Dear Colleague,
I am writing with great excitement to invite you to apply for participation in our NEH Summer Institute, “African-American Literature and Social History"! I am Wahneema Lubiano and along with a few of my colleagues and the selected participants for this program, we will come together for our NEH Summer Institute 2013 at Duke University in beautiful Durham, North Carolina.
Durham was once again named a “Tree City USA” in 2011 for the 27th year. Our city is part of North Carolina’s Research Triangle, a region the combines three major research-oriented cities in one large metropolitan region comprised of several major universities, two of the finest medical systems in the country (Duke and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), and a cluster of pharmaceutical and internet companies and research facilities. In addition to its place as one of the top centers for urban forestry, Durham is also the home of what came to be known through the first half of the 20th century as Black Wall Street, a city within a city that W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington both visited in 1910 and thought of as the national model for the black middle class, a city anchored by two African American insurance and financial giants—the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company and the Mechanics and Farmers Bank.
I am writing to you as director of the Institute—which will meet from July 8th through July 26th—in order to provide information about “African-American Literature and Social History,” a wonderful three-week opportunity for secondary school teachers to be part of a project that analyzes the interplay between the social worlds of African-American literature, the social history out of which that literature was produced, and the moment in which both we ourselves and the texts find ourselves now. We’re going to integrate literary analysis and criticism with insights drawn from research in social history using readings of African-American literature along with social, historical, and philosophy writings relevant to the frame and context of the fictional works. The readings will include novels and short stories, historical materials, and literary criticism. The project will also include excerpts from films and documentaries and music selections. We will explore the situations and conditions of the times out of which these texts arose. We are interested in discussing these narratives as the means by which we both recognize and know the world, and are able, at the same time, to imagine it in fuller and richer detail. And we are excited by the prospect of doing this work in one of the regions of the country that is rich in historical significance itself.
This letter will provide an overview of the Institute, including the faculty, structure, and the syllabus, supplemented by greater detail provided in the buttons to the left.
Faculty
I am Associate Chair and Associate Professor in the Department of African and African American Studies and the Literature Program at Duke. I am the editor of and contributor to The House That Race Built, an anthology of essays that address the contemporary moment in African-American critical race theory. My fields of scholarship include African-American intellectual history and cultural studies. I’ve published essays on Toni Morrison and Spike Lee’s films, among other work, and am especially interested in the critical analysis of the relationship between the form of African-American fiction and the social world that provides its context. I will be joined by a team of scholars which includes:
-
Tess Chakkalakal, Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at Bowdoin College. Professor Chakkalakal is an expert on the evolution of the “Uncle Tom” figure in both American literature and in popular culture. Her most recent book,Novel Bondage, examines the representation of slave marriage and intimacy in 19th century fiction.
-
William Darity, Jr., Professor of Public Policy and Economics. Professor Darity is the Arts and Sciences Professor of Public Policy, African and African American Studies, and Economics at Duke University. He is Chair of the Department of African and African American Studies and Director of the Research Network on Racial and Ethnic Inequality. He has long been interested in an examination of the relationship between African American literature and knowledge produced in the social sciences.
-
Thavolia Glymph, Associate Professor of African and African American Studies and History at Duke University. Professor Glymph is a specialist in slavery and Reconstruction. Her recent award-winning study, Out of the House of Bondage, reconstructs our understanding of plantation life and the relationship between slaves and owners. She will provide the history complement to Professor Chakkalakal’s expertise in 19th century fiction.
-
Harryette Mullen, Professor of English at the University of California at Los Angeles. Professor Mullen is an award-winning poet and literary critic, the ideal scholar to lead the small group working on Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls. Mullen will provide guidance in the use of the methods of literary criticism by the participants at the institute.
