Fall 2007 HRC Events
Skip ahead: September, October, November, December
11 September, Tuesday, 4:30 p.m.
Aesthetics as One of the Eighteenth Century "Life" Sciences
Winfried Menninghaus Seminar
Humanities Building 119
20 September, Thursday, 4:30 p.m.
The Invention of Race in Medieval Romance
117 Humanities Building
Geraldine Heng, Perceval Fellow in Medieval Romance, Historiography, and Culture, University of Texas
Geraldine Heng recently published Empire of Magic: Medieval Romance and the Politics of Cultural Fantasy, on the genesis and genealogy of medieval romance, in which she explores historiography, cultural trauma, the crusades, race, and empire-formation.
Co-sponsored by the HRC Medieval Studies Workshop and the Medieval Studies Program. Contact Jane Chance, jchance@rice.edu or x2625.
25 September, Tuesday, 4:00 p.m.
Benefits of Art-Related Practices I: Fine-Tuning and Optimizing of Mental Operations, Cognition and Emotion
Winfried Menninghaus Seminar II
Humanities Building 119
25 September, Tuesday, 12:00 p.m.
Intervening in Student Learning Abroad: The Georgetown Consortium Study
Fondren Library - Kyle Morrow Room
Michael Vande Berg
This talk is part of the Americas Colloquium, and is co-sponsored by the Center on Race, Religious & Urban Life. Contact Alex Byrd, axb@rice.edu.
26 September, Wednesday, 4:00 p.m.
Understanding Promises and Agreements
Rice Faculty Fellow Presentation
119 Humanities Building
Hanoch Sheinman, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Rice University
Dr. Sheinman examines the nature of promises and agreements, their relation to social practices, and the basis of the obligation to keep them. Contact Hanoch Sheinman, sheinman@rice.edu or x2718.
28 September, 2007, 4:00 p.m.
Tradición y malestar de la frontera en el Caribe Hispano
Rayzor Hall 123
Juan Carlos Rodríguez, Lecturer in Hispanic Studies, Rice University
Dr. Rodríguez, co-organizer of the Global Hispanism Workshop, is an award winning poet (Premio Olga Nolla 2005) and co-editor of Polygraph: an International Journal of Culture and Politics issue # 15 on "Immanence, Transcendence, Utopia," (Spring 2004). His future projects include Malestar de la frontera, a study of the concept of border in the Caribbean, and Imaginarios Urbanos del Caribe Global, a study of Caribbean urban circuits in the age of globalization.
This talk is part of "Transnational Caribbean Cultures," a series organized by HRC's Global Hispanism Workshop. Contact Juan Carlos Rodriguez, jcr3@rice.edu, or x5707. Co-sponsored by the Hispanic Studies Department, the Institute of Hispanic Cultures, and the Houston Arts Alliance.
2 October, Tuesday, 4:00 p.m.
From the Electrical Fairy to the Magic Box: An Anthropological Account of Invisible Infrastructures
Technology, Cognition, and Culture Lecture Series
McMurtry Auditorium, Duncan Hall
Genevieve Bell, Director of User Experience, Digital Home Group, Intel Corporation
Dr. Bell's team conducts ethnographic research on daily life in homes all over the world in order to improve Intel's technology offerings and strategic planning. She has helped to introduce the notion of culture as a technology determinant. Says Dr. Bell, “Traditional market research tools, such as market research surveys and demographic profiling are good at telling you what people say they are doing. They don't tell you why they are doing them; they don't tell you how they do them. Nor do they tell you what they actually are doing.” Drawing historical, economic, regulatory, and cultural frameworks, as well as a decade's worth of ethnographic research, here wireless is re-imagines as one of a sequence of invisible infrastructures over the last century, rather than a brand new technology.
The TCC Series traces the evolution of information technologies and their influence on civilization. It explores the passage from oral to written, from manuscript to print, and from print to electronic communication. The influence of these communications media on the management of knowledge, cognitive and technological developments, and cultural history is examined, as well as the role these media play at the interfacing of scholarship and scientific, humanistic, and social history. Co-sponsored by the Department of Anthropology, Information Technology, the Vice Provost, the University Librarian, and the Computer and Information Technology Institute (CITI). Contact CITI, citi@rice.edu or x5823.
