Fall 2008

20 September, Saturday, 7:30 p.m.Three Arrows from the Mountain: Calabar to Cuba, Unbreakable Transmission in the Art History of the WorldThe Menil CollectionRobert Farris Thompson, the Colonel John Trumbull Professor of Art History, Yale University.  This talk is part of the lecture series "Museums and the Medical Humanities: The Arts of Transformation" coordinated by the HRC Collaborative Research fellow Marcia Brennan. Contact Marcia Brennan at mbrennan@rice.edu.

25 September, Thursday, 6:30 p.m.
Leadership in Service
307 Sewall Hall
Ann Best, Executive Director, Teach for America - Houston
The H.E.R.E Speakers Series advances understanding of Houston’s impact on national issues of religiosity, social justice, and political equality by inviting noteworthy figures to give public lectures on related topics. This talk is part of the Houston Enriches Rice Education (H.E.R.E.) Project.

16 October, Thursday, 2:30 p.m.
Poetry and Poetics Seminar
1133 Alice Pratt Brown
Matteo D'Amico, composer
A special seminar with D'Amico to be held for Rice University poets and composers. Click here for further details cocerning the premiere American performance of D'Amico's Stabat mater on Friday, October 17. See Rice News preview (10/09/08) of this event. This seminar is part of the HRC's Poetry and Poetics Workshop. Contact Joseph Campana at jac4@rice.edu or x4316.

17 October, Friday - 19 October, Sunday
Promises and Agreements
102 Baker Hall
This conference will examine the subject of promises and agreements from the perspectives of social, moral, legal and political philosophy. Co-sponsored by the Department of Philosophy, Dean of Humanities, and James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy. Contact Hanoch Sheinman at sheinman@rice.edu.

20 October, Monday, 6:30 p.m.
"Texas and the Presidential Election" Panel Discussion
117 Humanities Building
The H.E.R.E Speakers Series advances understanding of Houston’s impact on national issues of religiosity, social justice, and political equality by inviting noteworthy figures to give public lectures on related topics. This talk is part of the Houston Enriches Rice Education (H.E.R.E.) Project.

30 October, Thursday, 4 p.m.
Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software
McMurtry Audiotorium Duncan Hall
Christopher M. Kelty, Associate Professor, Center for Society & Genetics, UCLA
This talk describes the technologies and the moral vision that binds together hackers, geeks, lawyers, and other Free Software advocates. It will also touch on some of the ways the practices of free software have been "modulated" in new projects such as Rice's own Connexions, a project to create an online scholarly textbook commons. Organized by the Ken Kennedy Institute for Information Technology.

31 October, Friday, 4 p.m.
The Drug Empire: The Control of Alcohol and Drugs in Africa since the Late Nineteenth Century
117 Humanities Building
Charles Ambler, Professor of History, University of Texas at El Paso
This lecture is part of the HRC’s African Studies Workshop. Contact Kerry Ward at kward@rice.edu or x2443.

31 October, Friday, 4 p.m.
There and Back Again: Natural History, Biodiversity, and the Problem of Locality
119 Humanities Building
James Griesemer, Professor and Chair of Philosophy, University of Calfornia, Davis
The problem of "returning" to the "same" place takes on particular philosophical significance in the context of recent conservation research at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, Berkeley, aimed to resurvey regions of California studied intensively by the museum's founding director Joseph Grinnell in the early 20th century. Grinnell was a visionary naturalist who anticipated rapid ecological and evolutionary change in the state and designed his museum to detect and monitor such changes. The current director, Craig Moritz, views the museum's resurvey project as "furthering" Grinnell's vision. In this talk, I will describe Grinnell's scientific ideas, the museum's organization, and the problem of locality in biodiversity research created or made poignant by current efforts to detect the effects of climate change by revisiting Grinnell's historical field sites. Sponsors: History of Philosophy Workshop, Workshop for the Cultural Study of Science and Technology, Department of History, and Department of Philosophy. Contact Jack Zammito at zammito@rice.edu

6 November, Thursday, 7 p.m.
The Body of the Second World War: Now
100 Herring Hall
Alexander Nemerov, Professor of History of Art and American Studies,
Yale University  
This talk is part of the lecture series "Museums and the Medical Humanities: The Arts of Transformation" coordinated by the HRC Collaborative Research fellow Marcia Brennan. Contact Marcia Brennan at mbrennan@rice.edu.

