Student applications are now open for this summer’s Story+ research program. Applications are due on February 22 but will be evaluated on a rolling basis, so students should apply as soon as possible.
Story+ is a six-week summer research experience for undergraduate and graduate students who work in small teams to bring academic research to life through dynamic storytelling. In 2023, the program will run in person from May 17 through June 30. Graduate and undergraduate students will receive a stipend for their participation. Please see details and application information.
Story+ is administered by the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute in conjunction with Bass Connections, with support from Duke University Libraries.
The undergraduate research stipend will be $3,150. While we will help connect you to on-campus housing resources, room and board arrangements (on or off campus) are the responsibility of participants.
Graduate student project managers, whose commitment is for a similar time frame with more limited hours, will receive a stipend in line with graduate student summer funding requirements and expectations. The details of these stipends will be shared as soon as they are available.
Generally, students receive their stipends in two equal payments at the end of each program month, May and June. Please be aware that policies may require different payment paperwork and longer approval processes for students in select categories, including (but not limited to) international students, non-Duke students, DKU students, non-US citizens. In such cases, you may not receive your stipend according to the timeline mentioned above. Please email fhi@duke.edu and/or contact the visa office and/or reach out to your financial aid advisor for guidance on making summer plans.
When applying, you’ll be able to select, and rank, up to three different Story+ projects.
For the application, you’ll be asked to provide the following information:
Resume
Unofficial Transcript
A one-paragraph Statement of Interest per project chosen (250 words)
A one-paragraph Contribution Statement per project chosen detailing the experiences, strengths, skills, interests, and abilities in humanities research you bring to the project (250 words)
Up to two References (no actual letters, just names and email addresses)
The priority deadline for all student applications is 11:59 pm on February 22, 2023, but we will evaluate applications on a rolling basis, so please get your application in as soon as you can.
Questions
For any questions about the program or application, please contact fhi@duke.edu.
We strongly encourage you to review what project leaders indicate as to the desired qualities of team participants and if they request any supplemental materials for you to upload. Full details about each Story+ project can be found on the Story+ page.
Story+ is a 6-week summer program that immerses interdisciplinary teams of students, faculty, and staff in arts and humanities research and public storytelling. Story+ promotes inquiry-based learning and vertically integrated collaboration through projects that may be driven by archival research, oral history, textual analysis, visual analysis, cultural criticism, art, or other humanistic research methods. Small teams of undergraduates, supervised regularly by graduate student project managers, collaborate on focused projects that contribute to the broader research, teaching, scholarly communications, and/or public engagement agendas of sponsors such as Duke faculty, Duke librarians, non-profit organizations, and other University or non-University entities. Story+ final products have taken the form of a variety of written content, museum/gallery/library exhibits, websites, annotated archives, short films/videos, curricula, podcasts, social media content, and other genres.
A typical Story+ team consists of a project sponsor, a project manager (MA, MFA or PhD student), and three undergraduate project researchers. Story+ provides funding for undergraduate and graduate students so that they can dedicate time and attention to six weeks of project work.
With mentorship from sponsors, project managers, and Story+ infrastructures, undergraduate students learn how to conduct rigorous interpretive research in a team setting, connect academic knowledge to broader social issues, and communicate their research fordiverse audiences in a complex media environment. Graduate students get the distinctive pedagogical and professional opportunity to manage complex collaborative projects, mentor undergraduates, and facilitate the networks of relationships that such projects require. Project sponsors benefit from the opportunity to engage a dedicated team of students and the scholarly resources of Duke to begin a new project, shift an existing project into its next phase, or bring a project into completion with an eye towards engaging a broader audience. All participants benefit from the opportunity to try out new ideas and methods among a supportive, creative community of colleagues.
For summer 2023, we anticipate selecting up to 6 teams. As has been our practice, all proposals will be reviewed by a committee composed of program co-directors, FHI support staff, Library staff, past graduate student mentors, and previous project sponsors.
While we have found benefits to remote research work and might return to offering programs with this option in the future, we do not anticipate teams working remotely this year. Therefore, all project proposals should anticipate a full return to on-site engagement for summer 2023.
