Drawing inspiration from John Hope Franklin’s path-breaking 1947 study, the “From Slavery to Freedom” Franklin Humanities Lab seeks to examine the life and afterlives of slavery and emancipation, linking Duke University to the Global South. Our lab experiments with ways to rethink slavery, particularly its cultural ramifications, in the face of legislative shifts and institutional maneuvers that obscure it’s persistent relevance. Drawing on the lab model, we host several vertically-integrated research projects to develop new ways to understand freedom as a historical experience, a representation, and a lived reality, privileging both the local area of Durham, North Carolina and the global permutations of transatlantic slavery and its emancipations.
Computational Media, Arts & Cultures