowledge, understanding and respect for others of different abilities.  Building on these essential competencies of caring and responsible citizenship, we aspire as a collective to become more understanding of challenges faced by BIPOC North Carolinians with disabilities.

The primary mode of communication or animation of our findings will be through the design and production of the storyline of a Mass Open Online Course (MOOC) on this important and emerging topic of consequence.  The outputs of this project will also be linked to a 2021-2022 extension of an existing Bass Connection project titled, ‘Leave No One Behind: Exploring the Impact of the COVID19 Pandemic on People with Disabilities (PWDs) in North Carolina'.

Outcome: The What is Past is Prologue Team leveraged the product-oriented project of the PI Sponsor, Dr. Michel Landry, with the individual personal and professional growth objectives of the individual research members, Kaelyn Griffiths, Josee Li, and Binisha Patel, and the Project Manager, Bryan Rusch. The project’s goal was to develop a foundation from which a Bass Connections team the next semester could build a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) from, integrating marginalized voices of disabled individuals from the BIPOC community to shed light on cultural, health care, and policy inequalities in North Carolina. The short timeframe and technical restrictions forced the team to become adaptable to the sources and logistic restraints of the six weeks. Conversational interviews with scholars and activists were coupled with scholarly articles and books, and multimedia sources available on the internet to immerse the team in the multifaceted experience of disability, and the community surrounding it. The first half of the project focused on building a knowledge base of the theories, history, and individuals important to disability studies and disabled communities. Daily meetings saw the team expand their own knowledge of the fields of Disability Studies and Justice and grow their own sense of community. Through weekly reflection sessions, the team continued to reaffirm their commitment to intersectional views to be upheld not only within the MOOC to be developed, but their own future work. The second half saw lightning-sessions, where the team members came to each session with handpicked sources on the various topics to be included in the syllabus, and each module of the MOOC was storyboarded. In the end, the researchers produced ten module storyboards, providing key documents and topics for each section, and ensuring that each module has generous time devoted to giving platform to the voices of those most affected. As the six weeks ended, the team also worked towards ensuring the longevity of each member’s involvement within Disability Studies and Justice. From the sources and techniques derived over the past six weeks, Kaleyn and Binisha developed two research questions to be further explored through capstone Independent Studies in the Sociology Department, and Josee began the process of developing a House Course for the Spring on Disability. In conjunction with these projects, Bryan is now developing a working group for undergraduate and graduate students working on topics of Disability Studies to facilitate research projects, events, and develop relationships with the disabled members of the Durham community. The team’s work in Story+ and beyond were defined by the four commitments they established during their first session: Creating Community; Ensuring Authenticity; Producing Advocacy; and Creating Visibility. None of the work that was done and products generated during these six weeks stopped on June 26. What is Past is Prologue rings true for all members of this team.

 

Project Sponsor(s): Michel D. Landry BScPT, MBA, PhD; Professor, School of Medicine (Orthopaedic Surgery), Duke Global Health Institute, and the Duke-Margolis Centre for Health Policy; Raj Telhan MD MFA; Assistant Professor, Department of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC

Graduate Mentor: Bryan Rusch, PhD student Art, Art History & Visual Studies

Undergraduates: Kaelyn Griffiths, Josee Li, Binisha Patel

Overview: During this collision of artistic and academic energies, students will examine U.S. policy responses to significant coal mining disasters during the 20^th Century and experiment with methods of processing their research through dance. Drawing on evidence such as transcripts of Congressional hearings, federal reports explaining the causes of disasters, and oral histories with coal miners and their families, students will employ content analysis methods to answer two primary questions: how were the narratives used to explain each disaster constructed? And how did those narratives influence policy that aimed to prevent similar catastrophes in the future? At the same time, dance artist, educator, and researcher Justin Tornow will introduce the students to embodiment methods, which will include an introduction to somatic practices, structured improvisations for movement and spatial orientation, and the use of chance operations. By the end of the six-week term, students will draw on these tools to compose a post-modern movement performance that communicates both their research and the results of including embodiment as one of their methodological cornerstones. Through this unique research experience, students will investigate themes such as the politics of expertise, the role of focusing events and class and gender-based power dynamics in policymaking, the impact of embodiment on academic inquiry and communication, and the alienation of human bodies from processes of energy production in fossil-fueled societies like the modern U.S.

Outcome: This team experimented with various methods of embodied research while investigating the roles that coal miners’ bodies played in policymakers’ efforts to improve mine safety following major disasters. These embodied methods included basic exercises (regularly-scheduled mindfulness meditations and stretching) designed to focus each researcher’s attention on their body. More advanced techniques used, such as matching the postures of miners at work or on a picket line, or the breath patterns of oral history narrators disabled by black lung, were creative and interpretive methods that sought to reconfigure both how they processed their research and their relationship to the subjects at its core. This work resulted in two interrelated conclusions: that policymakers conceptualized miners’ bodies as unruly objects in need of regulation more often than they understood them as human beings in need of protection from mining’s various dangers; and that an intentional and critical emphasis on engaging both the body and mind during research has the potential to transform the research experience in ways that may expand the archive and open doors to deeper empathy.