Liberal Studies Seminars
Each year, Duke GLS offers a wide array of Liberal Studies (LS) Seminars developed exclusively for its students, including the GLS core course. Students in the program also can take graduate courses (500-level and higher) from across campus. For further details about course grades and requirements, see the Registration, Degree Requirements or Academic Policies pages.
Students will be introduced to strategies for conducting documentary fieldwork and archival research with a variety of tools and mediums, including photography, film/video, audio, narrative writing, and poetry. A major focus will be on identifying and analyzing the ethical and aesthetic considerations related to representing and exhibiting the lives and stories of others, and/or ourselves.
We will plumb the depths and range of documentary expression with assigned materials that include thought pieces (reflections written by practitioners on process, context, dilemmas, and/or mistakes), reviews/critiques, as well as actual documentaries. All assigned materials—readings and links to podcasts and videos—will be made available online for students.
We will begin our exploration by considering why documentary stories are important, what makes a compelling story, and how various media forms are employed by documentary artists. Subsequently, our discussions will address questions fundamental to any documentary form concerning issues such as point of view, representation, reciprocity, truth, editing, and ethics. Hands- on activities, interspersed throughout the semester, will allow students to engage with documentary forms and questions.
Students will propose, research, and carry-out a creative documentary project for the course, which will be work-shopped during class sessions. Possible outcomes could include a podcast, photo series, video piece, drawings, or narrative non-fiction essay.
Equipment is not provided, but students will be advised about a range of readily-available tools (smart phones and apps) and low or no-cost approaches that could be used. No previous experience or technical skills required; project formats are flexible.
The following are major pedagogical goals for the course:
• Identify and address the complexities involved in representing others.
• Contextualize documentary work historically and comparatively.
• Understand the present-day call from BIPOC documentarians for accountability and culture shift in the documentary field
• Learn about documentary studies at Duke University.
• Engage with a variety of genres of documentary work.
• Identify biases within—as well as voices and themes traditionally missing from—the documentary field.
• Synthesize knowledge from readings, screenings, and speakers.
• Reflect on how documentary practices inform and inspire social change.
• Imagine new uses and forms of documentary work based on an understanding of the evolution of documentary forms.
• Understand major ethical dilemmas involved in doing and exhibiting documentary work.
Note: the Fall 2024 course offering will include a special module — connected to the observance of Duke’s Centennial — on creating oral history interviews and related material with Duke-connected veterans of US military engagements abroad from 2001 to the present day.
This course explores musical experience according to three different dimensions: first, music as a social phenomenon, second as an emotional one, and finally as transcendental (aka ineffable, spiritual, sublime, holy). Examples are drawn from African-American music in New Orleans, popular music, jazz, Bach and Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and the Romantics, sacred music of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, John Coltrane, and Gospel.
Each of us already has a sense of music as a social phenomenon. We like a certain kind of music, in part, is because it helps define our peer group, social class, and self-identity as a rebellious person, a conformist, and so on. All music is socially conceived, but some kinds of music invest heavily in this project. Many genres of African-American music, for example, are designed to bring people together in a participatory way. The inquiry extends to the use of music as a way to energize ideologies.
Most people are also aware of their own emotional experience of music, but it is possible to go further. We have been taught how to articulate emotions in socialized ways, and this can be observed musically. Musical gestures correspond with feelings. This section of the course includes readings on emotions, neuroscience and music.
It is challenging to talk about music as a transcendental phenomenon, but that does not invalidate the experience. For the nineteenth-century Romantics, music was the queen of the arts because of its ability to transport listeners into ethereal realms. African-American churches rely on music to do the same thing as they try to connect with the Holy Spirit. We may separate the themes of social, emotional and transcendental for analytical purposes, but in the end they are closely connected. This is demonstrated by another African-American example: the participatory music-making of nineteenth-century slaves was primarily social at the same time that it was intensely emotional and also transcendental, the latter indicated by the name of the great body of music that emerged—the Spirituals.
GLS Students may apply to one of four summer programs at Oxford for Duke credit. Applications may be submitted directly to the University of Oxford; upon admission to the summer program, GLS will issue a permission number to register for the course for Duke credit. Please email Lisa Robinson Bailey with any questions about registration and payment.
Please note that all payments will be processed by GLS. Duke tuition and room and board at Oxford will be billed via the Duke Bursar according to the summer billing schedule. Program fees, accommodations, and application deadlines vary according to program.
English Literature Summer School, Exeter College, June 30-July 20, 2024
- Deadline to submit application: Applications open in January 2024. There are three gathered field deadlines for applications: February 15, March 15, and April 15, 2024. Subject to the availability of places, late applications may be considered on a first come, first served basis until 15 May 2024.
