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Call for Applications: Peter Lange Director of DukeEngage

Call for Applications Peter Lange Director of DukeEngageThe Kenan Institute for Ethics seeks applications from current, regular-rank Duke faculty to become the Peter Lange Director of DukeEngage. The deadline for applications is April 8, 2024.

The ideal candidate will have a record of community-engaged scholarship and teaching, the capacity to collaborate with peers and staff members, and experience with academic service and/or community-building that demonstrates excellent potential for leadership. We are looking for an energetic person who will help lead ongoing efforts to adapt the past and current successes of DukeEngage to the shifting landscapes of higher education and the world.

Background

DukeEngage was launched in the summer of 2007 with the ambition to change the way students learn about the world, about the challenges facing specific communities, and about the potential to draw on community assets to address those challenges. Since then, more than 5,500 Duke undergraduates have participated in the program. DukeEngage now sends roughly 200 students into the field each summer for eight-weeks of immersive experience in communities in the United States and around the world.

In summer 2023, students participated in twenty-two programs in thirteen countries outside the United States, from Paraguay and Brazil to Oman and Jordan to South Africa and South Korea. Sites for domestic programs included Boston, Chicago, Miami, New York, Orange County, CA, and Washington, DC. Programs are populated with six to ten students and designed by Duke faculty and staff in collaboration with community partners on a wide variety of topics: health, education, conservation, sustainable development, immigration, democracy, science and technology, and so on.

Job Description

The director will work closely with the director of the Kenan Institute for Ethics and the associate director of DukeEngage on all aspects of the design and implementation of DukeEngage, from strategic and financial planning to the successful fielding of summer programs. Responsibilities include:

  • adapting the program to a changing culture inside and outside the University;
  • integrating DukeEngage with other projects in the Kenan Institute;
  • assessing existing projects, via site visits when time allows;
  • developing pilots to experiment with new models;
  • connecting with similar programs in other institutions;
  • articulating the program’s strategic vision to diverse audiences;
  • recruiting and onboarding directors for new summer project teams;
  • aiding with project design, and mentoring project team leads as appropriate;
  • convening project directors and marshaling their input on program aims and implementation;
  • guiding the development of content for pre-program trainings and post-program reentry for students
  • strengthening the curricular aspects of the program’s co-curricular identity;
  • linking DukeEngage appropriately to Duke’s efforts to build enduring partnerships with Durham and other communities in the Carolinas; and
  • developing collaborations with other Duke units and programs, not least Duke Service Learning, the new Center for Community Engagement, the Office of Durham and Community Affairs, the Focus Program, and Bass Connections.

The DukeEngage director, in their role as director, will report to the director of the Kenan Institute for Ethics and will work closely with the four full-time staff who run the day-to-day operations of the program. In addition to the above duties, expectations are that the faculty director will direct a DukeEngage program each summer and will continue to teach in a way that models possibilities for making connections between DukeEngage programs and the wider curriculum. Effort percent is negotiable, but will be substantial; as a result, the endorsement of a candidate’s department chair, or school dean as applicable, will be crucial.

Send queries to David Toole (david.toole@duke.edu). To apply, candidates should send a letter of interest, a two-page statement discussing their philosophy of community engagement, a CV, and the names of three references to Kim Dorman (kimberly.dorman@duke.edu). The deadline for applications is April 8. The goal is to have a director in place by July 1.

What Now? Mini-Course on Taylor Swift Encourages Reflections on Personal Growth

Part of the The Purpose Project at Duke, What Now? is a network of first-year courses across the disciplines where questions of happiness, purpose, and other ethical concepts are key. Once-a-week experiential learning sessions bring What Now? students and faculty together to explore resources at Duke, develop connections, and to reflect on the ideas presented in their courses.

What Now? also offers three-week “mini-courses” that allow students to learn from faculty members across the network. Written by Audrey Patterson, this article about Lisa Andres’s mini-course on Taylor Swift was originally published in the Duke Chronicle.

