When Elizabeth Schrader signed up for a free short-course in the summer of 2019, the doctoral candidate in religion had no idea it would have an immediate impact on her scholarship. Two years earlier, Schrader published an article arguing that early Christian copyists may have altered the Gospel of John to minimize the role of Mary Magdalene. This was an important finding, but it wasn’t getting the attention in scholarly circles that she’d hoped for. “Although my work had appeared in a prestigious journal (the Harvard… read more » about What I Got Out of the Duke Graduate Academy
DURHAM, N.C. -- When you think about what separates humans from chimpanzees and other apes, you might think of our big brains, or the fact that we get around on two legs rather than four. But we have another distinguishing feature: water efficiency. That’s the take-home of a new study that, for the first time, measures precisely how much water humans lose and replace each day compared with our closest living animal relatives. Our bodies are constantly losing water: when we sweat, go to the bathroom, even when we breathe.… read more » about Humans Evolved to Be the Water-Saving Ape
Professor Aarthi Vadde will welcome esteemed writers like Teju Cole (author of Open City), Orhan Pamuk (winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature), and George Saunders (author of Lincoln in the Bardo) to her new podcast “Novel Dialogue,” which premieres today. Each episode pairs a novelist and a critic for lively, fun, and sophisticated dialogues about the art of novel writing. Vadde will serve as a co-host on the show alongside John Plotz, the Barbara Mandel Professor of the Humanities at Brandeis… read more » about Professor Aarthi Vadde Debuts New Podcast “Novel Dialogue”
In Boston, the median white household owns $247,500 in wealth – assets minus debts. In the same city, the median Black household owns a mere $8 in wealth. That’s right, eight dollars. The same pattern repeats itself across the United States, where a yawning wealth gap separates Black and white Americans. Just how did that vast chasm come about? And how might we respond to it? Those questions are at the heart of the new six-part series, “The Arc of Justice,” a special production of the Sanford School of Public… read more » about ‘Arc of Justice’ Launches New Series on Inequality
This month, we present a collection of 12 Duke-authored books documenting women's contributions to history, culture and society. These books, along with many others, are available at Duke University Libraries, the Gothic Bookshop or the Regulator Bookshop. Women and the War Story by Miriam Cooke In “Women and the War Story,” Professor Emerita miriam cooke charts the emerging tradition of women’s contributions to what she calls the “War Story,” a genre formerly… read more » about 12 Duke-Authored Books on Women's History
About Liann I’m from the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, CA and attended UC Davis as an undergraduate. I knew as an undergrad I wanted to get my PhD, so my senior year I applied to doctoral programs, accepted my offer of admission, graduated in June, and was in Durham by August. My mentor was a little concerned I was taking on graduate school a bit fast, but I knew this was the right decision for me. My mentor in undergrad introduced me to the topic of networks and I immediately knew that was my focus. Choosing Duke… read more » about Liann Tucker Uses Network Analysis to Study Adolescent Mental Health and Health-Risk Behaviors
The following interview is reprinted from Duke Business Oriented Women’s Alumni Spotlight series. Janvi Shah is a first-year student at Harvard Business School in Cambridge, MA. Originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, she moved across the country to Duke, graduating in 2015 with a major in Neuroscience and minors in both Computer Science and Finance. At Duke, she was the Program Director for FEMMES (Females Excelling More in Math, Engineering, and Science) and founded StartupConnect, Duke’s first startup-… read more » about Q&A with Janvi Shah ‘15, MBA Candidate, Harvard Business School
As part of its event series tgiFHI, the Franklin Humanities Institute is conducting interviews with its faculty speakers in order to familiarize broader audiences with the diversity of research approaches in the humanities, arts, and interpretive social sciences at Duke University. Martin Miller is Professor of History at Duke University. In this edited and condensed interview, he describes life as an American graduate student in 1960s Moscow; how he analyzes photographs with a historian's eye; and how Western… read more » about Meet Your Humanities Faculty: Martin Miller
