Scholars@Duke
Karin Shapiro

Karin Shapiro

Associate Professor of the Practice in the Department of African and African American Studies
African & African American Studies
kshapiro@duke.edu
Box 90252, Durham, NC 27708
243D Friedl Building, Box 90252, Durham, NC 27708
Office hours Wednesdays 3:30pm-5:00pm  

Available to Mentor

  • PhD
  • Undergraduate

Advising & Mentoring

Awards won by undergraduate students:


Fall 2023, Student won Lowell-Aptman Prize, junior/senior category (Angela Wu)


Fall 2022, Student won Lowell-Aptman Prize, junior/senior category (Darren Janz)


Fall 2020, Student won Lowell-Aptman Prize, junior/senior category (Jenna Clayborn)


Fall 2018, Oli Holsti Research Award, honors thesis (Anna Katz). Her thesis was published in the inaugural issue of Duke Visible Thinking. Katz, A. (2019). “The Road to the White (Nationalist) House: Coded Racial Appeals in Donald Trump’s Presidential Campaign”. https://visiblethinking.duke.edu/issue1-1


Fall 2014, Student won Lowell-Aptman Prize, honors thesis category (Mary Tung)


Summer 2014, Student won $10,000 Davis Project for Peace grant.  Built a reading room with internet access and computer resources in the Mpaka Refugee Camp, Swaziland (Aristide Sangano) http://www.davisprojectsforpeace.org/


Spring 2014, Student won Oliver W. Koonz Human Rights Essay Prize (Jacob Tobia)


Fall 2013, Student won Lowell-Aptman Prize, junior/senior category (Mary Tung)


Spring 2013, Course evaluations among the top 5% of all undergraduate instructors at Duke.


Spring 2013, Student won Oliver W. Koonz Human Rights Essay Prize (Taylor Henley).  Essay published Michigan Journal of History Fall 2013, Vol. X:1


Fall 2012, Student won the Durden Prize, junior/senior category (Catherine Miller).  Co-taught with William Chafe in the field of US southern history.


Spring 2012, Course evaluations among the top 5% of all undergraduate instructors at Duke.


Fall 2011, Student won the Durden Prize, honors thesis category (Ryan Brown).  Student was a finalist for the Durden Prize, junior/senior category (Callie Seaman).  Brown’s thesis is now published as a book.  Ryan Brown, A Native of Nowhere: The Life of Nat Nakasa (Jacana, 2013)


Spring 2011, Student won the award for the best undergraduate thesis. Thesis in South African social history. (Ryan Brown).


Spring 2011, Student won the Oliver W. Koonz Human Rights Essay Prize (Brianna Nofil). Nofil now teaches history at William & Mary. Her book, Detention Power: American Jails and the Origins of Immigrant Incarceration, now under contract with Princeton University Press, had its start as a research essay in my class.


Spring 2011, Two students won Fulbrights (Ryan Brown, South Africa and Katherine Rose Filler, Indonesia).


Fall 2010, Student won the Durden Prize, junior/senior category (Ryan Brown).  Student was a finalist for the Durden Prize, junior/senior category (Katherine Rose Filler).  Student was a finalist for the Durden Prize, freshman/sophomore category (Brianna Nofil).  The first two were in South African history and the third in American immigration history.  Of the nine Durden undergraduate student prizes across all disciplines, three students had written papers in my classes.


Spring 2007, Student won the award for the best undergraduate history thesis.  Thesis in the social history of the American South (Lydia Wright).


2005-2006, Hart Leadership Award (Lauren Jarvis). Spent a year working with the Women on Farms Project. Jarvis now teaches history at UNC, Chapel Hill.


Spring 2005, Students won awards for the best undergraduate history thesis (Khalid Kurji) and the best Master of Arts in Liberal Studies thesis, the former in South African history and the latter in the Politics of the American South (Randy Yale).


Spring 2004, Students won awards for the best undergraduate history thesis (Andrew Van Kirk) and the best Master of Arts in Liberal Studies thesis, both in South African History (Doris Jacobs).


Explanation of the awards: