As part of the Humanities Futures initiative supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Franklin Humanities Institute is soliciting proposals for Working Groups in global and emerging humanities from non-departmental centers, programs, and initiatives at Duke, as well as from groups of faculty working in scholarly formations not currently housed by an organizational unit. As of January 2016, Humanities Futures is supporting 6 Working Groups:

– The Ancient Mind: Mind, Brain and Society
– The Black Outdoors: Humanities Futures After Property and Possession
– The Future of the African City
– Narrating the Environment
– Present and Future of Critical Islamic Humanities
– Theorizing the Emerging Field of Global Health Humanities

We anticipate funding up to 6 additional groups during this CFP round. For more information about Humanities Futures, please visit: http://humanitiesfutures.org/.

Each Humanities Futures Working Group will receive funding to invite 5-6 major scholars to Duke. The working group will be asked to contribute short “think pieces” to the grant’s central website (http://humanitiesfutures.org/) on what they understand to be a vital future directions in the group’s area of focus. These may include original papers by invited guests, responses by Duke faculty participants, interviews and conversations, multimedia and other creative forms of documentation. The “think pieces” work best as informal iterations of work for which the authors will also seek peer-reviewed publication in a more extensive and refined form; they can later be linked, if appropriate, to published articles to provide publicity for the print publication. In an evolving knowledge ecosystem, “partner materials,” such as audio of a performance or an interview, or even data series from research, may bolster the impact of a print text. Format of the speaker visits are also at the discretion of the working groups: groups may choose to organize a speaker series spanning multiple semesters or academic years (NOTE: the grant ends Fall 2017, all funds must be expended by that point), a single public event featuring all of your invited speakers, etc.  The grant will also cover group meeting expenses, books and materials, and other related program costs. Each group will receive between $18,000 to $20,500 in TOTAL funding (NOT per year).

Working group proposals should provide the following materials:

• A 1-2 page overview of the states and directions of research in the field under consideration, with attention to questions of disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity in the humanities today;
• A preliminary list of scholars whom you may wish to invite, including brief summaries of their current work and/or the questions they are likely to address;
• The names of 2-3 primary faculty organizers, with an additional list of possible working group participants.

Please send proposals to fhi [at] duke.edu by February 5, 2016. Group activities can commence immediately upon approval of funding. Inquiries can be directed to FHI Associate Director Christina Chia (christina.chia [at] duke.edu).