This new program for Houston-area high schools, especially those with student populations currently underrepresented at Rice University, will bring faculty from the School of Humanities at Rice to high school classrooms to present new scholarship in their fields and to provide an introduction to college-level topics and approaches.
From the list below, interested teachers may identify a speaker and topic that would suit their classrooms. Topics include literary analysis, American history, religious studies, media studies, and linguistics. To request a professor to visit your classroom, please contact the Office of K-12 Initiatives at Rice.
Availability is limited. Once a match is made and visit has been scheduled, you and the professor will meet beforehand to talk over the lesson plan. The professor will want to know about the ideas and terms already current in your class. Typically, the professor will make a brief presentation and, with your guidance and leadership, will incorporate active learning strategies.
These faculty members have been encouraged not to over-simplify their work, but to present their richest ideas and conclusions. Your students will thus have exposure to college-level learning in the humanities.
See Rice News profile of the Civic Humanists here (11/20/08).
Brown v. Board: Antecedents and Legacies
Alexander X. Byrd, Associate Professor of History
Dr. Byrd explores the deep roots and ambiguous aftermath of the modern black freedom movement through the lens of an iconic American civil rights case. Are we all better off because of Brown?
Reading Bleeding Trees
Joseph Campana, Assistant Professor of English
Following an epic trope, the bleeding tree, from classical sources to Shakespeare, we can assess the relationship between literature and the lived experience of pain, suffering, and sympathy. Is pain experienced differently across histories, cultures, and bodies? Might pain provide a sense of common experience that creates networks of sympathy and community?
How the City Changed Everything We Think about Ourselves
Terrence Doody, Professor of English
This will be a talk on the historical development of the novel, the history of the idea of the individual, and what happens when the self is outnumbered by one million to one in big nineteenth-century urban settings.
The Critical Study of Religion and the Place of the Humanities in the University
Matthias Henze, Associate Professor of Religious Studies
We tend to think of religion as a private affair, not something to be studied at the university. But a quick glance in the newspaper reveals that religion is a major factor in public life, both in the U.S. and around the globe. This talk will illustrate the nature of religious studies as an academic discipline and the benefits of studying religion at a secular university such as Rice.
The Role of Young Storytellers in Contemporary African and Indian Fiction in English
Betty Joseph, Associate Professor of English
Why do many authors of new fiction from Africa and India employ young storytellers as the primary voices in their works? Do they challenge other voices of traditional authority? Reading selections by Salman Rushdie, Chimamanda Adichie and Arundhati Roy, we’ll discuss the insights young storytellers can provide into political, sexual, and familial aspects of everyday life in Nigeria and India.
How to Read the Aeneid
Scott McGill, Associate Professor of Classical Studies
An introduction to major problems of interpretation of an epic poem. How much history is necessary for interpretation? How much is too much? How much literary history? What makes the Aeneid an epic poem? Besides the “epic voice,” how many “further voices” in Virgil’s poem do we hear?
Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Language (but Were Afraid to Ask)
Nancy Niedzielski, Associate Professor of Linguistics
Language is a fascinating phenomenon: a highly complex system with infinite varieties, but we pick it up and understand each other with amazing ease. Though intimately linked with our culture, identity, past, and future, hundreds of languages are on the brink of extinction. Perhaps most fascinating is the capacity of us speakers - of any given language - to believe vast numbers of falsehoods. This talk will present some of the surprising truisms about language that we linguists have discovered.
Medicine and Media: How Doctor Shows on Television Teach Us About Health
Kirsten Ostherr, Associate Professor of English
In the intersecting fields of mediastudies and medical humanities, Dr. Ostherr offers a discussion of the depiction of medical technology in popular television programs such as Grey's Anatomy, House, M.D., and C.S.I., and the role these images play in shaping patient experiences in clinical settings. These more recent hit TV shows will be placed in context through comparison with older films and television shows that offer a different perspective on the practice of medicine.
The Humanities Research Center at Rice University serves to foster research and interest in the humanities, broadly understood.
Through funding of faculty, graduate, and undergraduate student fellowships; interdisciplinary workshops; international conferences; external faculty visitors; document archives; research seminars; and most recently its Public Humanities Initiative, the HRC strives to broaden the scope and depth of humanities-based conversations throughout the larger intellectual community.