- Program fees/room and board, shared facilities: $2545
- Program fees/room and board, en suite: $2950
Complete course information and application for English Literature.
History, Politics and Society Summer School, Exeter College, June 30-July 20, 2024
- Deadline to submit application: Gathered field deadlines will be announced in January 2024.
- Program fees/room and board, shared facilities: $2545
- Program fees/room and board, en suite: $2950
Complete course information and application for History, Politics & Society.
Creative Writing Summer School (Intermediate and Advanced programs), Exeter College, July 21-August 10, 2024
- Deadline to submit application:
- Applications for the intermediate strand will be processed on a first come, first served or rolling basis until May 1, 2024. Subject to the availability of places, late applications may be accepted until June 1, 2024.
- There are three gathered field deadlines for applications to the advanced strand of the program: March 1, April 1, and May1. Subject to the availability of places, late applications may be considered on a first come, first served basis until June 1, 2024.
- Program fees/room and board, shared facilities: $2545
- Program fees/room and board, en suite: $2950
Complete course information and application for Creative Writing
International Politics Summer School, St. Antony’s College, July 28-August 10, 2024
- Deadline to submit application: There is a limited number of places available on every seminar, and in assigning successful applicants to seminar groups the Program Director will pay particular attention to applicants' personal statements. Subject to the availability of places, late applications may be considered until June 1, 2024.
- Program fees/room and board, shared facilities: $1625
- Program fees/room and board, en suite: $2181
Complete course information and application for International Politics.
Explanation of Tuition and Program Fees:
Duke tuition ($4290) and room and board at Oxford (see rates for each program above) will be charged to your bursar account and is due according to summer tuition schedule. Students wishing to make installment payment (Duke tuition portion ONLY), must be enrolled in the TMS plan. See www.bursar.duke.edu
Program fees include access to Oxford’s IT facilities and the Continuing Education Library; accommodations, and meals (except lunch on Saturday and Sunday). You are responsible for your travel costs.
Cancelation conditions set forth by Oxford University:
All enrollments are subject to Oxford University Department for Continuing Education’s Terms and Conditions for Course Registration and Fee Payment. BE SURE TO READ THE CANCELATION NOTICE BEFORE CONFIRMING YOUR OFFER OF ADMISSION FROM OXFORD. GLS IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY FUNDS FORFEITED TO OXFORD FOR LATE CANCELATIONS.
Two comedic themes during the Pandemic of 2020 have been time and memory, and the discombobulation of both. In this seminar, we will read words and images recalling time, told in different forms. For publishing purposes, an item needs a “genre.” The items for this class may be convened under the genre “memoir,” in the form of essays, poems, drawings, and more conventional storytelling. Readings may include: James Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son (1955); Lillian Smith’s Killers of the Dream (1949); Larry McMurtry’s In a Narrow Grave (1968); Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals (1980); Patricia Polacco’s My Rotten Redheaded Older Brother (1994); James McBride’s The Color of Water (1995); Jerry Stiller’s Married to Laughter (2000); Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home (2006); Roz Chast’s Can’t We Talk about Something More Pleasant (2014); and Miranda Richmond Mouillot’s A Fifty-Year Silence (2015). Weekly (2-3 pp. double-spacing, 10-11 point font) close reading from the assigned text. Papers due at time of class. Participation is 40% of your grade; papers, 60%. Listening attentively to your neighbor is as important as speech for your participation grade.
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Humanity is on the move. Climate refugees, exiles of war, economic migrants, expatriates seeking new opportunities, along with others compelled to flee their current circumstances and look for a new life, are moving across borders comprise a chaotic movement en masse in greater numbers than ever in the history of humanity. Combine these movers with the billions of religious pilgrims, adventure travelers, and tourists, and we find ourselves in a chaotic world of migrations in every direction. How to make sense of it? What does this world of travel tell us about our future?
In this course, we will seek to make sense of all the movements in which we find ourselves and others. Readings on pilgrimage will intermingle with memoirs and essays on travel, writings and films on the act of walking, and readings and explorations of refugees, immigrant life, and border crossings. We will seek to understand this means for humanity and for us personally.
We will place ourselves in this mix of movers as we consider our impact on the world. We will consider related questions, such as: How should we think of places and identities in a world in motion? Are there ethical means of travel in this age of climate change and political upheaval? How does travel and an act as simple as an afternoon walk resemble the pattern of a human life? How does a labyrinth give us a glimpse into the meaning of movement in larger contexts? What can pilgrimage mean for non-traditional participants on a religious journey? How do we make sense of our place in a world where refugees are knocking at our door asking to be let in to American safety? What of border walls and their meaning for our collective human future? And more!