What Have Story+ Teams Done?
Outcomes of past Story+ teams have ranged from “finished products” (e.g., a completed curatorial plan, a physical exhibit, or a published research report), “prototypes” or pilot projects (e.g., a prototype online teaching module or a proof-of-concept audio podcast), as well as preliminary, exploratory research that contributes to a larger ongoing project (e.g., oral histories, translation, transcription, or archival discovery). As possible points of reference, please see our Story+ website for descriptions and outcomes from previous teams. While we value products, we also encourage participation by those committed to experimenting with novel processes of research. In particular, we recognize that team-based approaches may be new to some, and we want to work with you to explore how such an approach might enhance your work.
What Are the Objectives of Story+?
Our primary objectives are to enable teams to conduct rigorous, hands-on arts/humanities research, to facilitate collaborative and creative research transmission, and to promote community, inclusion, and care as humanistic modes of work.
We recognize that most undergraduate applicants will be new to research outside the classroom and/or to team-based research specifically. Story+ “Central” works collaboratively with project sponsors and project managers to cultivate week-to-week and overarching workflows that also teach independent and rigorous research practices.
What Time Commitment Should Project Sponsors Expect?
Project sponsors should plan to be accessible to their teams on at least a weekly basis and are expected to be regularly available to collaborate with their full team. The most successful of our projects have been those with sponsors who have clearly articulated goals for their own engagement with the teams and who identify key components of responsibility for project managers and work with them to amend/expand those plans as the work evolves.
The Qualtrics application form asks for the following components:
Brief description of the overall project planned to be on-site at Duke campus for the full six-weeks of work (May 17-June 30). Think of this as the short abstract we might use to advertise the team to prospective student applicants. (250 words)
Description of the specific project goal(s) and output(s) you hope to accomplish through Story+. Please address how Story+ goals (providing a rich arts/humanities team-based research and public storytelling experience for graduates and undergraduates) align with your project goals.
A basic timeline (approximately May 17 to June 30) of project milestones, proposed team-based processes, desired outcome(s), and how/why this work is important to your research/your unit/your organization.
A tentative six-week work plan. This might include a sketch of methods, methodologies, weekly schedule, opportunities for students, campus/community partners who might collaborate, post-Story+ afterlives of the work.
List of essential skills undergraduates will need to contribute to the project. The more specific you can be, the better. We return to these details when constructing our call for applicants. (Please note that, while you can encourage particular undergraduates to apply and they have the opportunity to rank your project as their first choice, all undergraduate applicants will be placed in a general pool for consideration across projects.)
List of skills or technologies you believe your project will need beyond those brought by students. If you can provide training or access to these skills and technologies, please indicate that here. If you cannot, please suggest pathways for acquisition, if you know of online or campus resources. If you don’t know where to access them, let us know that also. This information will help us plan how best to support each team’s work as well as possibilities of shared training sessions across teams.
The name(s) of any specific graduate students you have in mind for the role of your project manager? If you do not have a specific student in mind, please list essential skills or disciplinary knowledge you would like your project manager to have. We have had Master’s students and Doctoral students fill this role with success.
Any funding from external sources or other Duke units that you plan to engage to support the work of the team. This can be for additional graduate or undergraduate team participants, to support away-from-campus field trips, or fund visitors to campus for team consults.
Story+ is funded by Together Duke and administered by the Franklin Humanities Institute in conjunction with Bass Connections, with additional support from the Duke Libraries.
Eager to explore interdisciplinary humanities research? Student applications are now open for this summer’s Story+ research program. The application deadline is February 20, but applications will be evaluated on a rolling basis, so students should apply as soon as possible.
Story+ is a six-week summer research experience for undergraduate and graduate students who work in small teams to bring academic research to life through dynamic storytelling. In 2022, the program will be offered in a hybrid format from May 11 through June 24. Nine teams will be fully in-person and two fully remote. Graduate and undergraduate students will receive a stipend for their participation. Please see details and application information.
Faculty are encouraged to link a Story+ project proposal to a 2022-2023 Bass Connections project team. Those wishing to do so must submit a joint proposal through the Bass Connections RFP process.
