Franklin Humanities Institute

The Franklin Humanities Institute (FHI) is an interdisciplinary humanities center house within the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University dedicated to supporting humanities, arts, and social science research and teaching. The institute's mission is to encourage humanistic inquiry throughout Duke campus and to raise public awareness of the humanities. Named after the prominent African American historian and civil rights activist John Hope Franklin, who retired from Duke in 1985 as the James B. Duke professor of History, the institute has also made a commitment to promote scholarship that enhances social equity, especially through research on race and ethnicity.The Franklin Humanities Institute is part of a consortium of interdisciplinary research centers and institutes located at the John Hope Franklin Center for Interdisciplinary and International Studies at Duke.

History

The Franklin Humanities Institute was founded in 1999 by Cathy Davidson, then Vice Provost for interdisciplinary Studies, and Karla FC Holloway, former Dean of the Humanities and Social Sciences. In 2002, the Institute received a three-year grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for a project entitled “Making the Humanities Central.” The grant was renewed for a second three-year cycle in 2005.

In Spring 2007, the FHI became the new administrative headquarters of the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes , an international organization that supports interdisciplinary humanities...
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