We will explore such readings as:
- Ian Reader’s Pilgrimage: A Very Short Introduction
- Selection from three books by Rebecca Solnit: A Book of Migrations, A Field Guide to Getting Lost and Wanderlust
- Henry David Thoreau’s Walking
- Frederic Gros’s: A Philosophy of Walking
- Duncan Minshall’s While Wandering: A Walking Companion
- Suketo Mehta’s This Land is Our Land: An Immigrant’s Manifesto
- John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath
- Sonia Nozario’s Enrique’s Journey
- John F. Kennedy’s A Nation of Immigrants
- Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
- Timothy Egan’s A Pilgrimage to Eternity
- Gloria Anzaldua’s Borderlands/La Frontera
- Valeria Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive
- Charles Thompson’s Border Odyssey: Travels Along the US/Mexico Divide
- And more.
In addition to readings, we will watch and discuss such films such as Estevez’s The Way, Herzog’s Pilgrimage, Apted’s 63 Up, and the classic, Wizard of Oz, among others.
This course should appeal to anyone interested in current affairs, especially those reflecting on the meaning of life, whether backwards or forwards; those considering the meanings and ramifications of travel; global citizens hoping to live ethically in a world of the displaced; humanists concerned about climate change and movement; and generally anyone who has ever walked and, with Thoreau, wanted to reflect on what it means “to saunter.” Hint: the root word signifies walking is a holy undertaking.
Seminar format. Participation mandatory. Applied studies of pilgrimages, work with immigrants, and travel encouraged. No prerequisites. Meant to appeal to all GLS students.
The development and initial offering of this new course in the Spring of 2021 was supported through the generosity of GLS alumna Lottie Applewhite.
Charles D. Thompson, Jr. is Professor of the Practice of Cultural Anthropology and Documentary Studies at Duke University. A common thread through his work is a deep concern for people doing their all to have a voice in our agricultural systems.
Thompson holds a Ph.D. in religion and culture from UNC-Chapel Hill, with concentrations in cultural studies and Latin American studies. He also holds an M.S. degree in Agricultural Education from NC A&T State University. His particular interests include farmworkers, immigration, agriculture, and Appalachian Studies. His methodology includes oral history, ethnographic writing, documentary filmmaking, and collaborative community activism.
A former farmer, Thompson remains concerned about laborers within our food system. He has written and made films about small farmers and farmworkers. He is an advisory board member of Student Action with Farmworkers, the Duke Campus Farm, and other food and agricultural initiatives.
Thompson is author or editor of six books. His latest (2015) is, Border Odyssey: Traveling the Valley of the Shadow of Death. He also wrote Spirits of Just Men: Mountaineers, Liquor Bosses, and Lawmen in the Moonshine Capital of the World. He is also editor, with Melinda Wiggins, of The Human Cost of Food: Farmworker Lives, Labor, and Advocacy.
Thompson is the producer/director of five documentary films, including Faces of Time (2015), Brother Towns/ Pueblos Hermanos (2010), We Shall Not Be Moved (2008), and The Guestworker (2007). His latest film, in collaboration with the organization, Farm Aid, is entitled, Homeplace Under Fire (2016).
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The earth now has 7.8 million people and will likely peak at 10 billion around 2060. How can the diversity of plants, animals and ecosystems survive on a finite planet with a climate that is changing at an unprecedented rate? This course examines the role of national parks and other protected areas and the challenges these areas face in protecting species and ecosystems. It is notable that the acreage of protected areas is higher than ever, and substantially above the 10 percent that was once the target of the environmental movement. Yet global extinctions are high and rising. Two of the main issues for protected areas are dealing with a fast-growing flood of tourists and making peace with the hundreds of millions of people, many of them poor, who live in and around them. Is conflict among protected areas, local populations and tourism inevitable? Or can we make tourism “sustainable” and harness it for the benefit of both nature protection and local development?The earth now has 7.8 million people and will likely peak at 10 billion around 2060. How can the diversity of plants, animals and ecosystems survive on a finite planet with a climate that is changing at an unprecedented rate? This course examines the role of national parks and other protected areas and the challenges these areas face in protecting species and ecosystems. It is notable that the acreage of protected areas is higher than ever, and substantially above the 10 percent that was once the target of the environmental movement. Yet global extinctions are high and rising. Two of the main issues for protected areas are dealing with a fast-growing flood of tourists and making peace with the hundreds of millions of people, many of them poor, who live in and around them. Is conflict among protected areas, local populations and tourism inevitable? Or can we make tourism “sustainable” and harness it for the benefit of both nature protection and local development?