After a three-week lesson series on the lyrics of Taylor Swift songs, these students knew “All Too Well” about the broader implications of what the pop singer represents.

Lisa Andres, lecturing fellow of the Thompson Writing Program, has been delving into the lyrical prowess and rhythms of Taylor Swift as part of the “What Now?” ethics half-credit course.

Throughout the three-week miniseries, Andres guided her class through an exploration of several albums including “Midnights,” “Reputation” and “Lover.”

Andres wrote in an email to The Chronicle that Swift’s autobiographical songwriting traced her “shifting conceptions of happiness in the wake of broken hearts, media scrutiny and emotional growth,” as well as the cultural response to these changes.

While the series offers an outlet for Swifties to find new songs to add to their playlists, Andres hopes that exploring the lyricism and cultural context of different phases of Swift’s life will help students consider their own journeys and interactions with the changing world around them.

In one class, Andres projected the lyrics to Taylor Swift’s “I Forgot That You Existed” and pressed play on her computer. After a couple of minutes of foot tapping, lip-syncing and head bobbing, Andres asked the class how they perceive the lyrics in the wake of a male artist’s public bashing of Swift.

20240208 Lisa Andres & Taylor Swift Class Amy Zhang 2
Lisa Andres, lecturing fellow of the Thompson Writing Program, speaks to her class. Photo credit: Amy Zhang.

Andres delved into a discussion about indifference and moving on as a takeaway for students.

“I think for me personally, when I listen to music I don’t often think about the lyrics behind it or the meaning … I think analyzing it is really important because you can learn more about the artist,” first-year Saanvi Cherukumalli said.

Despite teaching about Swift’s musical work, Andres wants students to learn beyond Swift and more about what she represents.

“Things that belong to popular culture — like Disney, like Harry Potter, like Taylor Swift — are often more powerful teachers because people don’t see them as purposefully pedagogical,” Andres wrote. “Yet they often reveal — with startling clarity — the larger questions and struggles we’re currently trying to navigate.”

Andres showed clips of Taylor Swift’s documentary “Miss Americana,” which captures moments from her early life and her humble beginnings as a young country singer. First-year Andrew Sample spoke about how the documentary juxtaposes Taylor’s massive success and how it has “weighed on her in a way that very few have ever experienced.”

Students in the course also analyzed “You’re On Your Own Kid,” a personal narrative on Swift’s recent “Midnights” album.

“To hear that message even though we have very different opinions on her and her music … There is something unifying about a statement of ‘You have what it takes to take the next step,’” Sample said.

Andres hopes that even if students aren’t fans of Taylor Swift, the class at least gives them a new perspective they can approach her and her music with. She wants students to ultimately reflect on their own growth throughout their lives and first year at Duke.

“Do I think students need to know about Taylor Swift specifically? Not necessarily. But I think looking at her catalog of music — the stories she tells, the growth she demonstrates — and at her cultural impact provides fascinating insight into how we’re navigating this current climate,” Andres wrote.

Summer Funding Opportunities for PhD Students

Summer Funding for PhD StudentsAPPLICATION DEADLINE:
MARCH 31, 2024

The Kenan Institute for Ethics is providing three funding opportunities for Ph.D. students for summer 2024: internships, dissertation awards, and travel awards. Internships and dissertation awards are available only to students who do not have full summer funding. Because of limited funds, all three opportunities are competitive.

KENAN SUMMER INTERNSHIPS

Three of the Institute’s programs are seeking a summer intern for 6, 8, or 12 weeks between May 17 and August 16, 2024. Interns will work no more than 19.9 hours/week. All current Ph.D. students enrolled in the semester before and after the internship and who do not have full summer funding are eligible to apply. Awards for internships include summer tuition, summer stipend, associated fringe, and the summer health fee. Programs seeking interns are:

Democracy and the Politics of American Higher Education gathers faculty, administrators, and member of the public to reflect on how the university should respond to ongoing threats toward democratic values and principles. Responsibilities will include staying on top of news about the politics of American higher education, writing summaries of recent publications on the topic, helping organize and produce a monthly newsletter, and working on a white paper on the history of the issue. Ideal candidates will have excellent writing skills and coursework/knowledge/experience related to higher education and democracy. For more information contact Eric Mlyn.

