Author of “Digging the Africanist Presence in American Performance: Dance and Other Contexts,” Brenda Dixon Gottschild is Professor Emerita of Dance Studies at Temple University in Philadelphia. She performs with choreographer Hellmut Gottschild (her husband). Her scholarly work takes performance—specifically, dance—as a measure and paradigm of society. She explains that, although the embrace of the sciences represents a promising future for the humanities disciplines, persistent biases towards blackness in society and academia still pose considerable hindrances to genuine growth & the exchange of ideas.

As part of our new Mellon initiative Seminars in Historical, Global, and Emerging Humanities, the Franklin Humanities Institute (FHI) is partnering with Duke’s 18 arts, humanities, and interpretive social sciences departments to organize a 3-year series of cross-departmental public seminars. Each Humanities Futures event brings together a sub-group of Duke humanities departments, in a joint exploration of the futures of the disciplines in light of the interdisciplinary developments of recent decades. This event is jointly organized by the FHI, the Department of Cultural Anthropology, the Dance Program, and the Program in Literature.