6 - 9 November, Thursday - Sunday
New Ways of Analyzing Variation
Hotel Zaza
The 37th Annual Meeting of the New Ways of Analyzing Variation conference will showcase research on language variation according to social groupings including studies on the ethnography of speaking, language and social class, gender, ethnicity and sexuality, language in the schools, and more. For more information see http://nwav37.rice.edu/

10 November, Monday, 4 p.m.
Daily Life in an East African Coastal Town: Materiality and Consumption at Vumba Kuu, Kenya, 13th - 15th centuries AD
119 Humanities Buildling
Stephanie Wynne-Jones, Leverhulme Fellow at the University of Bristol
Dr. Wynne-Jones discusses her current archeological research at the Kenyan coastal site of Vumba Kuu, where for the past two years, she has been carrying out geophysical surveys and archaeological excavations. This talk is sponsored by the HRC's African Studies Workshop and the Department of Anthropology. Contact Kerry Ward at kward@rice.edu or X2443.

14 November, Friday, 1 p.m.
Transcultural Betrayals of Empire: Inca Gracilaso, Tirso de Molina, and the Inequities of Colonial Ethnicity and Gender
302 Rayzor Hall
Michael Horswell, Associate Professor of Spanish and Latin American Literature, and Chair of Languages, Linquistics and Comparative Literature, Florida Atlantic University
Both Inca garcilaso's and Tirso de Molina's significant works on the Pizarro rebellion of the 1540s Perú provide an opportunity to consider how early modern subjects negotiated personal and political circumstances that made "treason" a compellingg theme for both historiography and theater. Horswell's recent book Decolonizing the Sodomite: Queer Tropes of Sexuality in Colonial Andean Culture (U Texas Press, 2005) provides an alternative history and interpretation of the much maligned aboriginal subjects the Spanish often referred to as "sodomites." This lecture is part of the HRC's Global Hispanism Workshop. Contact Lane Kauffmann at rlk@rice.edu or x5403. Download the flyer.

17 November, Monday, 6:30 - 8 p.m.
Being "Ridiculous" in an Era of Gradualistic Thinking
117 Humanities Building
Benjamin L. Hall III, Attorney, The Hall Law Firm
The H.E.R.E Project Speakers Series advances understanding of Houston’s impact on national issues of religiosity, social justice, and political equality by inviting noteworthy figures to give public lectures on related topics. This talk is part of the Houston Enriches Rice Education (H.E.R.E.) Project.

21 November, Friday, 4 p.m.
Traducir una herencia: El fantasma de la lengua italiana en la literatura latinoamericana contemporánea (Gerbasi, Russotto, Raschella, Morábito)
302 Rayzor Hall
Gina Saraceni-Carlini, Visiting Scholar from Universidad Simón Bolívar, Caracas, Venezuela
Addressing the processes of cultural transmission and translation that arise in the context of transatlantic migrations and displacement, Professor Saraceni's lecture - in Spanish - explores the ways in which Latin American writers take upon themselves the transmission of the Italian language and heritage as a hermeneutical imperative and challenge. Saraceni will be a Visiting Professor at Rice next semester.
This lecture is part of the HRC's Global Hispanism Workshop. Contact Lane Kauffmann at rlk@rice.edu or x5403. Dowload the flyer.

1 December, Monday, 5 p.m.
Form, New Formalism, and the Problem of Reading Poetry
English Department Lounge, Herring Hall
Cary Wolfe, the Bruce and Elizabeth Dunlevie Professor of English, Rice University
This discussion forum takes up Wolfe's recent essay "The Idea of Observation at Key West, or, Systems Theory, Poetry, and Form Beyond Formalism" (NLH 29 (2008): 259-276). If, for poets, the "new formalism" refers to the (purportedly) radical resurgence of traditional form and metrics among writers in the early 90s, critics too have been waging their own skirmishes about how literary form matters in an age dominated by strategies that often seem to displace and replace literature as an object of study. How can we think about and with the particularity of aesthetic objects without isolating them from historical or social concerns?
Download the flyer. This forum is part of the HRC's Poetry and Poetics Workshop. To RSVP and for access to the articles (electronic or otherwise), contact Joseph Campana at jac4@rice.edu or x4316.

10 December, Wednesday, 4 p.m.
The World Health Organization Pilot Projects and the Global Malaria Eradication Campaigns
327 Humanities Building
James Webb, Professor of History, Colby College
This lecture is part of the HRC’s African Studies Workshop. Contact Kerry Ward at kward@rice.edu or x2443.