About Story+
Story+ is a six-week summer program that immerses interdisciplinary teams of students, faculty and staff in humanities research and public storytelling. Story+ promotes inquiry-based learning and vertically integrated collaboration through projects that may be driven by archival research, oral history, textual analysis, visual analysis, cultural criticism or other humanistic research methods.
Small teams of undergraduates, supervised by graduate student mentors, collaborate on focused projects that contribute to the broader research, teaching, scholarly communications, and/or public engagement agendas of Duke faculty, Duke librarians, nonprofit organizations and other University or non-University project sponsors. Story+ final projects have taken the form of writing, exhibits, websites, annotated archives, short films/videos, podcasts, social media content and other genres.
A typical Story+ team consists of a project sponsor, a graduate student mentor and three undergraduate researchers. Project sponsors benefit from the opportunity to engage a team of students, who are provided with appropriate guidance and mentoring through Story+, in producing a tangible product that may further their work. Story+ undergraduate students learn how to conduct rigorous interpretive research in a team setting, connect academic knowledge to broader social issues and communicate their research stories with diverse audiences – within and outside the University – in a complex media environment. Graduate mentors get the distinctive pedagogical and professional opportunity to manage a complex collaborative project and facilitate the network of relationships that such projects entail.
Call for Proposals Story+ 2022
The Franklin Humanities Institute invites proposals from Duke faculty, archivists, artists and other campus and community members for the Summer 2022 edition of Story+. We anticipate we’ll gather again full-time, fully in-person for Story+ Summer 2022. In order to provide options for our diverse student population, though, we are interested in accommodating proposals for projects that are full-time and fully remote. Please indicate your preferred format in your proposals.
We seek projects of any topic that are anchored in humanities research methods and questions, with well-defined project goals that can be feasibly completed in six weeks. Outcomes of past Story+ teams have ranged from finished products (e.g., a completed curatorial plan a physical exhibit or a published research report), prototypes or pilot projects (e.g., a prototype online teaching module or a proof-of-concept audio podcast), as well as preliminary, exploratory research that contributes to a larger ongoing project (e.g., oral histories, translation, transcription or archival discovery).
We encourage proposals that build upon or towards course offerings, Humanities Labs, or Bass Connections teams during the regular school year. As possible points of reference, please see our Story+ website for descriptions and outcomes from previous teams. P.I.s or projects previously supported by Story+ are eligible to apply, but note that priority may be given, in these cases, to projects that demonstrate a significantly new direction or outcome. Individuals are strongly encouraged to consult with Amanda Starling Gould about interest and available opportunities.
Story+ is built upon the foundational values of care, inclusion, and community. Our primary objectives are to enable undergraduate and graduate students to participate in rigorous, hands-on humanities research, to facilitate collaborative and creative research transmission and to promote teamwork and interdisciplinary as humanities modes of work.
Our values also animate how we reach out for partnerships across Duke and beyond Duke, in the projects we solicit and select, in the ways we recruit and support students, and in our common programming throughout the summer. We understand that our work is done with and within a privileged institution of higher education that has a historically complicated relationship with research subjects, objectification and positivism. To generate humanistic research means paying attention to how structures and systems influence the collection of evidence, methods of analysis and communication of results and to our particular identities and contexts as researchers.
This embrace of situated knowledge does not require that Story+ projects adhere to certain topics, modes of work; or presentation practices; it does however, require a self-awareness about the choices any particular project makes from subject matter, to methodology, to communication with the public, to divisions of labor and supervisory authority. As such, we ask all potential and participating partners to consider how, following our Story+ Code of Conduct, they and their projects will contribute to a research community where inclusion, consensus and reciprocity are at the heart of practice and communication.
Project sponsors should plan to be accessible to their teams on at least a weekly basis and are expected to be regularly available to collaborate with their full team. The most successful and highly ranked of our projects are those with dedicated sponsors and clearly articulated goals. All project leaders will be asked to oblige the Story+ Policies and Expectations for Story+ Team Leaders and the Story+ Code of Conduct included therein.
