Franklin Humanities Institute

The Warehouse is home to the Humanities Laboratories initiative, which aims to contribute to Duke's research and pedagogical missions by convening groups of faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates around discipline-crossing projects, in spaces designed specifically to facilitate collaborative work.

Complementing historic strengths in supporting faculty and graduate scholarship (notably through the twelve Annual Seminars they hosted between 1999 and 2011), the Labs invite undergraduates to participate as researchers themselves, helping to define emerging and future areas of humanistic inquiry.

Conceived as a "laboratory" for humanists from diverse disciplines, each annual seminar focuses on a theme or problem with broad historical, philosophical, or geographical scope.

These limited-term labs include dedicated space in the historic Smith Warehouse home of the FHI, and are organized around a research area and specific projects and promote vertical integration among undergraduates, graduates, and faculty.

Since 2002, series speakers have included the Harvard historian Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, the Ciompi Quartet violinist Hsiao-mei Ku, Radio France Internationale Correspondent Dominique Roch, the writer and human rights activist Ariel Dorfman, as well as John Hope Franklin himself.

The Mellon Annual Distinguished Lecture in Humanities has featured well-known scholars from many fields and from across the globe, including the philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah, the British filmmaker Isaac Julien, the Dutch cultural theorist and video artist Mieke Bal, the Indian historian Romila Thapar, and the US literary critic Emory Elliott.

As one of the participants on the Duke iTunes U project, the Franklin Humanities Institute has made a number of its public events available for download as video and audio podcasts.