Richard J. Powell knows every artist, critic and art world star featured in the new HBO documentary “Black Art: In the Absence of Light.” He was a friend of the late art historian, curator and artist David Driskell, whose 1976 exhibition, Two Centuries of Black American Art, inspired the 90-minute special. Powell also knows a thing or two about correcting outdated narratives of art history. As author, curator, art historian and professor, Powell has dedicated his career to rewriting the cannon to include Black artists who… read more » about Richard Powell on Where Black Art Goes From Here
DURHAM, N.C. -- Duke researchers have been studying something that happens too slowly for our eyes to see. A team in biologist Philip Benfey’s lab wanted to see how plant roots burrow into the soil. So they set up a camera on rice seeds sprouting in clear gel, taking a new picture every 15 minutes for several days after germination. When they played their footage back at 15 frames per second, compressing 100 hours of growth into less than a minute, they saw that rice roots use a trick to gain their first foothold in the… read more » about Time-Lapse Reveals the Hidden Dance of Roots
Part of our “Art and Artists are Essential” collection and invitation. “I started writing music over winter break from home. I met Robbie Rosen, a producer and American Idol finalist, who helped me write original songs for the first time! This is a song about being stuck between two places, and I think every Duke student has felt this in some capacity, especially during the pandemic. We were back in our hometowns for longer than we are used to, and many of us are questioning where we feel most at home. I feel really… read more » about Sophia Roth ‘22: “Between Two Worlds”
The following piece is reprinted from Duke Baldwin Scholars’ February 2021 newsletter. I am narrowing in on a year of editing the photography for New York Magazine and digital sites from my apartment in Brooklyn. I have been working at New York Magazine for nine and half years. I am currently the Senior Photo Editor, where I primarily work on print but also oversee the digital editing. Moving remote last March was a major adjustment for our newsroom and especially for the print production of the… read more » about Baldwin Alumnae Spotlight: Maya Robinson ‘11, Senior Photo Editor, New York Magazine
William Gedney’s A Time of Youth finally makes its debut more than fifty years after its initial conception. The photographs were taken during Gedney’s Guggenheim Fellowship from 1966–67, as he wandered the streets of San Francisco capturing moments preceding the Summer of Love. Edited by Lisa McCarty ‘13, an alumna of Duke University’s MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts, the newest monograph by Gedney is published by Duke University Press in conjunction with the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript… read more » about William Gedney’s Photo Book “A Time of Youth,” Edited by Lisa McCarty MFA EDA ‘13
As part of its event series tgiFHI, the Franklin Humanities Institute is conducting interviews with its faculty speakers in order to familiarize broader audiences with the diversity of research approaches in the humanities, arts, and interpretive social sciences at Duke University. Jarvis McInnis is the Cordelia & William Laverack Family Assistant Professor of English at Duke. In this edited and condensed interview, he describes looking at home through a different lens, why his research on the… read more » about Meet Your Humanities Faculty: Jarvis McInnis
When Cultural Competence in Computing (3C) Fellows first opened its application, the program’s leadership was hoping to bring 20 computer science faculty into their first cohort. Instead, after just two days, they had nearly 80 applicants. “Overwhelmed—that was the first response,” said Nicki Washington, the program’s director and a professor of the practice of Computer Science at Duke. The numbers kept growing. By the time they stopped accepting applications, 3C had 144 fellows from 67 different organizations across four… read more » about Diversifying Computer Science, One Cohort at a Time
Dennis Keith Stanley, professor emeritus of Classical Studies at Duke, died Jan. 30. He was 86. He was the author of The Shield of Homer (Princeton University Press, 1993) a masterful interpretation of narrative sequence in the Iliad. It was nominated for the prestigious Goodwin Award of Merit of the American Philological Association (now the Society of Classical Studies). “Taking structural emphasis as a guide to poetic discourse,” said his publisher, he argued the Iliad was “not a poem of ‘might’ — as opposed to the… read more » about Duke Flags Lowered: Keith Stanley, Classical Studies Professor Emeritus, Dies at Age 86
For Drew Greene, it started with the children he coached in high school. He was part of a soccer program for youth in his hometown of Richmond, Virginia. When his players told him about their siblings who had been sent to jail for simple school-yard fights, Greene was inspired to start investigating the school-to-prison pipeline. That interest led him to join the Henrico County Equity and Diversity Advisory Committee in his senior year. He hoped to help address the racial, gender and socioeconomic disparities in his school… read more » about A New Minor Prepares Students to Take on an Unequal World—in Any Field
