Duke on Demand

Why Social Science? Why Literature? Or, How Do Experiments and Stories Help Us See Our Own Attention Blindness?

Beginning with Ulric Neisser's classic gorilla experiment of the late 1970s, reprised by Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris in 1999 as "the invisible gorilla," we have had experimental evidence that shows how, by focusing attention on a particular object, we can miss just about everything else happening in the same place at the same time. Other experiments teach us that we have difficulty noticing change when we are fixated on certain constant elements (especially our own centrality to the action). Still others show how we inflate our estimation of our own accuracy, lack of prejudice, memory, and courage. Magicians, pickpockets, gamblers, thieves, insurance adjusters, and trial lawyers have all known this. So have artists. In this unit, we'll look at classic experiments in attention blindness and change blindness as well as some classic magic acts (possibly by bringing in a professional magician), witness unreliability, and movies about classic cases of cons and double-cons that depend on self-absorption and its flipside, self-deception. We will read a number of essays by literary theorists and writers on the importance of "defamiliarization" (being able to gain perspective on oneself) as well as on the role of literature in making visible what is otherwise inexpressible.

Professors Bruce Lawrence and Sattar Jawad discuss the term minority in this clip from Professor Lawrence's public lecture, "Citizen Ahmed".

In a year marked by no less than sixteen mass shootings in the United States, including shootings at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado and a Sikh Temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, the murder of twenty children and six adults at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut was perhaps the most tragic of exclamation points.

In the aftermath of the Sandy Hook murders, women and men of faith were challenged to make sense of what was so obviously senseless.

Throughout his career, preacher and scholar Dr. Luke A Powery, has attempted to strike the right chord with regards to the reality of death and the responsibility of those in the pulpit. In his new book Dem Dry Bones: Preaching, Death and Hope (Fortress Press), Dr. Powery writes, "In order to experience life, resurrection, or hope, one must go through death...yet in many contemporary churches, some preachers avoid dealing with death because they do not realize its vital connection the substance of Christian hope. Because of this denial of death, we are left with sermons that possess a weak pnuematology and are fundamentally hopeless."

Dr. Powery, the first Black Dean of the Chapel at Duke University, sits down with host Mark Anthony Neal in the Left of Black Studios to discuss death, preaching, and hope in times of despair.

The province is helping Nova Scotians get ready to make the most of the federal shipbuilding contracts that will bring 30 years of opportunities and good jobs. Premier Darrell Dexter released an analysis of the range of activities needed to create, produce, deliver and maintain the arctic offshore patrol ships, polar icebreaker, and research vessels.

The $25-billion federal shipbuilding contracts will provide work for the next 30 years and 11,500 direct and indirect jobs in Nova Scotia when the project hits its stride in a few years time.

Coming fall 2013~ SSRI West
Stop by, grab a cookie and mingle
Share ideas and create team projects

Lexia Chadwick performs a song in response to her experience on her alternative fall break trip to Apopka, Florida.

Issues around immigration are all over the news these days. But what about women- how do they experience immigration? What are the narratives of struggle and strength of women in immigrant communities? How do those experiences connect to women students at Duke? Through family home-stays, participation in a local women's conference, and volunteering at a community-based organization, a group of Duke undergrads learned first hand from the experience of young women in low-income, immigrant, and farm work communities in Apopka, Florida.

During her 2012-13 Visiting Faculty Fellowship with the Humanities Writ Large initiative at Duke University, Adeline Koh is developing a historical role-playing game called Trading Races. The game is set at the University of Michigan in 2003. Players contest the fate of affirmative action there, taking on the roles of specific historical figures and a student assembly. In this video, Koh talks about her game, about the "Reacting to the Past" pedagogy that it's based on, and about the RTTP conference she has organized for Jan. 19 & 20, 2013 at Duke's Franklin Humanities Institute. More about Koh's Fellowship: http://humanitieswritlarge.duke.edu/visiting-faculty-fellows-2012-13/adeline-koh Trading Races: http://tradingraces.adelinekoh.org/ Reacting to the Past: http://reacting.barnard.edu/ Photo credits: http://www.flickr.com/photos/momentsnotice/3494085120/ (Supreme Court building); http://bamn.com (pro-affirmative action protest); http://www.flickr.com/photos/mogello/56624483/ (anti-affirmative action protest); http://reacting.barnard.edu/streaming-video (game playing)

"Humanities in Humanitarianism: the Haiti Project" is a new year-long course taught by Joshua Nadel, a 2012-13 Visiting Faculty Fellow with the Humanities Writ Large initiative at Duke University. Here he talks with Haiti Lab co-director Laurent Dubois about the class, in which students first study the history and theory of humanitarian aid in Haiti and then, during the second semester, organize an international symposium on the subject. It is offered jointly by Duke and North Carolina Central University, Nadel's home institution. More about Nadel and his course: http://humanitieswritlarge.duke.edu/visiting-faculty-fellows/joshua-nadel More about the Haiti Lab: http://www.fhi.duke.edu/labs/haiti-lab

On October 19th, 2012, Sasha Pack, Assoc. Prof. of History at the University at Buffalo (SUNY), visited the FHI and the BorderWork(s) Lab to share his lecture, "Europe's Deepest Border: The Strait of Gibraltar in Modern Times." In this interview, he gave us an overview of his work on the strait.
http://fhi.duke.edu/events/sasha-pack-talk

On November 5th, 2012, Erin Lentz visited the FHI to present her paper, "Hungry for Change: the Opportunities and Challenges of New Food Assistance Tools when Responding to Food Insecurity."

In this interview, we asked Erin to speak about her work, how borders affect her work, and how her work might address some of the ways in which borders are conceived. Her lecture was part of the Monday Evenings @ Borderworks(s) series.

During the Fall 2012 semester, BorderWork(s) Lab faculty Claudia Koonz and Erika Weinthal led a FOCUS cluster on Humanitarian Challenges: Borders, Environments, and Rights. Designed for first-year students, the Focus program provides clusters of courses designed around an interdisciplinary theme. Students come together for dinner once a week to process what they learn in the classroom. In tandem with Humanitarian Challenge's weekly dinners, Profs. Koonz and Weinthal organized an ambitious speaker series that features academics, activists, and artists.