The application form will ask for the following components:
Brief description of the overall project. This year, we are inviting proposals for full-time, fully in-person and fully online projects. Please indicate your preferred format in your proposals.
Description of the specific project goal(s) and output(s) you hope to accomplish through Story+. Please include here a basic timeline (approximately May 11 to June 24), project milestones, expected outcome(s) and how/why this work is important to your research/your unit/your organization.
Description of how your project aligns with the mission and goals of Story+ to offer a rich humanities research and public storytelling experience for graduates and undergraduates
Workplan: this is optional but ideal. This might include a sketch of methods, methodologies, weekly schedule, opportunities for students, campus/community partners who might collaborate, post-Story+ afterlives of the research.
List of essential skills undergraduates will need to contribute to the project
Do you have a graduate student in mind for the role of your graduate mentor? If you would like us to help match you with a mentor, please list essential skills you would like this person to have.
Any funding from external sources or other Duke units that can support the work of the team
For queries about the program and/or to discuss specific project ideas, please email Amanda Starling Gould.
Story+ is co-directed by Amanda Starling Gould and Jules Odendahl-James. Story+ is funded by Together Duke and administered by the Franklin Humanities Institute in conjunction with Bass Connections, with additional support from the Duke Libraries.
Interested in exploring interdisciplinary humanities research topics and methodologies? Student applications are now open for this summer’s Story+ research program. The application deadline is February 19, but applications will be evaluated on a rolling basis, so students should apply as soon as possible.
Story+ is a six-week summer research experience for undergraduate and graduate students who work in small teams to bring academic research to life through dynamic storytelling. In 2021, the program will be offered remotely during Summer Session 1, from May 12 through June 25. Undergraduate students will receive a competitive stipend for participation. Graduate students can receive a stipend or travel support up to $2,500. Please see details and application information.
The Story+ Summer Research Program is now accepting proposals for Summer 2021 projects that engage undergraduate and graduate students in collaborative research on humanities-based topics. Proposals are due by December 4 at 5:00 p.m.
Faculty are encouraged to link a Story+ project proposal to a 2021-2022 Bass Connections project team. Those wishing to do so must also complete the Bass Connections proposal process, also due December 4, 2020.
About Story+
Story+ is a six-week summer program that immerses interdisciplinary teams of students, faculty and staff in humanities research and public storytelling. Story+ promotes inquiry-based learning and vertically integrated collaboration through projects that may be driven by archival research, oral history, textual analysis, visual analysis, cultural criticism or other humanistic research methods.
Small teams of undergraduates, supervised by graduate student mentors, collaborate on focused projects that contribute to the broader research, teaching, scholarly communications, and/or public engagement agendas of Duke faculty, Duke librarians, nonprofit organizations and other University or non-University project sponsors. Story+ final projects have taken the form of writing, exhibits, websites, annotated archives, short films/videos, podcasts, social media content and other genres.
A typical Story+ team consists of a project sponsor, a graduate student mentor and three undergraduate researchers. Project sponsors benefit from the opportunity to engage a team of students, who are provided with appropriate guidance and mentoring through Story+, in producing a tangible product that may further their work. Story+ undergraduate students learn how to conduct rigorous interpretive research in a team setting, connect academic knowledge to broader social issues and communicate their research stories with diverse audiences – within and outside the University – in a complex media environment. Graduate mentors get the distinctive pedagogical and professional opportunity to manage a complex collaborative project and facilitate the network of relationships that such projects entail.
Call for Proposals Story+ 2021
The Franklin Humanities Institute invites proposals from Duke faculty, archivists and other campus and community members for the Summer 2021 edition of Story+. We seek projects of any topic that are anchored in humanities research methods and questions, with well-defined project goals that can be feasibly completed in six weeks. Outcomes of past Story+ teams have ranged from finished products (e.g., a completed curatorial plan a physical exhibit or a published research report), prototypes or pilot projects (e.g., a prototype online teaching module or a proof-of-concept audio podcast), as well as preliminary, exploratory research that contributes to a larger ongoing project (e.g., oral histories, translation, transcription or archival discovery).