The Purpose Project at Duke strives to facilitate conversations, foster partnerships, and field experiments inside and outside the classroom that enable students — undergraduate, graduate, and professional— to pursue questions of moral purpose and a life well-lived as an integral part of their Duke experience. Current programs include courses for first- and second-year undergraduates; a summer co-curricular program for undergraduates interested in healthcare as a profession; a program for doctoral students aspiring to become teachers of undergraduates; and a university-wide project focused on storytelling as an avenue for exploring hard questions, and questioning answers. The Purpose Project is seeking a Ph.D. student with skills in qualitative methods who will help brainstorm assessment and evaluation, collect and analyze qualitative data, and assist in reporting findings. For more information contact Alexandra Cooper.

Just Environments is a joint project of the Kenan Institute for Ethics and the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability. It invests in collaborations between communities, students, and scholars based on research and data justice principles in order to explore solutions and practices to promote environmental justice. It also houses the Environmental Justice Lab, which is devoted to the study of environmental justice and questions at the intersection of race, poverty, and the environment. For more information on a summer internship with Just Environments, contact Kay Jowers.
To apply for a summer internship, send an email to Kim Dorman specifying the program of interest and whether you want to pursue a 6-, 8-, or 12-week internship. Include the following attachments as pdf documents.

  • An updated CV (maximum two pages)
  • A brief statement (maximum two pages) of your interest in the program and how it relates to your overall academic, research, and professional plans.
  • A letter of support from your primary faculty advisor
  • A listing of already awarded summer funding and of any concurrent proposals for other summer funding. If applicants receive news about other funding proposals after the submission deadline, they should provide updated information to Kim Dorman.

Students with questions about planning around existing summer funding can contact grad-finaid@duke.edu.

SUMMER DISSERTATION AWARDS

Summer Dissertation Awards provide funding for post-prelim PhD students without full summer funding who are prepared to spend the summer researching and writing dissertations focused on questions of ethics, especially if those questions align with the Institute’s emphasis on the good life, the good community, and the good society.
These awards are for twelve weeks between May 17 and August 16, 2024, and include summer tuition, summer stipend, associated fringe, and the summer health fee.
To apply for a summer dissertation award, send the following documents to Kim Dorman:

  • An updated CV (maximum two pages)
  • A brief statement (maximum two pages) of your dissertation research and its intersections with questions of ethics, especially if those questions align with the Institute’s emphasis on the good life, the good community, and the good society
  • A letter of support from your primary faculty advisor
  • A listing of already awarded summer funding and of any concurrent proposals for other summer funding. If applicants receive news about other funding proposals after the submission deadline, they should provide updated information to Kim Dorman.

Students with questions about planning around existing summer funding can contact grad-finaid@duke.edu.

SUMMER DISSERTATION RESEARCH TRAVEL AWARDS

The Kenan Summer Dissertation Research Travel Award provides funding for PhD students to travel in order to conduct pre-dissertation or dissertation research that focuses on questions of ethics, especially if those questions align with the Institute’s emphasis on the good life, the good community, and the good society. All PhD students are eligible to apply for up to $4,000 for domestic travel support, and $5,000 for international travel.

