Announcing the 2023 Benenson Award Winners
Congratulations to the seventeen students who received a 2023 Benenson Award in the Arts. This year's group of awardees submitted a wide range of projects to be explored this summer – including printmaking, film, visual arts, music, dance and creative writing.
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.
—Jules Odendahl-James, Ph.D
Chair, Student Arts Awards Committee
Director of Academic Engagement, Arts & Humanities
Lecturer, Theater Studies
2023 Benenson Award Winners
Rebekah Theresa Alvarenga
she/her
Class of 2023
Majors: Cultural Anthropology and Visual Arts
Minor: Documentary Studies
Kulsoom Rizavi
she/her
Class of 2025
Majors: Computer Science and Political Science (Data Science Concentration)
Minor: Cinematic Arts
Bella Bann
she/her
Class of 2023
Majors: Visual Arts and Art History
Minor: Markets and Management Studies Certificate
Mauro Mastrapasqua
he/him
Class of 2025
Majors: Math and Physics
Leah Esemuede
she/her
Class of 2024
Majors: Dance and Psychology
Minors: Spanish
Jacob Whatley
Class of 2025
Major: Visual and Media Studies
Minor: Cinematic Arts
Certificate: Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Huiyin Zhou 徽音
they/she
Class of 2024
Major: Cultural Anthropology
Minor: Asian American and Diaspora Studies
Certificate: Documentary Studies
Lhamo Dixey
she/her
Class of 2025
Majors: Religion & Political Science
Certificate: Innovation & Entrepreneurship
Tess Redman
she/her
Class of 2024
Major: Psychology
Minors: Creative Writing and Spanish
Miranda Gershoni
Class of 2023
Major: Literature in Global Cultural Studies
Minors: Cinematic Arts and Documentary Studies
Documentary project in process.
Michela Arietti
she/her
Class of 2026
Majors: Biology and Dance
Marina Varriano
she/her
Class of 2026
Majors: Public Policy and Music (Concentration in Piano Performance)
Alyssa Shi
she/her
Class of 2023
Major: Statistics
Minor: Dance
Certificate: Science and the Public
Quinn Smith (Chickasaw/Choctaw)
Class of 2023
Major: Public Policy
Minors: Visual and Media Studies and History
Caroline Rettig
Class of 2023
Majors: Art History and French and Francophone Studies
Vicky Yang
Class of 2025
Major: Music (Concentration in Piano Performance)
Tashia Ethridge
all pronouns
Class of 2024
Major: African and African American Studies
Certificate: Documentary Studies