We encourage proposals that build upon or towards course offerings, Humanities Labs, or Bass Connections teams during the regular school year. As possible points of reference, please see our Story+ website for descriptions and outcomes from previous teams. P.I.s or projects previously supported by Story+ are eligible to apply, but note that priority may be given, in these cases, to projects that demonstrate a significantly new direction or outcome.
Individuals are strongly encouraged to consult with Amanda Starling Gould about interest and available opportunities. Story+ is built upon the foundational values of care, inclusion, and community. Our primary objectives are to enable undergraduate and graduate students to participate in rigorous, hands-on humanities research, to facilitate collaborative and creative research transmission and to promote teamwork and interdisciplinarity as humanities modes of work.
Our values also animate how we reach out for partnerships across Duke and beyond Duke, in the projects we solicit and select, in the ways we recruit and support students, and in our common programming throughout the summer. We understand that our work is done with and within a privileged institution of higher education that has a historically complicated relationship with research subjects, objectification and positivism. To generate humanistic research means paying attention to how structures and systems influence the collection of evidence, methods of analysis and communication of results and to our particular identities and contexts as researchers.
This embrace of situated knowledge does not require that Story+ projects adhere to certain topics, modes of work; or presentation practices; it does however, require a self-awareness about the choices any particular project makes from subject matter, to methodology, to communication with the public, to divisions of labor and supervisory authority. As such, we ask all potential and participating partners to consider how you might (no matter your topics or goals) acknowledge, address, or understand intertwining systems of oppression (ableism, racism, sexism, heterosexism, etc.) as you create your projects and, more importantly, your projects’ plans of student work.
Project sponsors should plan to be accessible to their teams on at least a weekly basis and are expected to be regularly available to collaborate with their full team. The most successful and highly ranked of our projects are those with dedicated sponsors and clearly articulated goals.
Please Note: We anticipate Story+ 2021 will again be a remote experience. Feeling a little stuck on how to translate or transform your project to online-only? Amanda Starling Gould is available to help all teams envision and enact collaborative remote research practices and methods.
The Qualtrics application form will ask for the following components:
Brief description of the overall project
Description of the specific project goal(s) and output(s) you hope to accomplish through Story+. Please include here a basic timeline (approximately May 13 to June 25), project milestones, expected outcome(s) and how/why this work is important to your research/your unit/your organization.
Description of how your project aligns with the mission and goals of Story+ to offer a rich humanities research and public storytelling experience for graduates and undergraduates
Workplan: this is optional but ideal. This might include a sketch of methods, methodologies, weekly schedule, opportunities for students, campus/community partners who might collaborate, post-Story+ afterlives of the research.
List of essential skills undergraduates will need to contribute to the project
Do you have a graduate student in mind for the role of your graduate mentor? If you would like us to help match you with a mentor, please list essential skills you would like this person to have.
Any funding from external sources or other Duke units that can support the work of the team
For queries about the program and/or to discuss specific project ideas, please email Amanda Starling Gould. Story+ is funded by Together Duke and administered by the Franklin Humanities Institute in conjunction with Bass Connections, with additional support from the Duke Libraries.
Interested in bringing academic research to life through dynamic storytelling? Check out the new projects for the Story+ Summer Research Program before applications open on January 24. The priority deadline to apply is February 14, but applications will be evaluated on a rolling basis.
Story+ is a six-week summer research experience for undergraduate and graduate students interested in bringing academic research to life through dynamic storytelling. It is offered through the Franklin Humanities Institute (FHI) and Bass Connections, with support from Versatile Humanists at Duke and Duke Libraries. It is open to all undergraduates, except graduating seniors, and all graduate students, with preference given to doctoral students in the humanities and interpretive social sciences.
Undergraduates work in small teams with graduate student mentors, in a collaborative and creative research environment. Each project has a sponsor. Students learn to conduct qualitative, humanities-based research (e.g., archival research, narrative analysis, visual analysis, ethnography) and to communicate their research through effective storytelling techniques. Final projects may take the form of writing, websites, exhibits, short films or other media, depending on the project’s goals.