5 October, Friday, 4:30 p.m.
Thomas Kuhn and Interdisciplinary Conversation: Why Historians and Philosophers of Science Stopped Talking to One Another
Humanities Building 119
Jan Golinski, Professor of History and Humanities, University of New Hampshire
Dr. Golinski has published research on the history of chemistry, on the problems of method in the history of science and on the social history of science in Britain in the 18th century. His most recent book is British Weather and the Climate of Enlightenment.
Sponsored by the History of Philosophy Workshop, the Cultural Studies of Science and Technology Workshop, and the German and Slavic Studies Department.
9 October, Tuesday, 4:30 p.m.
Benefits of Art-Related Practices II: Promoting Imagination, Techniques of Deception, Sensus Communis, Paranormal Behavior
Winfried Menninghaus Seminar III
Humanities Building 119
13 October, Saturday - 14 October, Sunday
Conference: Sociology of Music Performance in the Twenty-First Century
Alice Pratt Brown Hall - The Shepherd School of Music
Featured speaker, 13 October, Saturday
Young Musicians and Their Careers: Highlights from the Longitudinal Study of Music Involvement, 2001-2007
Shoshana Dobrow, Assistant Professor of Management Systems, Fordham University
Dr. Dobrow's research addresses the question of why people make seemingly irrational decisions to pursue extraordinarily competitive, challenging music career paths. This presentation will offer highlights from an ongoing longitudinal survey study of talented young musicians. Dobrow investigates the nature of subjective orientation - the sense of calling.
Sponsored primarily by the Shepherd School of music. Contact Janet Rarick, rarick@rice.edu or x4854.
18 October, Thursday, 7 p.m.
Workshop: The Utility of Counterfactual Thought: Experiments in History
327 Humanities Building
Mark Grimsley, Associate Professor of History, Ohio State University
Please contact Randal Hall (rh@rice.edu) if you plan on attending the evening workshop. He will be happy to forward to you a copy of the paper that will be discussed.
19 October, Friday, 3 p.m.
1864 and the Shaping of Post-Emancipation America
117 Humanities Building
Mark Grimsley, Associate Professor of History, Ohio State University
The events are part of a lecture series on the American Civil War associated with Humanities Research Center Fellow Jacqueline G. Campbell.
22 October, Monday, 4 p.m.
Private Bodies/Public Texts: Home Invasions
117 Humanities Building
Karla FC Holloway, William R. Kenan Professor of English, Duke University
Dr. Holloway will discuss the intersections of law and literature that challenge the idea of the home as a domestic sanctuary when issues of gender, race, and sexuality are in play. Dr. Holloway’s research interests focus on African American cultural studies, biocultural studies, ethics and law. She is the author of the recent memoir BookMarks: Reading in Black and White.
This talk is part of the Americas Colloquium and is co-sponsored by the Center on Race, Religious & Urban Life. Contact Alexander X. Byrd, axb@rice.edu.
25 October, Thursday, 4 p.m.
****Postponed to March 12, 2008 - Click here for details****
Atraidas por la aventura: Gender, Migration, and Mass Culture in Postrevolutionary Mexico
Andrew W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow Presentation
117 Humanities Building
Laura Isabel Serna, Andrew W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow, Rice University
26 October, Friday
Venturing Beyond the Beyond: A Generational Symposium on the Visual Imagery and Mystical Hermeneutics of Elliot R. Wolfson
Fondren Library - Kyle Morrow Room
Programming includes a range of internal and external speakers. Invited speakers include Professor Emerita Edith Wyschogrod; Steven Wasserstrom of Reed College; and Virginia Burrus of Drew University. Elliot Wolfson will offer concluding reflections and remarks on the papers.
The conference will be organized around three major currents of Dr. Wolfson's creative production: hermeneutics, aesthetics, and poetics. Wolfson is a leading scholar in the field of Jewish Studies and medieval Jewish mysticism, or Kabbalah. He has demonstrated that hermeneutical activity and mystical practice were more or less identical in medieval Kabbalah, that reading sacred scripture and interpreting texts - often through elaborate techniques that can only be described as creative esoteric (mis)readings - constituted a powerful contemplative practice. He has also engaged in elaborate theorizations about God's body in Jewish thought (a divine body which cannot be seen, but which is nevertheless seen), the nature of the symbol or image in the aniconic traditions of Judaism, and what we might call the paradox of the veil.
