StudioDuke is a two-semester creative lab and mentorship program providing students the opportunity to take their advanced, on-going creative projects to the next level. StudioDuke is a program of Duke Innovation & Entrepreneurship, in collaboration with DEMAN (Duke Entertainment, Media & Arts Network) and Duke Arts. Students are matched with creative industry professionals (including Duke alumni) for one-on-one mentorship that kicks off in the fall semester.
The goal is to bring each project to the point where it is ready to be presented to industry professionals. The StudioDuke team will help facilitate connections, resources, and logistics to support the project. Students will participate in programming aimed to help advance their creative projects and career opportunities.
Major: Sociology with a Human Organization Development & Marketing Focus
Certificate: Innovation & Entrepreneurship
Title of Project: The Yellow Room: A Wantonly Optimistic Podcast
The Yellow Room: A Wantonly Optimistic Podcast is Gen Z’s shared coming-of-age story. Inspired by the power of abundant and reckless optimism, Benjamin Chipman grapples with the unique challenges of early adulthood in the age of Gen Z through personal stories and guest features. It’s a podcast for the oversharer, the uncertain, and those who seek genuine connections.
Major: Evolutionary Anthropology with a Concentration in Anatomy
Minor: English
Title of Project: This Stanford senior already has two YA novels out. Will her native Florida ban them?
I’m writing an article for the Los Angeles Times about Stanford author-activist, Malavika Kannan, and her queer coming-of-age novel, All the Yellow Suns.
Major: IDM in Visual Art & Public Policy
Project Title: Motherboard
My project is a sci-fi writing anthology comprised of shorts (stories and screenplays) focused on the human body’s relationship with technologies interacting with it, such as prosthetics, sex toys, and camera headsets, set in my hometown of Lahore, Pakistan.
Major: Neuroscience and Cinematic Arts
Minor: Theater Studies and Chemistry
Project Title: Washed
A production of a 5-episode web series revolving around an unlikely friendship between two actors who navigate college and friends, race, and the entertainment industry, when a highly anticipated feature is set to be filmed on their campus.
Major: Visual Media Studies
Certificate: Innovation & Entrepreneurship
Project Title: My Gummy Trip
My Gummy Trip is a short film about a 20-year-old girl who goes on a gummy-induced trippy journey which ultimately leads to the restart of a relationship with her estranged brother.
Major: Visual Media Studies
Certificate: Innovation & Entrepreneurship
Project Title: Untitled Screenplay
This historical fiction screenplay follows a pair of Polish siblings taken from home and raised with German foster parents in the 1940s, as well as their attempts to return home after the war.
Major: Visual Media Studies with a Cinematic Arts Concentration
Minor: Economics
Project Title: Washed
The development of a 5-episode web series revolving around an unlikely friendship between two actors who navigate college and friends, race and the entertainment industry, when a highly anticipated feature is set to be filmed on their campus.
Major: Biomedical Engineering & English
Project Title: Ghost-Speak
Twenty years apart, Gold Eyes and his mother, Pearl, must navigate a town whose people want to erase their identities as they struggle to establish their lives in an America designed to exclude them.
Major: English
Minor: Cinematic Arts
Certificate: Innovation & Entrepreneurship
Project Title: “Literally”
A screenplay about two thieves—a man and woman—who decide to steal a house on wheels and drive it across the country. Later, it is revealed that they aren’t actually criminals, but struggling screenwriters, who don’t know how to finish their script, so they inhabit their characters to inspire the ending.
Major: Cinematic Arts
Minor: Theater Studies & Psychology
Project Title: Enwood
Enwood is an hour-long single-camera “dramatic comedy” that follows the life of a Queer Black nineteen year-old who tries to enter the acting industry.
Major: Public Policy
Minor: Cinematic Arts
Project Title: Leaving to Belong (TV Screenplay)
“Leaving to Belong” is a half-hour comedy TV-pilot about Native American college freshmen trying to find community at an ivy league institution where the world’s brightest don’t know that Native American people still exist (based on real life experiences).
Major: English and Visual Arts
Project Title: 2001
2001 is a multimedia compilation of artworks and writings on my selfhood to reflect upbringing, motherhood, interpersonal relationships, sexuality, and “labels” of identity.