Story+ takes place during Summer Session 1 (May 13 to June 26, 2020). Undergraduates receive up to $3,000 to defray housing and living expenses. Please note that amounts may be lower for projects with off-campus components, as special arrangements for housing, meals, etc. will be made for students at the field sites. For participating students receiving need-based financial aid, Duke will assume responsibility for half of the summer earnings requirement. Graduate students can receive a stipend or travel support up to $2,500.
How to Apply
Story+ applicationsopen on January 24. When applying, students will be able to select and rank up to three Story+ projects. Applicants will be asked to provide the following information:
Resume
Unofficial transcript
One-paragraph statement of interest per project chosen
One-paragraph contribution statement per project chosen detailing the experiences, strengths, skills, interests and abilities in humanities research they bring to the project
Up to two references (no actual letters, just names and email addresses).
For any questions about the program or application, please contact fhi@duke.edu.
The priority deadline for all student applications is February 14 at 11:59 p.m., but FHI will evaluate applications on a rolling basis, so please get your application in as soon as you can. Full details about each project can be found on the Story+ page.
Directors, teaching and graduate assistants, and fellows of the Representing Migration Humanities Lab (top row: Charlotte Sussman, Tsitsi Jaji, Domenika Baran, Jarvis McInnis, Corina Stan; second row: Sasha Panaram, Karen Little, Sonia Nayak, Catherine Lee, Isabella Arbelaez; third row: Jessica Covill, Kelsey Desir, Nicole Higgins, Jared Junkin, Dana Johnson; bottom row: Andrew Kim, Trisha Remetir, Hannah Borenstein, Grant Glass, Anna Tybinko)
The lab received support from Humanities Unbounded, a five-year initiative funded by an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant.
“We were lucky to have some great graduate students as part of the group convening the lab,” Sussman says. “They made me really enjoy working collaboratively.”
Sussman is the author of Consuming Anxieties: Consumer Protest, Gender, and British Slavery, 1713–1833 and Eighteenth-Century English Literature. Based on her positive experience with the lab, she says she “started looking for different kinds of pedagogies and also opportunities for graduate students.”
Fifteen students have served as Representing Migration fellows, teaching assistants, or graduate lab assistants. Others have taken part in courses and research with faculty.
One of the lab’s projects explored Migration Memorials. Around the same time, over at the Duke Marine Lab, Cindy Van Dover’s lab was studying the impact of seabed mining. “It occurred to them that [mining] grants from the International Seabed Authority were close to the path of the Middle Passage,” Sussman says. Van Dover’s lab became interested in proposing a memorial to victims of the trans-Atlantic voyages that brought enslaved Africans to the New World.
Phillip Turner, a Ph.D. student in Marine Science and Conservation, convened a meeting with a wide range of experts, including Sussman. “They knew about the geography but were curious how the Middle Passage was recorded or memorialized,” she says.
Phillip Turner (second from left) with Aline Jaeckel, Diva Amon, and Jessica Perelman at the 25th Session of the International Seabed Authority in Kingston, Jamaica
Turner organized a coauthored article on ways to commemorate the enslaved people who came to rest on the Atlantic seabed. In 2018, he received a Graduate Student Training Enhancement Grant to attend a meeting of the International Seabed Authority, where he networked and discussed the Middle Passage project. “The project was positively received,” he reported, “and it will hopefully be discussed in more detail at subsequent ISA sessions once the manuscript has been published.”
Kaylee Alexander
Sussman had an idea to explore the Middle Passage from a new angle and involve more students through a Data+ summer research project. To help prepare the project, doctoral student Kaylee Alexander (Art, Art History & Visual Studies) worked with Duke Libraries’ Data and Visualization Services as a Humanities Unbounded Graduate Assistant.
“One of the original goals of the project was to use data representing nearly 36,000 transatlantic slave voyages to see if it would be possible to map a reasonable location for a deep-sea memorial to the transatlantic slave trade,” Alexander reflected. “The promises of these data were great; we just had to figure out how to use them.”
Sussman’s Data+ team set out to locate where and why enslaved Africans died during the sea voyage and analyze patterns of these mortality rates.