Co-sponsors include the HRC Judaic Studies Workshop, the Departments of Art History and Religious Studies, as well as the Stanford and Joan Alexander Foundation. Contact Marcia Brennan, mbrennan@rice.edu or x3470 or Jeffrey Kripal, jjkripal@rice.edu or x2238.
30 October, Tuesday, 6 p.m. 2 November, 2007 , 4:00 p.m. 5 November, Monday, 4 p.m. 5 November, Monday, 6 p.m. 9 November, Friday, 4 p.m. 13 November, Tuesday, 4 p.m. 16 November, Friday, 3 p.m. 16 November, Friday, 9:30 a.m. 20 November, Tuesday, 12 p.m. 29 November, Thursday, 6 p.m. 30 November, Friday, 4 p.m. See Rice News coverage (11/14/07). 3 December, Monday, 7 p.m. 6 December, Thursday, 4 p.m.
****Postponed Until Further Notice****
Public Humanities Initiative
Mexicans Look at Mexico I: Culture and Fine Arts
Baker Hall, James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy
Teresa Franco, General Director of the National Institute of Fine Arts in Mexico
Co-sponsored by the Baker Institute's Latin American Initiative. Contact Moramay López-Alonso at moramay@rice.edu.
Radical Statehood: A Brief History in its Tenth Anniversary
Rayzor Hall 302
Frances Negrón-Muntaner, Assistant Professor of English, Columbia University
Dr. Negrón-Muntaner will present her work on the reception of the radical statehood manifesto in Puerto Rico and the United States. She is an award-winning filmmaker, writer, and scholar.
This talk is part of "Transnational Caribbean Cultures," a series organized by HRC's Global Hispanism Workshop. Contact Juan Carlos Rodriguez, jcr3@rice.edu, or x5707. Co-sponsored by the Hispanic Studies Department, the Institute of Hispanic Cultures, and the Houston Arts Alliance.
Horseman of the Apocalypse: Columbus' Later Writings and the Theological Advent of the Modern
119 Humanities Building
J. Kameron Carter, Assistant Professor in Theology and Black Church Studies, Duke University Divinity School
Approaching Columbus not only as a seafaring, but also and importantly as a literary discoverer and conqueror, Dr. Carter's talk will consider the precise way in which theological discourse allows Columbus to construct the colonial order of things. Dr. Carter draws on patristic and medieval approaches to theology in engaging the contemporary theological and cultural imagination. His forthcoming book is Race: A Theological Account, in which he considers the modern construction of race as a theological problem.
This talk is part of the Americas Colloquium and is co-sponsored by the Center on Race, Religious & Urban Life. Contact Alexander X. Byrd at axb@rice.edu.
Public Humanities Initiative
Mexicans Look at Mexico II: Poverty Alleviation Programs and Economic Development in Mexico: Challenges for Policy Makers
Baker Hall, James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy
Miguel Székely, Undersecretary of Higher Education in Mexico
Co-sponsored by the Baker Institute's Latin American Initiative. Contact Moramay López-Alonso at moramay@rice.edu.
****Postponed to November 30, 2008-Click here for details****
El Gran Caribe: A View from the Canefields of Eighteenth-Century Jamaica
Alexander X. Byrd, Assistant Professor of History, Rice University
Blood Miracles and Fire Magic: The Transmutational Arts of Alberto Burri
117 Humanities Building
Rice Faculty Fellow Presentation
Marcia Brennan, Associate Professor of Art History, Rice University
Dr. Brennan examines the ways in which art museums function as numinous sites of aesthetic contemplation within modern and postmodern culture. Specifically, she explores the work of prominent author and museum director James Johnson Sweeney (1900-1986) who drew on motifs of mysticism in order to emphasize the instrumental capacity of aesthetics to express, and potentially induce, transformational and transcendent states of consciousness. Sweeney's critical discourses and his museum installations in the nineteen-fifties and sixties presented the works of Italian modernist artist Alberto Burri in paradoxical terms.