-
Daniella Ann Cook, Assistant Professor at the University of South Carolina's College of Education, educator and scholar of the systematic recording of human culture. Her most recent work dissolves rigid boundaries between fiction and detailed observation of cultural life with her creation of a composite counter-story based upon her fieldwork with teachers in post-Katrina New Orleans. She will work with Institute participants to assist them in identifying the useful materials that promote the transfer of ideas they obtain from the Institute into their classrooms and curricular.
Applicant Profile
We are looking for teachers who are interested in how interpretation of literary texts may be enriched by extended discussions of richly detailed social history. We especially welcome literary studies teachers who are interested in what empirical evidence might add to close study of novels, short stories, films and documentaries, and music. Applications from teachers of history, of visual studies, and current events are also welcome. We seek to bring together a diverse assemblage of teachers from a variety of schools: public, private, charter, urban, suburban, rural, large, small, or medium. The Institute scholars will be chosen from a pool of applicants that will reflect the varying levels of teaching, disciplines, and teaching assignments.
We are particularly interested in teachers who are placed where they can disseminate to their colleagues what they learn here; however, we do not want to discourage teachers who have found themselves with great interest in our topic but are isolated in their teaching situations and lack company in pursuing these interests.
Institutional Context
The institutional context for this NEH Summer Institute is provided by the Department of African and African American Studies in Duke University’s School of Arts and Sciences—a department with a faculty committed to research and teaching on the lives and culture of peoples of African descent worldwide—in partnership with the Research Network on Racial & Ethnic Inequality, a consortium of scholars engaged in interdisciplinary inquiry on disparities between racial and ethnic groups in a comparative, cross-national context. All of the Institute’s class meetings will be held in the Social Science Research Institute, located in the Erwin Mill building on W. Main Street in Durham, a short walk from Duke’s East campus and a short bus ride from Duke’s West and Central campuses.
Reading and Institute Structure
Reading for the Institute will include six novels that will be read by all Institute participants: Black Artemis, Wild Seed, The Bluest Eye, Linden Hills, Native Son, and Nat Turner (a graphic novel). Each small group will also read one additional text selected from among: The Resurrection of Nat Turner: Part One—The Witnesses, Cotton Comes to Harlem, Flight to Canada, Dessa Rose, and For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf. Additional historical, social science research, and literary critical readings will be provided by the Institute. We will send novels for advance reading to the participants a few weeks ahead of time; the other materials will be also be made available to students through links to Sakai, an electronic course that will be set up for the Institute.
The Institute will meet Mondays through Fridays from 9am until 2:15pm, with small group meetings from 2:30p to 4pm. The daily sessions will include framing lectures that begin each day, with discussion of the readings in the morning. Following an hour’s break for lunch, the afternoon sessions will include the viewing of film and documentary excerpts, and listening to some music, followed by discussion with special attention to the teaching of novels, articles, visual materials, and musical selections in the classroom. The workday will include small group meetings following a break in the day at 2:15pm. Institute participants will break up into small group meetings in order to address classroom work possibilities and lesson planning.
The Institute will require writing assignments as a means of aiding discussion and furthering analysis and synthesis. Each NEH summer scholar will produce a final project that will be shared with the Institute community at the close of the third week. The projects will be documented in a six- to eight-page paper and a lesson plan for incorporating one of five additional novels that will be assigned to a specific small group, into either a literature or social studies curriculum. The completion of these final projects will be facilitated by the smaller groups of five each led by one of the faculty members. Each group of five will be assigned one novel that will form the anchor for their design of a lesson plan. A group’s particular novel will be in addition to the six novels read by the entire group. The small groups will be assembled based upon each NEH Summer Scholar’s interests, instructional responsibilities, and grade levels of students taught.
As director of the Institute, I will keep office hours in order to assure that I meet with each participate at least two times during the three weeks of the institute, including one meeting with each participant in the first week of the seminar.
Institute Course Syllabus and Schedule
We will make available through this webpage a detailed syllabus and schedule for the institute. Prior to our first class meeting on Monday, July 8th, we will have a reception and dinner on Sunday, July 7th. We will end the Institute with another reception and dinner on Friday, July 26th. Please check back to this webpage for the syllabus and schedule so that you can inform yourself with regard to the distribution of the work and to have a sense of what your days will be like here at the Institute.
