Learning Games, Geolocation, Haiti: Franklin Humanities Labs 2011-2012

Here's an announcement about the exciting John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute Labs next year from Director Ian Baucom:

Dear friends & colleagues--

As many of you are aware, the Franklin Humanities Institute (FHI) launched a new initiative in "Humanities Laboratories"  this past Fall. The Haiti Lab, co-directed by Laurent Dubois and Deborah Jenson, has been a tremendous success in its first year, bringing undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty together in a dynamic array of collaborations with partners at Duke, at other US institutions, and in Haiti.  I'm pleased to announce that, beginning in Fall 2011, two new Humanities Labs - BorderWork(s) and GreaterThanGames - will be joining the Haiti Lab at the FHI's new home in the Smith Warehouse.   

As detailed in the brief descriptions below, each Lab brings a unique set of discipline-crossing research and pedagogical agendas rooted in the humanities. Convening in spaces specifically designed to facilitate collaborative work, our hope is that these groups will develop innovative directions in teaching, research and research dissemination, enrich the intellectual experiences of Duke faculty and undergraduate and graduate students, and foster the engagement of the humanities with an ever increasing array of disciplines and knowledge projects, toward the ultimate goal of generating significant new contributions to Duke’s research and pedagogical missions.  

Please join me in congratulating all three Labs!

Best wishes,
Ian Baucom
Director, Franklin Humanities Institute
Professor of English
Duke University

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FHI Humanities Laboratories

BorderWork(s) (http://www.fhi.duke.edu/labs/borderworks; commencing Fall 2011) draws together critical perspectives from the humanities, social sciences, and policy studies to explore the acts of division and demarcation — representational and material, symbolic, political-economic and cultural — that have parceled up the inhabited world into bounded communities that arrest, interrupt and/or redirect the free flow of humanity, goods, ideas, images, indeed imagination itself. This Lab will investigate the human consequences of cartographic divisions (broadly conceived) and the materialization of these divisions in wall-building, both literal and virtual. Whenever frontiers change or disappear altogether, human security is affected, usually negatively. Borders that restrict human movement can prevent farmers from reaching their land or drawing water; Internet firewalls can silence reports of human rights violations; genocide can force refugees from their homelands; the walls in Belfast both perpetuate segregation and make a tentative peace possible; and massive development projects such as dam construction can wreak environmental damage across borders as well as cause forced human relocations within borders. The Lab will have specific sites of inquiry, including borders between Israel and the Occupied Territories; India, Pakistan and Bangladesh; within Northern Ireland; and between China and Tibet, among others.

BorderWork(s) is led by Claudia Koonz (History), Philip Stern (History) and Erika Weinthal (Nicholas School), with additional core faculty, including Robin Kirk (Duke Human Rights Center/International Comparative Studies), Ralph Litzinger (Cultural Anthropology) and Sumathi Ramaswamy (History). The Lab will also include other faculty with related interests as well as graduate and undergraduates.

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GreaterThanGames (http://www.fhi.duke.edu/labs/greaterthangames; commencing Fall 2011) aims to build a game platform that brings together virtual and real world components, is adaptable over a range of networked and programmable devices including desktop computers as well as iPhones, iPads, etc., and develops rich narrative content that emerges interactively with player collaborations and choices. The goal is to use the combined allure of game play, virtual architecture and design, and digital storytelling to intervene constructively in real world problems. Three teams will closely collaborate to achieve this goal drawing upon faculty from Literature, English, Art, Art History & Visual Studies, ISIS, Classics, and Computer Science. In addition, the Lab's project will incorporate research from undergraduate courses and independent studies as well as work by graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, providing a model of vertical integration and collaborative teamwork.  

The GreaterThanGames Lab is co-directed by N. Katherine Hayles (Literature), Tim Lenoir (Jenkins Chair for New Technologies in Society), Victoria Szabo (Art, Art History & Visual Studies / ISIS).

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Conceived in the wake of the Jan 2010 earthquake, the Haiti Lab (http://www.fhi.duke.edu/labs/haiti-lab or http://www.fhi.duke.edu/haitilab) merges research, education, and practical applications of innovative thinking for Haiti's disaster recovery and for the expansion of Haitian studies in the U.S. At the Lab, undergraduate and graduate students work with specialists in Haitian culture, history, and language on projects featuring vertical integration of Duke University expertise across disciplines and schools. The Lab is also a resource for media outlets seeking to gain knowledge of Haiti (see faculty op-eds, interviews, etc. here: http://fhi.duke.edu/haitilab/online-projects).  Projects in 2010-11 have included a collaborative artwork with Haitian-American artist Edouard Duval-Carrié, a virtual "Haiti Island" in Second Life, a trilingual digital library of Haitian writings and historical documents, a study of PTSD in post-earthquake Leoganne, research on women's rights legislation in Haiti with Law School faculty and students, among others.

The Haiti Lab is co-directed by Laurent Dubois (History and Romance Studies) and Deborah Jenson (French and Romance Studies), with core affiliated faculty members Guy-Uriel Charles (Law School) and Kathy Walmer (Global Health and Family Health Ministries), and affiliated faculty members Victoria Szabo and Jacques Pierre.