This professorship seeks to fund proposals that allow UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke University to work together to extend their capacity in specific areas.

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The Keohane Professorship brings prominent faculty to serve as visiting professors at UNC and Duke for a one-year period, during which they deliver a lecture series and engage students and faculty around areas of shared interest to both institutions. Ultimately, the program is designed to energize new scholarly connections between Duke and UNC.

This professorship recognizes the remarkable contributions of Nannerl Keohane during her term as president of Duke University, and the unprecedented level of collaboration she and former UNC Chancellor James Moeser facilitated between these two great institutions.

The award was created in 2004 by then-Chancellor Moeser and was funded by the late Julian and Josie Robertson (parents of Spencer Robertson, Duke ’98, and Alex Robertson, UNC ’01) and the William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust.

Goals of the Professorship

  1. Promote inter-institutional collaboration and the enhancement of intellectual life at both universities by strengthening established or encouraging new collaborations.
  2. Contribute to the intellectual life of both campuses, and enrich curricular experiences through a carefully planned series of engagements with students.
  3. Deliver a series of three original public lectures that delve into the most promising directions of research in the scholar’s field, with attention to a broad audience.

Structure and Activities of the Professorship

Keohane professors will work closely with faculty leadership on both campuses to identify dates for three visits to the Triangle, each anchored by one of the public lectures, across a one-year period. These visits will include sessions with undergraduate and graduate students, visits to relevant classes, and other types of engagement with intellectual communities on both campuses. Recipients will also work with either Duke University Press or UNC Press to explore publishing revised versions of the lectures.

Funding

Keohane professors receive a payment of $50,000, from which they are responsible for covering travel expenses for their three visits.

Selection Process

Every year, the offices of the Duke and UNC provosts meet with relevant deans to discuss areas of important intellectual ferment where a visiting professorship would deepen intellectual ties between the two campuses. The offices then invite faculty leaders in a selected area to put forward potential invitees who can speak to the most exciting avenues of research in that scholarly domain, and do so in a way that engages broader audiences. The provosts from both institutions jointly make the final selection. The humanities, arts and interpretive social sciences are current areas of particular focus.

NEW KEOHANE VISITING PROFESSOR TO EXPLORE THE ASIAN AMERICAN EXPERIENCE DURING PROFESSORSHIP AT DUKE AND UNC

 

Pawan Dhingra is a leading scholar of Asian American culture and history.

Pawan Dhingra will serve as Keohane Distinguished Visiting Professor for 2022-2023.

National recognition and respect for Asian Americans is surging, and yet, racial violence against Asian Americans is rising as well. Rather than seeing these as opposing trends, it makes more sense to understand how they are connected, suggests Amherst College Associate Provost and Associate Dean of the Faculty Pawan Dhingra.

“To combat anti-Asian violence, we need to get at the root of what’s behind it. Celebrating Asian Americans will not adequately meet that goal,” said Dhingra, who has been appointed as the Nannerl Keohane Distinguished Visiting Professor at Duke and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for 2022-2023.

The Keohane Professorship brings prominent faculty to serve as visiting professors at UNC and Duke for a one-year period, during which they deliver a lecture series and engage students and faculty around areas of shared interest to both institutions.

Dhingra will discuss ways to combat anti-Asian violence during an Oct. 27 public lecture at The Carolina Inn.

Dhingra, the Aliki Perroti and Seth Frank ’55 Professor of U.S. Immigration Studies at Amherst College, is a renowned scholar of Asian American studies, inequality, immigration, race, identity and culture.

The current president of the Association for Asian American Studies, Dhingra has authored several books on the Asian American experience, including “Hyper Education: Why Good Schools, Good Grades, and Good Behavior Are Not Enough,” “Life Behind the Lobby: Indian American Motel Owners and the American Dream,” and “Managing Multicultural Lives: Asian American Professionals and the Challenge of Multiple Identities.”

Dhingra also co-curated the Smithsonian Institution’s exhibition “Beyond Bollywood: Asian Indian Americans Shape the Nation.”

In addition to engagement with students and faculty on both university campuses, Dhingra will offer three public lectures over the course of the year: