The seventh year of Duke’s signature arts mentorship program pairs thirteen students with professional mentors to develop their creative projects, including literature, theater, film, visual arts and more.
Duke Arts Studio offers creative and professional support for undergraduate student projects in the fields of arts, entertainment and media. This year’s cohort includes thirteen students who are each paired with Duke alums and local community members. Learn more about each student and their project below.
Duke Arts Studio was originally StudioDuke, a joint effort of Duke Arts, Duke’s Innovation & Entrepreneurship Initiative, Duke Entertainment, Media & Arts Network (DEMAN) and Duke Alumni Association. Duke Arts Studio is managed in collaboration with the Duke Entertainment, Media & Arts Network (DEMAN).
TRINITY COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES, CLASS OF SPRING 2024
Majors: Visual & Media Studies: Cinematic Arts and Political Science
Title of Project: 23 and Free
Spending his life believing he would die before the age of 23, like his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather before him, a directionless, confused young man must find meaning in his life after surviving his 23rd birthday.
TRINITY COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES, CLASS OF SPRING 2025
Majors: Physics and Visual & Media Studies: Cinematic Arts
Minor: Mathematics
Title of Project: Physical
Physical is a coming-of-age queer romance about two high-energy physicists working at an elite particle accelerator in 1985.
TRINITY COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES, CLASS OF SPRING 2024
Majors: Computer Science and Mathematics
Minor: Political Science
Title of Project: Sundial
Sundial is a sci-fi rock musical about confronting the inevitable.
TRINITY COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES, CLASS OF SPRING 2024
Major: Cultural Anthropology
Minor: Asian American & Diaspora Studies
Certificate: Documentary Studies
Title of Project: A Queer Child’s Home Coming
Growing up in China’s industrial hub, Dongguan, as a child of an extended family of internal migrants, I have been interested in exploring migration, (post-)memory, queer/feminist intimacy, and the interconnectedness of diasporic bodies in my transdisciplinary practice. For Duke Arts Studio, I am proposing a multimedia project interweaving non-fiction writing, film photography, polaroids, and audio/videos from my documentary fieldwork in China and the US. I will also draw archival images from my family albums, my parents’ childhood homes, and so on.
TRINITY COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES, CLASS OF SPRING 2025
Major: Psychology
Minor: Visual Arts
Title of Project: Pian’ (a webcomic)
Pian’ is a webcomic that follows a young Nigerian-American boy on his quest to learn how to play the piano, exploring the transformative relationships he builds with others along the way.
TRINITY COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES, CLASS OF SPRING 2026
Major: Chemistry
Minors: Statistics and Philosophy
Title of Project: On Rest
On Rest is a multimedia art space interweaving paintings and classical flute music to contemplate natural beauty. In a world constantly in (com)motion, I construct temporary respite via the quiet solace of a sylvan milieu.
TRINITY COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES, CLASS OF SPRING 2024
Majors: Computer Science and English
Title of Project: First World Problems
First World Problems is a speculative fiction novel about a young woman working for a tech company that has imposed a meritocracy on the United States and her quest to reach a perfect Merit Score.
TRINITY COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES, CLASS OF SPRING 2027
Majors: Art History and Visual Arts (Computational Media)
Title of Project: Can I Have Your To-go Boxes, Please?
I’ve noticed a weird phenomenon on campus: many people use to-go boxes in the dining hall only to later throw them into the “dish return”. My project is a live performance art piece in Duke’s dining hall, aiming to reveal this ironic phenomenon and provoke discussion of environmental and economic effects.
TRINITY COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES, CLASS OF SPRING 2024
Major: Theater Studies
Minors: Computer Science and Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies
Title of Project: Do I Know You?
I’m writing a play that follows the experience of a queer college student with a passion for writing and her relationships with the people in her life and the people she creates in her head.
TRINITY COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES, CLASS OF SPRING 2024
Major: Cultural Anthropology
Certificate: Innovation & Entrepreneurship
Title of Project: Stories from the page: Song-writing Composition
This project is dedicated to crafting original songs that pave the way for my music career as a singer-songwriter.
TRINITY COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES, CLASS OF SPRING 2025
Major: English
Minor: Sociology
Title of Project: Crown Ascent
Teenage royals from around the world are invited to a new school set in Washington D.C. to learn more about being next-in-line to the throne. Shortly after the school begins, Mia and Noah discover some dangerous secrets inside and outside the school that could change their lives forever.
UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL, DUKE UNIVERSITY, CLASS OF SPRING 2024
Majors: Communications Studies and Media Production
Minors: Visual & Media Studies: Cinematic Arts and African & African-American Studies
Title of Project: EYES EYES EYES EYES
Beyond its thesis of interrogating the intersections between “the gaze” within both the Internet Age and marginalized identity, EYES is ultimately a story about the journey of making sense of who you are and forging an individual path within the chaos of the world’s noise – finding and claiming authenticity within an era of hyper-performance. In addition to the project’s accompanying ethnographic photobook and bespoke DJ mix, its central deliverable, a brief genre-blending music film composed of sequential intimate character-driven vignettes, follows the fluid subconsciouses of a fracturing friend group that gets lost in their own minds while trying to gain access to a buzzy venue for their friend’s last night in town.
TRINITY COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES, CLASS OF SPRING 2026
Majors: Public Policy and Economics
Title of Project: Revival
In the past fifty years, hip-hop has not only revolutionized the music scene in America, but it has transformed the ways that marginalized communities gain justice in the modern day. The docuseries Revival explores how individuals and groups in America have utilized hip-hop to acheive political, social, and economic advancements for black and brown communities in the face of oppressive systems and structures.