FHI at 25 | Queering Duke: A Conversation with Mandy Berry, Kathryn Kent, and Jonathan Flatley

Video Description

Duke University's John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute (FHI) is 25! Read More Here: https://fhi.duke.edu/signature-series/fhi-25/ When the decision was made to turn Duke into a top-notch university in the 1980's, there was a substantial investment into the humanities that ushered the hiring of leading faculty who had a vision of what the field could and should look like. Along with innovating the university, there was also a push to build a cohort of scholars and graduate students focused on developing what we now know today as queer theory. By the 1990's, with the backdrop of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, which decimated the LGBTQ community worldwide, there was a hunger for an activist-approach to scholarly research that fostered a think-tank, of sorts, in gender, sexuality and feminist studies, though this was not embraced by everyone at Duke. This panel discussion featured Mandy Berry, Assistant Professor Literature at American University in Washington D.C., Jonathan Flatley, who works as a professor in the English Department at the University of Chicago, and Kathryn R. Kent, the J. Leland Miller Professor of American History, Literature and Eloquence in English and the Chair of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Williams College. Moderated by FHI's Director, Dr. Ranjana Khanna. 2024 marks the 25th anniversary of the establishment of the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke University. This year also coincides with the 100th anniversary of Duke. To mark these dovetailing anniversaries, FHI will host a series of conversations throughout the year engaging some of the most significant humanities scholars of our time - all formerly or currently affiliated with Duke - to historicize the University's significant investment in the humanities in the 1980s, reflect on what such investment made possible alongside national and international developments in the field, and propose future directions of humanities scholarship and teaching within and beyond Duke. @dukeuniversity @FranklinHumanities @FranklinCenterAtDuke