Duke Faculty Honor Wilhelmina Reuben-Cooke’s Legacy Through North Carolina Research and Courses

Thanks to funding from The Duke Endowment and the Office of the Provost, Duke faculty were invited to submit proposals to serve as fellows with the Wilhelmina M. Reuben-Cooke Culturally Responsive Pedagogy and Practices Project during the spring and fall semesters of 2025. Here are the selected fellows and their funded projects.

2025 Reuben-Cooke Fellows and Projects

Jenifer Hamil Luker, Associate Professor of the Practice of Sociology

Duke Student Activism and Legal Change,1924-2024

Orin Starn, Professor of Cultural Anthropology

Unionizing Amazon: Duke Undergraduates Engage with North Carolina Labor Activism

Charles Thompson, Professor of the Practice Emeritus of Cultural Anthropology, and Mike Wiley, Assistant Research Professor in the Program in Education

America’s Hallowed Ground: The Case of Booker T. Spicely in Durham

Javier Wallace, Postdoctoral Associate Program in African & African American Studies

The Roots of Tobacco Road: Race, Basketball and Social Justice

About the Fellowships

Wilhelmina Reuben-Cooke was one of the first African American students admitted to Duke in 1963. She went on to have a distinguished legal career as a lawyer and a law professor. In her personal and professional life, Ms. Reuben-Cooke exemplified resilience, leadership and the empowerment of historically excluded communities.

The goal of the initiative is to generate collaboration between students and faculty that honors Ms. Reuben-Cooke’s legacy. All current Duke faculty members teaching a course during the spring or fall semester of 2025 were eligible for the grant. Recipients will teach a course related to their funded project.

Main image: Jenifer Hamil Luker, Orin Starn, Charles Thompson, Mike Wiley and Javier Wallace