To apply for a summer dissertation travel award, send the following documents to Kim Dorman:

  • An updated CV (maximum two pages)
  • A brief statement (maximum two pages) of your dissertation research and its intersections with questions of ethics, especially if those questions align with the Institute’s emphasis on the good life, the good community, and the good society, and an explanation of what you hope to accomplish with travel
  • A budget and timeline for travel
  • A letter of support from your primary faculty advisor

How A DukeEngage Student Became an “Unlikely Ally” of Her Political Opponents

In this column, originally published in the Duke Chronicle as “DukeEngage Democracy at Risk: An Unlikely Ally,” Gabrielle Mollin T’26 reflects on how working on common goals can bring people from across the political spectrum together — and make it harder to stereotype your political opponents.

Illustration of a diverse group of people repairing a tattered American flag
Illustration by Yunyi Dai.

As campus conversations begin to spiral about finding the right summer internship, I can’t help but think about my time last summer at DukeEngage’s Democracy at Risk program. Upon arriving in D.C., I had my work cut out for me. Our program’s goal of helping fix American democracy was lofty, and on top of that, I would be working for the “other side.” This Republican organization was committed to defeating Donald Trump in 2024, even if it meant turning against the majority of the Republican Party. Yet as I embarked on my internship at Longwell Partners, where I would devote hours a day filming testimonials with two-time Trump voters regarding their decision to move on from the indicted, impeached and immoral former president for the 2024 election, I often found myself wondering: how did our country get here?

In search of answers, I quickly found my way back to a trusty book from my political science class at the start of my first year at Duke that I’d brought along as a D.C. read (thanks Professor Vanberg). As I opened my heavily annotated copy of “How Democracies Die,” I slowly peeled off the first pink sticky note I saw and dove into the section on the “closet autocrat,” where I soon found some answers.

Headshot of Gabrielle Mollin
Gabrielle Mollin. Photo courtesy of Gabrielle Mollin.

The “closet autocrat” bore all too many similarities to the man I’d spent my whole summer crusading against: Donald Trump. The chapter explained the nuances of outsider politicians — how they can rise to the top of a democratic institution with “rebel appeal” despite closeted disdain for democratic values.

As Donald Trump campaigned to label the media and political opponents as “terrorists,” with which his followers swiftly agreed, it became easier for him to justify actions against such groups and our democracy as he took the White House and fought back against leaving it. Even further, because Trump’s claim to fame deepened our culture of polarization and hostility, his words had a “boomerang effect.” Threatened, the media ditched restraint and professionalism in an attempt to undermine the government. Embattled, political opponents ditched restraint and professionalism in an attempt to undermine the government. The very people and institutions Trump baselessly condemned turned into what his voters feared most.

So it seems Trump invented a democratic crisis to get elected, but then he created that very crisis by stoking fear throughout his base. And when people are afraid, it’s easier for them to support quasi-authoritarian expansions of executive power (look at public favor for the USA PATRIOT Act after 9/11 or for Japanese internment camps during WW2). When these crises are invented by demonizing political rivals, thereby furthering polarization, politicians like Trump may feel justified to employ any means necessary to defeat opponents. And even if such actions are antidemocratic, citizens support them because they too fear the opponent.

But while Trump poses a definitive threat to our democracy, his power came from a fault within our political system: people don’t feel represented by their government. On nearly every testimonial call I had while interning at Longwell, two-time Trump voters cite Trump’s business skills and real-life experience as his primary appeal in 2016. Though they grew to resent his narcissism and vindictive rhetoric, Trump’s uninhibited politics managed to break down the barrier between most everyday Americans and the political sphere. So while Trump arguably embodies patient zero for the deep polarization that infects American society, he also signals a yearning within the American public for their politicians to fulfill Lincoln’s famed national promise of “government of the people, for the people, and by the people.”

The Republican firm I worked at knew where our democracy was headed with Trump, and like me, they wanted to change it. My friends jeered at me, a left-leaning New Yorker, spending eight weeks in a D.C. office with a bunch of Republicans. I laughed along, but after some time I didn’t find their jokes all that funny. Republican or not, the people at Longwell were committed to our democracy. They were committed to defending their party from Donald Trump. And they were committed to including me in the process, even though they knew I belonged to a different side of the political spectrum. What good was it to laugh at this group who had only been honorable in my eyes?