Continuing Education Credit
Institute participants will receive a certificate of completion, and the Research Network on Racial and Ethnic Inequality, the co-sponsor of the Institute, will work with each participant’s school system to meet professional development credit standards for the Institute.
Library and Computer Resources
Duke University is one of the top ten universities in the United States (according to the U.S. News and World Reportuniversity rankings) and has an enormous research library system and numerous satellite libraries across the campus. As part of the cooperation among Duke and the other campuses in this area—the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina State, and North Carolina Central University–our libraries’ holdings are augmented by the very large and well-regard collections of those three additional institutions.
Institute meetings will take place at the Social Science Research Institute on Main Street in Durham approximately three blocks from Duke’s East Campus and close to Duke’s West Campus. We will make arrangements for institute participants to have access to the Duke libraries, to the internet and to email. Participants will have the access and advantages accorded to visiting scholars.
Stipends
The amount of the stipend provided by NEH for Institute participants is $2,700. Stipends are intended to help cover travel expenses to and from the Institute location, research expenses not provided by the institute or available through campus libraries, and living expenses for the duration of the period spent in residence. One-third of the stipend will be waiting for the participants upon arrival; the remaining two-thirds of the stipend will be available at the beginning of the second and third weeks of the institute.
Housing and Local Arrangements
Participants who fly into Durham will use RDU, the national and international airport for the Research Triangle area of North Carolina. Transport cost from RDU to Durham is approximately $50.00
Participants are offered three major housing options that include rooms in an air-conditioned dorm away from student groups that occupy part of the campus during the summer; fully furnished one-two-and three-bedroom apartment communities in Durham; and a hotel, the Millenium. The rate for dorm housing will be available in the coming weeks. Two bedroom apartment prices in Durham begin at $95 a day, and three bedroom apartments at $150. Cost per participant can be as little as $50 per night within walking distance of the Social Science Research Institute. Participants will also have bus transportation available to them. The Millenium hotel provides a Duke University rate of $79 per night plus tax for single or double occupancy. Complimentary high-speed internet is included. The hotel’s shuttle provides transportation to the Duke campus free of charge.
More details will be forthcoming here at the Institute webpage.
Application Information
The application process includes two parts. First, you must register with the NEH on their website and declare that you intend to apply for our institute. That web address is: http://securegrants.neh.gov/education/participants/ This Institute’s webpage also includes a link to that site. You will fill out an online “cover sheet” with basic information. You finalize your online information by following their directions. Please print out this “cover sheet”. Next, you will send the completed hard copy application (just the original) to the address below:
Wahneema Lubiano, Associate Chair
African & African American Studies
Box 90252
Durham, NC 27708
Your hard copy application must be postmarked no later than 04 March 2013. Successful applicants will be notified of their selection on Monday, 01 April 2013 and will have until Friday, 05 April 2013 to accept or decline the offer. The hard copy application includes the completed cover sheet, a resume or brief biography, and application essay, and two letters of recommendation. More detailed instructions for compiling your hard copy application are available at the NEH website specified above.
The most important part of the application is the essay of no more than four double-spaced pages. This essay should include your reasons for applying to the specific project; your relevant personal and academic information; your qualifications to do the work of the project and make a contribution to it; what you hope to accomplish as part of the institute; and the relation of the institute’s study to your teaching.
Again, we truly appreciate your interest and with great enthusiasm invite you to apply to participate in our Institute. Over the coming weeks and months, we will be continually updating our webpage. If you have additional questions, please contact Jackie Terrell by email (terrell@duke.edu). We look forward to hearing from you and reading your application materials.
Sincerely,
Wahneema Lubiano NEH Summer Institute Director
Disclaimer: Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this {article, book, exhibition, film, program, database, report, Web resource}, do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
