Each year, Duke University awards Benenson Awards in the Arts, which provide funding for arts-centered projects proposed by undergraduates, including graduating seniors. This year, the Student Arts Award Committee awarded prizes to seventeen students for creative projects spanning printmaking, film, visual arts, music, dance and creative writing.
We had over 40 applications this year for Benenson funding, returning us to pre-pandemic levels of student interest in pursuing artistic intensives at amazing programs located all over the world, in creating their own projects (many started within classes or with faculty mentorship), and working collaboratively across forms and disciplines. We anticipate some amazing stories of trial and error, discovery and serendipity when the awardees share their project reports at summer’s end.
If you are looking for ideas about what might make a strong Benenson application, visit the Benenson Awards Project page in late October to see what Summer 2023 awardees describe. In the meantime you can find out how student artists navigated making work during the pandemic by reading about projects from 2020 to 2022.
Chair, Student Arts Awards Committee
Director of Academic Engagement, Arts & Humanities
Lecturer, Theater Studies
Majors: Cultural Anthropology and Visual Arts
Minor: Documentary Studies
Majors: Computer Science and Political Science (Data Science Concentration)
Minor: Cinematic Arts
Majors: Visual Arts and Art History
Minor: Markets and Management Studies Certificate
Majors: Math and Physics
Majors: Dance and Psychology
Minors: Spanish
Major: Visual and Media Studies
Minor: Cinematic Arts
Certificate: Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Major: Cultural Anthropology
Minor: Asian American and Diaspora Studies
Certificate: Documentary Studies
Majors: Religion & Political Science
Certificate: Innovation & Entrepreneurship
Major: Psychology
Minors: Creative Writing and Spanish
Major: Literature in Global Cultural Studies
Minors: Cinematic Arts and Documentary Studies
Documentary project in process.
Majors: Biology and Dance
Majors: Public Policy and Music (Concentration in Piano Performance)
Major: Statistics
Minor: Dance
Certificate: Science and the Public
Major: Public Policy
Minors: Visual and Media Studies and History
Majors: Art History and French and Francophone Studies
Major: Music (Concentration in Piano Performance)
Major: African and African American Studies
Certificate: Documentary Studies