Now I’m no democracy expert, but I do know people. I know how easy it is to judge, to criticize, to laugh. I know it’s tempting to write off your political opponents when you’ve never even spoken to them, fomenting caricatures of uninformed bigots. I used to do that. But after talking with Stephen from South Carolina, Ross from Utah, Joanna from Tennessee and many more two-time Trump voters around the country who are now committed to his exile from the Republican party, I came to see our country in a new light.

I’m miles away from identifying with the Republican party, but I can no longer impose false narratives onto their voter base. And even though I never fully agreed with these people, I came to understand them. They were scared. They were angry. They were isolated. They wanted change. And I want change for them. We cannot continue to exclude them from our political future; that’s why we are where we are today. Continued isolation will only bring about more polarization, which will only further damage our democracy. We should know better by now.

So instead of sticking with people who think like me, comfortably yet critically looking down at the “other,” I spent my summer in deep conversation with fellow Americans whom I once foolishly perceived as the enemy, working together towards a common cause many want to claim as their own. And now, I’m urging you to try something like it…you might be surprised.

What Teaching in Prison Taught One Duke Faculty Member

The Prison Engagement Initiative at the Kenan Institute for Ethics launched in 2022. Among its ongoing projects is the Duke in Prison educational initiative, which is currently recruiting Duke faculty interested in offering courses to Duke students and incarcerated students in local prisons.

Co-director James Chappel, Gilhuly Family Associate Professor of History, taught in a prison in Butner, North Carolina last year — his first experience teaching in a prison. This interview with Chappel has been edited and condensed.

Illustration of three desks in a classroom, with an orange desk in between two blue desks. The orange desk has a prison cell built underneath it. Above the desks, a window reveals a sky outside and a kite flying in the distance.
Chappel says that the differences between the Duke students and the incarcerated students “melted away” after the class got going — but reemerged, heartbreakingly, after class was over and only the Duke students were free to go home. Illustration by Yunyi Dai.

When did you first become interested in working in prisons?

Before I decided to become a historian, I wanted to be a lawyer, and I interned for a few summers at a public defender’s office in Florida, which led me to spend a fair amount of time in prisons working with clients. And this was before “The New Jim Crow” — I didn’t know about any of this stuff. It was heartbreaking just to see these people — almost entirely people of color — in prison for minor drug charges, and being treated in completely inhumane ways.

When I was post-tenure, and wondering how I could do the most good in the world from the position of a tenured faculty member, I returned to that experience. I’m a Christian, and I wanted to think about how I could serve the most marginalized groups in our society from an elite place like Duke. Prison education seemed like an obvious place to go.

How did you go about teaching in prison as a Duke faculty member?

Unlike a lot of our peer schools, Duke’s Trinity College of Arts & Sciences doesn’t have a prison education program. But the Duke Divinity School does. Its program has been around for 10 or 15 years, and it’s an awesome program.

Because my academic work is on religion, I was able to put together a graduate course, cross-listed between Trinity and the Divinity School. I taught a course on the history of theology at Butner Prison last year, to a class of about 10 incarcerated people and 10 Duke students, some from Trinity and some from Divinity.

I assume you had to do background checks and go through a process to get approved to teach at Butner?

Yes, I had to go through a long training, as did all the students, about how to comport yourself in a prison. We had to be certified and fingerprinted and things like that. It was kind of a process, and it’s one of the barriers to student participation, including the fact that students have to be 21. So, basically, they have to be either seniors or graduate students. And it requires a fair amount of flexibility in your schedule. This place is half an hour away, and you have to have transportation.

What do you think motivated the students, especially from Trinity, to take part in the class?

