John Benhart, KIE, Summer 2018

Kenan Summer Fellowship winner John Benhart is spending his break traveling around the United States, conducting informal interviews with community members in small to medium-sized towns. He is researching how citizens in these areas view responsibility to outsiders, including migrants, minorities, and other "foreign" groups, and how they define "community."

And he's doing it by bike!

"In a lot of ways, this project is about putting myself in a place where I am vulnerable and seeing how I and others respond," says John. "There will be days when I am tired, soaked from rain, and hungry, and I will learn about the community by how I am treated [when] in this state, if people offer help and encouragement, or whether I am just another person. Moreover, I have never been to most of the places I will be visiting; so, when I am exploring, I will be a true outsider. Thus, I will be investigating communities from a two-fold sense: gaining insight from how I am able to fit in, and from what I can surmise about the communities as I spend time with them. From this, I hope to find larger commonalities and distinctions across various American communities."

John is a Trinity junior from Pittsburgh.
Read John's first letter home here: http://kenan.ethics.duke.edu/blog/john-letter-1/Read more