DURHAM, N.C. -- A new pair of studies from a Duke research team’s long-term work in New Zealand make the case that mental health struggles in early life can lead to poorer physical health and advanced aging in adulthood. But because mental health problems peak early in life and can be identified, the researchers say that more investment in prompt mental health care could be used to prevent later diseases and lower societal healthcare costs. “The same people who experience psychiatric conditions when they are young go on to… read more » about Growing Evidence That Mentally Ill Youths Become Less Healthy Adults
Professor Vincent Conitzer has accepted a leadership role in a new artificial intelligence (AI) venture with the University at Oxford, the institution announced in a press release on Feb. 16. The Institute for Ethics in AI at Oxford aims to tackle major ethical challenges posed by AI, from facial recognition to voter profiling, brain machine interfaces to weaponized drones, and the ongoing discourse about how AI will impact employment on a global scale. Conitzer is joining the organization as the institute’s Head of… read more » about Duke Faculty Member to Partner With New AI Institute at Oxford
DURHAM, N.C. -- Humans aren’t the only mammals that form long-term bonds with a single, special mate -- some bats, wolves, beavers, foxes and other animals do, too. But new research suggests the brain circuitry that makes love last in some species may not be the same in others. The study, appearing Feb. 12 in the journal Scientific Reports, compares monogamous and promiscuous species within a closely related group of lemurs, distant primate cousins of humans from the island Madagascar. Red-bellied lemurs and mongoose lemurs… read more » about Lemurs Show There’s No Single Formula For Lasting Love
As part of its event series tgiFHI, the Franklin Humanities Institute is conducting interviews with its faculty speakers in order to familiarize broader audiences with the diversity of research approaches in the humanities, arts, and interpretive social sciences at Duke University. Philip Rupprecht is Professor of Music. In this edited and condensed interview, he describes the power of the press, the BBC, and other cultural institutions in mediating British musical culture, and how his own research… read more » about Meet Your Humanities Faculty: Philip Rupprecht
Last fall, Duke alumni Alex Sanchez Bressler ’18 and Daniela Saucedo ‘18, along with Saucedo’s mother, Ana Brewton, started a fused glass business. The trio now melts glass at a sweltering 1480 degrees Fahrenheit in the Sonoran Desert. Their kiln—a one-ton oven consuming a quarter of the garage—completes one firing over the course of fifteen hours. This was not something they planned to do together. La Colombe Contemporary Glasswork was launched during the COVID-19 pandemic within the confines of Brewton’s house in… read more » about All in the Family: La Colombe Contemporary Glasswork
How many people have seen their cervix? Obscured from view and stigmatized socially, the cervix is critical to women’s, transgender-men’s, and non-binary folks’ health — and potential reproductive health issues. A team formed through Duke’s Center for Global Women’s Health Technologies (GWHT) has created a device that not only holds immense medical potential but the potential to empower people with cervixes across the globe: It makes visible a previously invisible organ. Nimmi Ramanujam (Ph.D.), founder of GWHT and… read more » about Invisible No More, the Cervix
State leaders and education officials weighing whether to re-open schools are considering myriad factors, from infection rates to vaccine rollout to a reluctance on the part of both teachers and families. Three Duke experts, including a pediatrics professor co-leading a National Institutes of Health-funded study on how to reopen schools safely, spoke to journalists Wednesday in a virtual media briefing. (Watch the briefing on YouTube) Here are excerpts: DR. IBUKUN CHRISTINE AKINBOYO, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF… read more » about Masks, Distancing, Hand-washing Crucial for Reopening Schools
The United Nations has declared February 11 the sixth International Day of Women and Girls in Science. Presently, less than a third of scientists worldwide are women, and only about a third of women in college are pursing STEM fields. How many more great, female minds are out there who might help solve the world’s problems? We’d like to celebrate the day, and Duke’s path-breaking women scientists, by sharing some highlights of their work over the last year. Amanda Hargrove Duke chemist Amanda Hargrove identified a… read more » about Duke Celebrates Women and Girls in Science Day