I think students are drawn to different kinds of educational experiences. It’s important to say that is not charity work. This is not an internship. This is actual learning, alongside incarcerated people in a space where the Duke students and incarcerated students are treated exactly the same. They get to have the same assignments, they have the same grades, they have the same materials — everything’s the same. I think that’s a pretty unique experience for Duke students, to have those kinds of lateral relationships with a population that we would not generally spend time with at all.

The context right now is that we’re in a moment where many of us, whether we’re students, faculty, or administrators, are a lot more aware than we were 10 or 20 years ago about the injustices of mass incarceration, our complicity with it, and our responsibility to do what we can about it.

How did you set up your classroom to help bridge the divide between the Duke students and the incarcerated ones?

I was more worried about it than I needed to be. For one thing, I was mentored by faculty with experience in the Divinity program, and I also had a teaching assistant, Rev. Dr. Louis Threatt, who has a lot of experience in these spaces. They helped me set up the class in a way that made people feel more comfortable. We staggered the seating to make sure that there was no physical separation between the Duke students and the incarcerated ones, and we built in way more time than usual for group projects and other ways to get to know each other socially. Both communities were very interested in getting to know each other.

It probably sounds a little bit hard to believe, but it really did feel like the differences between the two student groups melted away once the seminar got started. It was incredible to see the bonds of genuine connection and friendship forming between Duke students and incarcerated students.

What was your experience like, teaching incarcerated people?

I have never encountered a hunger for knowledge or education like I did with the incarcerated students, who are so grateful to be there. They would always tell me: “This is the part of my week that I look forward to the most, because we are talking about ideas. I’m being treated like a human being. You call me by my first name, instead of by a number.”

Headshot of James Chappel
James Chappel

These people are smart. It did not feel like I had to talk to or teach them differently than the Duke students. They might have less formal education, but they have skills in reading and critical thinking. In my class, in particular, we were talking about religion, race, and power. In addition to their academic knowledge, which many of them did have, they also had life experiences that gave them, in some ways, a lot more insight than Duke students into how these things operate in the world.

I think a lot of Duke students — and Duke faculty, to be honest, including myself — we know the numbers. We know how bad it is. But it is a different feeling to spend two hours with these people talking about scholarly stuff, and then half of the group gets to go home, and half of the group doesn’t. The door slams behind you, and you see them walking back to their cells. And your heart just breaks for these people.

I think anybody who does it leaves thinking, “I can’t abandon these people.” We were allowed to have some email correspondence with the incarcerated students during the class, and at the end, one of them sent me this heartbreaking note that ended with “Don’t forget about us.” I think they feel so forgotten, and they are so forgotten.

One of the moral challenges of our time is: What can we do? What can we do from where we are? And because of where we sit at Duke, there is something we can do for this population. It’s something small, and it won’t solve the problem, but it’s something important nonetheless.

What can people at Duke do to help incarcerated people?

I want to acknowledge that there is already a lot of great work going on at Duke. The Prison Engagement Initiative was founded by the leaders of the Divinity School program, and it spent the first year of its operation doing a survey about what kind of work was happening at Duke. And a ton of work is happening at Duke. A lot of people are working on mass incarceration, especially in the Law School and in Public Policy. We want to build on that work and add to what Duke is already doing.

We are starting a Duke in Prison educational initiative, which will be led by myself and Chris Wildeman in Sociology. We are trying to bring together faculty who are interested in this work. Within, let’s say, the next two years, we hope to have a pipeline of classes between Trinity and a local prison.

Even if faculty aren’t sure they’ll be able to teach a whole class, they can still come in, because there are other opportunities — for instance, just coming in and giving a lecture about your research. Also, it’s important to say that if you want to get into this work, you’ll be trained. I had access to a lot of support.

The Prison Engagement Initiative is also organizing a Piedmont Prison Consortium, which is bringing together interested faculty from, right now, NC State, NC Central, and UNC-Chapel Hill. We had about 30 people from those schools at Kenan for a launch meeting in January. It was so exciting to see undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, and administrators from across the region who are drawn to this work. We hope to move this forward with the help of Kenan, Duke’s new Center for Community Engagement, and university and community colleges across the Triangle region.

