John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke U.

We support interdisciplinary humanities research, pedagogies, and collaborations, within and beyond Duke University.

[Jarvis C. McInnis @ProfMcInnis]

Had a great time @ASALH this year! I’m grateful for ALL the love everyone showed me for AFTERLIVES 🙏🏾 Special thanks to the panelists of my Hine-Horne Book Roundtable for grappling with my work with such rigor and care. Y’all really blessed me. 🙏🏾🙌🏾 Til next year, dear #ASALH!

[John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke U. @fhi_duke]

NEW ON YOUTUBE: https://t.co/MBhVJMkJOL
Prolific cultural theorist Fredric Jameson was known for his unflinching analysis of fascism steeped in his own Neo-Marxist theoretical framework. This panel follows Jameson's writings on globalization leading to a new stage of late fascism

[John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke U. @fhi_duke]

NEW ON YOUTUBE: https://t.co/MWz7dfhveM
Renowned postcolonial thinker and @HolbergPrize recipient Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak reflects on how Fred Jameson impacted her intellectual life through his research, his writing, and his friendship in her keynote address, “Reading Jameson"

[John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke U. @fhi_duke]

NEW ON YOUTUBE: https://t.co/FpVetTMK7a
Our Fredric Jameson Conference held in April w/ the @HolbergPrize featured Achille Mbembe & Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak as they discussed how Jameson influenced their work & thinking on the future of critical theory.

[SAVE A SEAT FOR ME (Simon & Schuster, 2026) @NewBlackMan]

"Neal is opening a long overdue door to the interiority that Black men particularly—and men living in a patriarchal society generally—have only learned existed in the last twenty years." -- @SimonBooks

Available at your favorite booksellers:
https://t.co/ufQnvV3RYR

[John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke U. @fhi_duke]

NEW ON YOUTUBE: https://t.co/ykQigkAlTt
Sculptor Stephen Hayes and cultural storyteller @ProfJWallace created a series of underwater sculptures dedicated to enslaved Africans and their descendants to honor the African diaspora—rooted in truth, humanity, and artistic innovation.

[John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke U. @fhi_duke]

NEW ON YOUTUBE! https://t.co/51nwEGRIKQ
@DukePress is 100! And we commemorated the event with two distinct panels tackling Publishing Fundamentals and everything you need to know about publishing your humanities and social science book.

[John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke U. @fhi_duke]

NEW ON YOUTUBE: https://t.co/m7keL1Lh7x
Our FHI Short Residency this spring semester featured @cnewf who spoke on the knowledge crisis facing the university system from such challenges as the current administration, AI, and a devaluing of critical thinking.

[John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke U. @fhi_duke]

Fredric Jameson insisted on “imagining a future which might be radically and constitutionally other.” Critical Theory is seen as both dead and an enduring threat. We are so excited for this 3-day event on Jameson’s legacy and Critical Theory. @HolbergPrize @DukeU

[John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke U. @fhi_duke]

NEW ON YOUTUBE: https://t.co/yIJex6H9Kb
How can language name geopolitical difference without claiming faithful representation, especially when such terms are under fire? New talk from Christina León, who studies literary, anticolonial, critical race, feminist, and queer theories

[Left of Black @LeftOfBlack]

Bishop G.E. Patterson's Legacy with Braxton D. Shelley

Watch the Full Episode on @LeftOfBlack:
https://t.co/IlMbaadAf3

[Left of Black @LeftOfBlack]

NEW EPISODE: https://t.co/6Le0o6rK77
Is Blackness still questioned in biracial people and families? In "The Trouble of Color: An American Family Memoir," Dr. @marthasjones_ looks into her family's history from her great-great-great-grandmother's survival of slavery. @BasicBooks

[Left of Black @LeftOfBlack]

NEW EPISODE: https://t.co/FcykBAvxbU
What can Booker T. Washington and the legacy of the Tuskegee Institute teach us about Black liberation, modernity, and Black worldmaking? Our Season 16 Premiere w/ @ProfMcInnis on his book, "Afterlives of the Plantation," from @ColumbiaUP

[John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke U. @fhi_duke]

REGISTER: https://t.co/kcI2ch2w4L
@DukeAlumni is partnering with us to invite alumni to explore "Why the Humanities Matter," and how the humanities shape shared lives and collective understanding. Explore culture, climate, and community through the lens of human rights!

[John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke U. @fhi_duke]

NEW ON YOUTUBE: https://t.co/zPpEcSq4zP
In his new book, "Afterlives of the Plantation," publ. by @ColumbiaUP, author @ProfMcInnis rethinks Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute as a site of new ideas about Black life, labor, and freedom. He is Assoc. Prof. at @Duke_English

[John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke U. @fhi_duke]

How did Black Atlantic thinkers challenge racial hierarchies with Black worldmaking? Prof. Adom Getachew was a speaker in our Black Archival Imagination Lab’s “Revisiting Garveyism” symposium this week and joined our podcast, @LeftOfBlack, while she was here.

[Left of Black @LeftOfBlack]

Black worldmaking is crucial to dismantling racial hierarchies. Adom Getachew of @UChicago joined Left of Black to talk her book, “Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination,” from @PrincetonUPress. New episode coming soon!

[John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke U. @fhi_duke]

NEW ON YOUTUBE: https://t.co/kxuFGPy7SO
The university system is actively being dismantled by Trumpism hell bent on erasing any challenge to power as a new paradigm of culture and knowledge is being erected. Chris Newfield, FHI's new Short Residencies scholar, pulls no punches

[John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke U. @fhi_duke]

NEW ON YOUTUBE: https://t.co/b3j96ytNle
In the Renaissance, life was brief & death was everywhere. Authorship offered a chance at immortality, an aspiration shared by Shakespeare and Milton. But slowly, authorship ceased to be the pursuit of immortality. @juliannewerlin at FHI

[John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke U. @fhi_duke]

NEW ARTICLE: https://t.co/FvXPZDpzW9
@juliannewerlin, Assoc. Prof. of @Duke_English, examines the lives of roughly 600 writers from the Renaissance to link mortality statistics to literary immortality––the best reason to compose poetry or to publish books was to cheat the grave.

[John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke U. @fhi_duke]

“The question is always how to get the learning we received from those who passed it on to us into the hands of people now..if you do nothing, nothing changes for the better.”
New digital toolkits bring the strategies & lessons of SNCC to a new generation https://t.co/xw1NuSMY0a