CLICK HERE TO WATCH A COURSE PREVIEW VIDEO
Through conversation, practice, and engagement with critical makers and thinkers, we’ll investigate how digital tools create knowledge, produce relations, and build worlds. We’ll look at how our digital tools, techniques, algorithms, search, and research are situated within and alongside systems of oppression (racism, sexism, ableism), both by design and by virtue of their being designed with/in those systems. We’ll interrogate how our tools are governing our actions and interactions as researchers, and how they are guiding our digital research insofar they are quietly influencing our projects.
We’ll think together about how to tell the stories of our research and projects knowing they are co-authored by the tools we use, and we’ll think through methods for how those tools might be hacked, or refused, to manifest more just systems. At its core, this class-qua-learning-lab is really about how we experience the world. If you are already using a digital tool for your research project, you’ll be invited to do a self-study of that tool with the goal of producing a short statement about how the tool is participating in and co-authoring your project.
Our current pandemic is, for many, revealing critical failures and design flaws in the foundational systems that guide our daily functioning. These revelations open problem spaces for entrepreneurial thinkers and tinkerers to ask What new techniques and technologies might we design in light of our current context? How might we think through the pandemic as we move through it?
Together we’ll explore these questions:
- How do our things, spaces, artifacts, environments design us?
- How has the pandemic, and let’s think broadly here, (re)designed our spaces, things artifacts, environments, actions, reactions, and interactions?
- How can we use speculative research to redesign the world?
- How can we call on a wide variety of knowledges to inform our practice?
- How can speculative fiction provide a model for future ways of living and/or ways of dreaming futures?
The development and initial offering of this new course in the Spring of 2021 was supported through the generosity of GLS alumna Lottie Applewhite.
Watch a course preview. 
Understanding the role of science in everyday life is a critical aspect of modern society. Science is often discussed through social media, news outlets, and politics without details of the underlying concepts. “Science in the Public Eye” is designed to give all students taking it a broad introduction to fundamental scientific concepts, expose them to the natural world, and make them a more informed citizen. In this course, students will investigate topics that are often discussed through these platforms. We will explore the science behind the topic, popular opinions, and discuss misconceptions. We will focus on topics ranging from vaccinations, disease epidemics, genetically modified organisms, and antibiotic resistance to the Endangered Species Act and climate change. Our main goal through our classroom discussions will be to focus on effective communication of the topic.
Each week we will read and discuss scientific and nonscientific readings on the assigned topic. We will compare and contrast the readings and discuss misconceptions that the general public might get from only reading nonscientific articles. Students will work individually or in pairs to lead one of the weekly discussions. Students will also research a recent topic in the news and prepare a 5-7 minute presentation on the topic. In addition, students will work in groups to prepare an educational video or other form of scientific communication (podcast, infographic, newspaper column, etc.) geared towards any age group about a topic related to the course.
The development and initial offering of this new course in the Fall of 2020 was supported through the generosity of GLS alumna Lottie Applewhite.
Laurie Mauger is a Lecturer in the Department of Biology. She received her Ph.D. in 2010 from Drexel University on population genetics and conservation of American crocodiles in Costa Rica. Since graduating, her research has focused on involving undergraduate students in research on projects focusing on population genetics of crocodiles, caterpillars, ringtail cats, and ants. Today, Dr. Mauger focuses mainly on pedagogical research investigating the impact of course-based research projects on student learning and attitude towards science and nature. She has published 5 scientific papers and is working with students to submit several more. Dr. Mauger has taught a variety undergraduate level courses on genetics, evolution, general biology, conservation biology at institutions such as Princeton University, Drexel University, and Southern University and a graduate level course in population genetics at Cedar Crest College. She joined the faculty at Duke in 2018.
The purpose of this course is to better understand the processes and outcomes of death and dying. The US and other developed countries have become death phobic and have avoided interactions around death and dying. Both death and dying are culturally bound and strongly influenced by religious beliefs, we will take a interdisciplinary approach to our examination of these phenomena (including sociological, psychological, religious, biomedical, and social psychological). This will help us better understand how and where people die, multiple beliefs about life after death, and what drives the American population to experience anxiety and fear about death and dying more than any other culture in the world.
The course includes an overview of the biological process of dying and biomedical definitions of death, the social and psychological aspects of death and dying in modern American culture, death and dying as multicultural phenomena, the clinical issues around death and dying, and the management of those issues in an aging society.
Requirements include four short response papers, an oral presentation, and a final research paper.