The goal is to set up a bachelor’s degree-granting program for incarcerated people. It’s very hard to get that set up. It requires a lot of classes. You have to deal with admissions, financial aid, degree credit transfers, and more. We’ve been working very hard on this, and we think it’s possible. We need help, though, so I hope that if anyone reading this feels called to this work, they’ll drop me a line. There’s always more to do.


An interest meeting for the Duke in Prison educational initiative is scheduled for Monday, February 19, 2024, at noon. If you are a Duke faculty member interested in joining, please email James Chappel and Chris Wildeman.

Natasha Lehner Receives 2024 Graduate Arts Fellowship

The Kenan Institute of Ethics has awarded its 2024 Graduate Arts Fellowship to Natasha Lehner, MFA Candidate in Experimental and Documentary Arts at Duke University.

One of several Kenan programs focused on the intersections of ethics and the arts, the Graduate Arts Fellowship supports the creation and exhibition of new work at the leading edge of documentary practice. It is awarded to one second-year student in Duke’s MFA|EDA program each year.

A photographer primarily working in film, Tash Lehner blends abstract photographic compositions with carefully selected archival texts and images. Juxtaposing the public and the personal, she creates open-ended, branching narratives with multiple points of entry and multiple interpretations, which offer no easy resolutions to their provocations.

“I hope people come to my work with a general sense of curiosity,” Lehner said, “and follow a line that might not be the one I designed for the viewer.”

As the 2024 Graduate Arts Fellow, Lehner will install an exhibit of her work in the Kenan-Keohane Gallery and give an artist’s talk at a public event on Monday, February 12.

Lehner’s exhibit, “More of Everything,” incorporates materials from the personal archive of her biological grandfather, Harvey Karman, who died in 2008 and whom she never knew. Karman was a psychologist and an abortion rights advocate who sought to make the procedure as accessible as possible. In his quest to do so, he experimented with controversial abortion technologies, some of which caused harm to patients. Yet the Karman cannula, a medical instrument he invented in the early 1970s, made early abortions safe and accessible, and is still in use today.

 
A father of four, Karman helped several other families conceive children by donating sperm. One of these children was Lehner’s father, who found out about his true parentage ten years ago, instantly connecting him with an extended family that he never knew existed. For Lehner, a whirlwind reunion with her biological relatives ensued — along with the discovery that, like her and her father, Karman was an avid photographer, some of whose abstract compositions bore startling resemblances to her own.

“More of Everything” reflects both Karman’s compelling and complex life story and the surprisingly strong connection that Lehner felt emerging between Karman, her father, and herself. The resulting exhibit brings together both new work and photographs from Lehner’s archive; photographs and poems from Karman’s archive, shared by his family; and photographs and text by her father, David Lehner. Additionally, Lehner uses archival images from media contemporaneous with key periods in Karman’s life.

The exhibit serves as “an impossible union” of three generations, Lehner says — a means of “generating a conversation that can’t be had.”

“This is the version of the story I’m ready to tell right now,” she said, acknowledging that countless others remain.

“You are more of everything, including love” is a line from one of the many poems in Karman’s archive. “More of Everything” shows how a story — and life — contains an infinite expanse of meaning, as do the other stories and lives that it touches. It explores not only the tensions between the private and public life of a complicated figure, but the mystery of how intimate and strongly felt connections between human beings can be. In spite of time, distance, and never knowing each other, “More of Everything” suggests that sometimes, somehow, we can.

“More of Everything” runs February 12–March 8, 2024, in the Kenan-Keohane Gallery in the West Duke Building on Duke University’s East Campus.

This exhibit precedes a larger exhibit on the same material to be shown at Cassilhaus on March 22–April 16 as Lehner’s MFA|EDA Thesis Exhibition.