Spreading the humanities’ wings: a new Mellon grant at Duke University provides opportunity for realizing the humanities’ heights and reach. From the article:

The funding will establish Humanities Unbounded, which will run from July 1, 2018, through June 30, 2023. The initiative will focus on three major areas:

  • Developing new collaborative curricula models that blend undergraduate education with faculty research and graduate student training.
  • Deepening Duke’s relationships with liberal arts colleges and historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs).
  • Piloting a new teaching partnership with Durham Technical Community College….

“We plan to develop nine humanities labs over the course of the grant, and we believe this will create innovative and flexible educational pathways that will expose more Duke students to the richness of humanistic thinking and its exciting research possibilities,” said Gennifer Weisenfeld, dean of the humanities.

The program will be led by Weisenfeld, an art historian; historian Edward Balleisen, vice provost for interdisciplinary studies; and Ranjana Khanna, director of the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke and professor of English, women’s studies and literature.

For a series of Q&A with Gennifer Weisenfeld, see here.