GLS eNews August 4, 2020

GLS Weekly News - August 4, 2020

Weekly Porch Sitting is back! Our Thursday afternoon virtual porch sitting resumes this Thursday at 5 PM. Please note the new meeting room link: https://duke.zoom.us/j/99662930148 

Students: This is a reminder that registration for fall 2020 is now open. Please be sure that you have your course choice(s) as well as CTN 1-01 in your book bag and that you have validated your book bag. All students regardless whether they are taking courses or not are required by the Graduate School to be enrolled in CTN 1-01. There is no charge for CTN as long as the student is enrolled in at least one course. 

GLS House remains closed until further notice. GLS staff are working remotely and may be reached via email.

In this edition:

• Message from the Director
• Exemplary Master's Project Videos Posted
• GLS Grad Publishes Master's Project Research
• Alumna Ties Together Community Threads
• Online Coronovirus Resources for Graduate Students

Message from the Director

Welcome to the very strange world of Fall 2020 at Duke and GLS. 

I hope this finds everyone in the GLS community safe, healthy, and stable as the pandemic drags on. I don’t think where we find ourselves now is where any of us hoped we would be at this point – still hunkered down, distanced, fearful for our lives and perhaps our livelihoods.  

The last few months have been an extraordinary and unsettling time as the virus has revealed, in stark relief, the persistent structural inequalities and injustices that mark American society and have worsened dramatically under the current political leadership. And yet, the moment has offered us unprecedented opportunities for learning about our past, for thinking critically about almost every system that shapes our lives, and for drawing upon the inspirational examples of many – like Representative John Lewis, who was from my hometown – to create a vision for the world we would want to live in.  

For all its confusion and uncertainty, this is just the kind of moment that the educational experience that GLS provides is made for. Flexible and responsive, drawing upon all available intellectual traditions, systems, and tools to help each of us understand our lives, our selves, this time and place.  

Although we can’t claim credit for planning this exactly, I am pleased that both of our new Liberal Studies seminars this semester -- Professor Robin Kirk’s “Human Rights Futures” and Professor Laurie Mauger’s “Science in the Public Eye” -- are highly relevant to now. Meanwhile, Dr. Kent Wicker’s “Self in the World” will again focus on "embodiment,” also a key theme as keeping our bodies safe from the acute threat of the virus is a top priority. 

With all of that, there is no question that things will be different this fall. Some differences are disconcerting, most especially our fall enrollments. We had hoped to welcome 18 new students to GLS, but due to visa difficulties and the challenges of travel, eight of them (most of our international students) have deferred either to spring or fall of 2021. Our remaining entering class looks more like our “traditional non-traditional” GLS community, with many hailing from the local Triangle area, including several Duke employees, and a majority taking up the program part-time while working. The diversity in the group remains a hallmark, and we look forward to getting to know you all! 

That will be a challenge, of course, because we will not be able to gather this fall in the ways we historically have. To keep our staff safe, GLS House will remain closed for the foreseeable future, with the staff working remotely. Most of the teaching in the program will be online. Advising will happen through Zoom. Still, we are here for you, and we invite everyone in the GLS community – faculty, staff, students, and alums – to join us on Thursday evenings (5-6 pm) for GLS (Virtual) Porch Sitting! With a zoom link and computer and favored drink in hand, we gather on Thursdays to catch up, visit, and get to know each other. I hope you’ll come! 

Finally, we do have some changes coming that aren’t pandemic-related: We are sad this year that to two longtime faculty champions for our program, Professor Debby Gold and Professor Melissa Malouf, have retired from Duke and rolled off our Advisory Committee. Both Debby and Melissa have served over twenty years on the Advisory Committee, taught countless courses, and advised many master’s projects. We will feel their loss acutely, but anticipate that they will continue to teach for GLS from time to time. Although “replacing” them is not really possible, we are pleased to welcome Professor Leo Ching (Asian and Middle Easter Studies) and Professor Mark Olson (Art, Art History, and Visual Studies) as new Advisory Committee members. They join Professors Amy Laura Hall (Divinity), Jon Shaw (Biology), Tom Brothers (Music), and Susan Thorne (History). We look forward to working with the Committee in the coming months to think about GLS’s future in the post-pandemic years. 

 See you on the “porch” on Thursday! 

Exemplary Master's Project Videos Posted

Videos of our 2019-2020 Exemplary Master's Project awardees are now posted on our special Graduation 2020 website. Below, Dr. Kent Wicker explains the Exemplary Master's Project designation and introduces the student videos. Click here to watch our grads discuss their work.

Graduate Publishes Master's Project Research

Beverly Dowdy (MALS 2019) published an article based on her master's project research in the Summer 2020 issue of Advertising and Society Quarterly. Read it here for free.

Beverly's master's project, “The Selling of Virginia: English Emigration to the Chesapeake in the 17th Century," received the Exemplary Master's Project designation in 2019. The full text is available on DukeSpace.

Beverly Dowdy (MALS 2019) presents her work during the 2019 Exemplary Master's Project Celebration.

GLS Alum Ties Together Community Threads

Filmmaker Rhonda Klevansky (MALS 2014) interviewed a group of women who spent the first few months of the pandemic making face coverings to distribute to health care workers and other members of their communities. The result was Community Threads: Mask Making in the Coronavirus Pandemic. Watch the video below to hear their stories.

Online Resources for Graduate Students

• COVID-19 updates for students are available on Duke's Coronavirus Response website.
• Graduate School-specific COVID-19 updates are posted here. TGS has also created a FAQ for continuing and incoming international students.
• The Duke Student Assistance Fund was established better support master's students who may be experiencing difficulty providing for their basic needs during this extraordinary time.
• Blue Devils Care is a new mental telehealth service that can provide support wherever you may be located currently. You can access the service by using the key DUKE2020.
• The Career Center now offers online drop-in advising for graduate students on Wednesdays and Fridays. View the schedule here.

EVERY THURSDAY :