Chudi Zong, Ethan Czerniecki, Daisy Zhan, Charlotte Sussman, and Emma Davenport at the Data+ poster session
“It’s been really interesting to fill in the gaps of the Middle Passage and search for patterns,” said Chudi Zhong, a master’s student in Statistical Science. “There is a lot of missing data, and we’ve used current technology to fill gaps. For example, using the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, we can find records on how many enslaved people died. The Climatological Database for the World’s Oceans has other kinds of data for ships. We merged the two databases and found 35 matching voyages. Then we used our own model to make predictions.”
Dutch Slaving Voyages (1751-1795): The height of each bar corresponds to the average number of deaths per 150km2 grid. The color of the bar corresponds to the number of ship locations recorded in each grid. [From the Data+ team’s executive summary]As an undergraduate majoring in Philosophy and Global Cultural Studies, Ethan Czerniecki said the Data+ project “gave me a different way of approaching these topics outside the humanities that proved to be expansive,” he said. “I wouldn’t have thought to treat these individuals as data points, but [the data science approach] opens up new areas like data visualization. Combining a humanities project with data science is really interesting, and the methodologies interact well.”
Prediction of 2,164 trans-Atlantic voyage paths that ended in the northern hemisphere based on the LSTM model; inset map: prediction of 36 trans-Atlantic voyage paths based on the LSTM model, all of which have reasonably smooth lines. [From the Data+ team’s executive summary]English Ph.D. student Emma Davenport served as project manager for the Data+ team. “This was my first experience in a real mentorship role,” she said. “It’s different than being part of a team doing the research. Being a mentor calls for a different set of skills and a different orientation.” Davenport is going on the job market this year. “Job committees want to see that you have a set of skills for guiding undergraduate research,” she said, “and both academic and nonacademic jobs are looking for candidates with a well-rounded skillset. I couldn’t have gotten this experience from traditional teaching and research.”
This fall, a Bass Connections project team is continuing the work of the Representing Migration lab and the Data+ project. Doctoral students in English and Romance Studies and undergraduates representing at least six majors are collaborating with faculty and librarians. Some students are creating a map showing where the deaths occurred in the Atlantic; their original data will support a proposal for the Middle Passage memorial.
“I think these opportunities are really great,” says Sussman. “Duke is not a heavy teaching school, at least for English, relative to other Ph.D. programs, but I think what Duke can offer grad students is more unique. This kind of work is useful to them professionally, whether they go into academia or not.”
In addition to the opportunities she has found to engage students in research on migration, Sussman has tapped into other Duke programs as well.
Undergraduates Clifford Haley, Eli Kline, and Bailey Bogle present “Pirating Texts” at the 2019 Story+ Research Symposium. Photo: Jennifer R. Zhou
Grant Glass used a Data Expeditions grant to create a data visualization module for Sussman’s course, Queens of Antiquity. A doctoral student at UNC Chapel Hill, Glass also served as project manager on Sussman’s 2018 Data+project, Pirating Texts, and as graduate mentor on the 2019 Story+ summer research project of the same name.
“Using this [kind of approach] in your classroom setting involves letting go of authority, and sometimes that works better than others,” says Sussman. “You have to be willing to let go.”
Learn more at a free lunchtime event on December 4 at the John Hope Franklin Center for Interdisciplinary and International Studies, featuring Charlotte Sussman and colleagues.
![Dutch Slaving Voyages (1751-1795): The height of each bar corresponds to the average number of deaths per 150km2 grid. The color of the bar corresponds to the number of ship locations recorded in each grid. [From the Data+ team’s executive summary].](http://sites.duke.edu/interdisciplinary/files/2019/09/dataplus-middle-pass-execsum-fig1-tw.jpg)
![Prediction of 2,164 trans-Atlantic voyage paths that ended in the northern hemisphere based on the LSTM model; inset map: prediction of 36 trans-Atlantic voyage paths based on the LSTM model, all of which have reasonably smooth lines. [From the Data+ team’s executive summary].](http://sites.duke.edu/interdisciplinary/files/2019/09/dataplus-middle-pass-execsum-fig2-tw.jpg)
