Public Humanities
Initiative
Humanities Research Center
Rice University
Civic Humanists Visit High School Classrooms
This program brings faculty from the Rice School of Humanities to Houston-area high schools, especially those with student populations currently underrepresented at Rice University, to present new scholarship in their fields and to provide an introduction to college-level topics and approaches.
See Rice News profile of the Civic Humanists here (11/20/08).
The following faculty will present these talks at Eastwood Academy High School, Stephen F. Austin High School, and Cesar E. Chavez High School.
Witnessing Life: Seeing and Speaking the Pain of History
Joseph Campana, Assistant Professor of English
With the advent of digital technology and social networking, magazines can seem antiquated. But 1936 witnessed a revolution in consciousness with the birth of the first major weekly magazine. Life magazine approached the world with startling photojournalism, rich juxtapositions of high and low, public and private culture, and rapid innovations in advertising. In the course of this lecture, we'll consider how the magazine represented iconic events, especially those that ask a reader to witness moments of great pain or violence.
How Did the Bible Come to Be?
April DeConick, the Isla Carroll and Percy E. Turner Professor of Biblical Studies
The Bible and the stories it tells are familiar to almost everyone in America, yet how familiar are we with its own story, its own history as a book? In order to illuminate the Bible's history as a book, this talk will trace the history of the Bible itself, from its oral beginnings, to its written Hebrew and Greek manuscripts, to its modern translations.
Multiculturalism in France
Julie Fette, Assistant Professor of French Studies
Like Americans, the French are a people of diverse cultures, ethnicities, and religions. Both nations espouse the democratic principles of liberty and equality. But France and the United States differ significantly in how they integrate (or not) minorities into their societies. The talk will focus on issues of immigration, secularism, and affirmative action.
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.
Re-Envisioning the World: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Fourth Dimension
Nicole Waligora-Davis, Assistant Professor of English
W.E.B. Du Bois is among the most noteworthy civil rights activists, humanitarians, and American intellectuals of the 20th century. While it has been many decades since the Civil Rights Movement, what lessons may we continue to draw in the 21st century from Du Bois’s vision of democracy and citizenship?
April DeConick presents a history of the Bible to students at Carnegie Vanguard High School (10/14/09)
The HRC
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.
Contact:
Lauren Kleinschmidt
Asst. to the Director
713.348.2770
laurenk@rice.edu