Expanding Narratives and Approaches to the Philosophical Canon

Project Team

Members of the Project Vox team.
Members of the Project Vox team; Back row: Max Ma, Samuel Zepeda, Aurora Yu, Mary Purcell, Kelsey Brod, Liz Milewicz, Andrew Janiak; Front row: Cheryl Thomas, Zoé Murphy, Faith Chong, Shreya Joshi, Sophia Maldonado; (Photo: Nubia Nurain Khan)

Team profile by Sophia Maldonado, Liz Milewicz, Andrew Janiak, Kelsey Brod and Will Shaw

Dedicated to de-centering the traditional canon of philosophy and transforming the discipline, the Project Vox team continues to conduct research on marginalized philosophical figures and amplifying their voices by publishing entries on its website. Most recently in April 2024, the team published a new web entry on philosopher Germaine de Staël.

Project Vox website.
Web entry on philosopher Germaine de Staël, created by the Project Vox team

While working on the Staël entry, members of the team visited the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History & Culture at the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library to engage with a range of materials on women’s history. From French revolutionary pamphlets to published works produced by philosophers, the team members’ interaction with these primary source materials proved fruitful for understanding these figures and the impact of their work.

Apart from the new philosopher entry, the team continued to write monthly blog posts on topics ranging from AI and images research to students’ travel experiences and their work on Project Vox. One post, in particular, marked a milestone for the project in expanding and incorporating new digital humanistic methods into our research.

Photos of team members engaging with archival materials.
Students and leaders engage with materials from the  Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History & Culture at the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. (Photos: Liz Milewicz)

Prompted by students’ work on data visualization and a desire to make this work accessible, Project Vox launched SandVox, a venue for sharing unconventional, ephemeral or experimental scholarly work with its audience. In contrast to the project’s main content – philosopher entries, teaching materials, a timeline and an image gallery – SandVox projects can be created by anyone, and they are not hosted by Project Vox. Instead, SandVox is an aggregator and portal that provides links to resources elsewhere on the web.

Nevertheless, Project Vox’s influence does not begin and end at Duke. In October 2023, Project Vox alumni, Yasemin Altun, Meredith Graham and Dana Hogan, presented their paper “Project Vox and Early Modern Women’s Collaborations in the Arts” at the Women in Art and Music Conference at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. By focusing on previous philosophers, Anna Maria van Schurman, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and Tullia d’Aragona, their talk exemplified the objectives of the project and its expansive level of engagement.