Contact Marcia Brennan, mbrennan@rice.edu or x3470.
15 November, Thursday, 7 p.m.
Workshop: Brave Bummers of the West: Veteran's Memories of Sherman's March
327 Humanities Building
Anne Rubin, Associate Professor of History, University of Maryland
Please contact Randal Hall (rh@rice.edu) if you plan on attending the evening workshop. He will be happy to forward to you a copy of the paper that will be discussed.
Identities Gained and Lost: Confederate Nationalism during the Civil War and Reconstruction
117 Humanities Building
Anne Rubin, Associate Professor of History, University of Maryland
The events are part of a lecture series on the American Civil War associated with Humanities Research Center Fellow Jacqueline G. Campbell.
Public Humanities Initiative
Mexicans Look at Mexico III: Energy Policy
Baker Hall, James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy
Francisco Salazar, President of the Energy Regulatory Commission (CRE) of Mexico
Co-sponsored by the Baker Institute's Latin American Initiative. This address is also part of the Baker Institute's international conference "The Future of Natural Gas Markets in North America." Contact Moramay López-Alonso at moramay@rice.edu.
****New Date****
Singapore Genomics: Global Science?
Andrew W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow Presentation
224 Herring Hall
Pei P. Koay, Andrew W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow, Rice University
Contact Pei P. Koay, p2koay@rice.edu or x4226.
27 November, Tuesday, 4 p.m.
An Ordinary, Everyday Crisis: Between Salvation and Survival in Modern Jewish Thought
Rice Faculty Fellow Presentation
117 Humanities Building
Gregory Kaplan, Anna Smith Fine Assistant Professor of Judaic Studies, Rice University
Dr. Kaplan analyzes and evaluates the prominent twentieth-century efforts of Martin Buber and Franz Rosenszweig to re-focus on the central problem of modern Jewish thought on the relation of the sacred to the secular.
Contact Gregory Kaplan gkaplan@rice.edu or x2778.
Public Humanities Initiative
Mexicans Look at Mexico IV: Trafficking and Vulnerability of Migrants: A Conceptual Form
Baker Hall, James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy
Jorge A. Bustamante, UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants
See Rice news coverage.
Co-sponsored by the Baker Institute's Latin American Initiative. Contact Moramay López-Alonso at moramay@rice.edu.
****New Date ****
El Gran Caribe: A View from the Canefields of Eighteenth-Century Jamaica
123 Rayzor Hall
Alexander X. Byrd, Assistant Professor of History, Rice UniversityDr. Byrd’s area of expertise is Afro-America, especially black life in the Atlantic world and the Jim Crow South. He is presently completing a history of free and forced transatlantic black migration in the period of the American Revolution, entitled Captives and Voyagers.
This talk is part of "Transnational Caribbean Cultures," a series organized by HRC's Global Hispanism Workshop. Contact Juan Carlos Rodriguez, jcr3@rice.edu, or x5707. Co-sponsored by the Hispanic Studies Department, the Institute of Hispanic Cultures, and the Houston Arts Alliance.
Workshop: Making a Desert and Calling It Peace: Ideas of Wilderness in the Aftermath of the American Civil War
327 Humanities Building
Lisa Brady, Assistant Professor of History, Boise State University
This event is part of a lecture series on the American Civil War associated with Humanities Research Center Fellow Jacqueline G. Campbell.
119 Humanities Building
Jotting Notes by Song Intellectuals, 960-1279
ZHONG Zhenzhen, Director of the Institute for the Study of Chinese Classics, Nanjing Normal University, and President of the Association for Traditional Chinese Poetry
Professor Zhong is a leading scholar in classical Chinese poetics, an author of more than a dozen books in the field. This talk will introduce the philosophical wisdom, literary beauty, artistic achievement, and scientific discovery from China's most culturally accomplished period, examining in particular the literary genre known as biji, or jotting notes.
This talk is sponsored by the Chao Center for Asian Studies, the Department of Art History, and HRC's Medieval Studies Workshop.
