Individual Research Fellowships for Rice Faculty
The Humanities Research Center awards up to three teaching-release fellowships to Rice faculty each academic year, and to date has awarded a total of sixty-seven. The fellowships facilitate the completion of a single-author, book-length project or the initiation of a new project, in order to assist faculty in the development of their careers. Fellows are released from teaching for one semester to pursue their research projects. The fellows also participate in the intellectual life of the center by sharing research activities through active participation in a yearlong brown-bag series with other HRC Fellows.
2009-10 Research Fellows
Visit the HRC office to examine or borrow selected publications by these scholars.
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April DeConick, Fall 2009
Isla Carroll & Percy E. Turner Professor of Biblical Studies
Sex and the Serpent: Why Sexual Conflicts of the Early Church Still Matter
DeConick's current project explores the sexual and gender landscapes of early Christianity, identifying what the conflicts were, what was at stake, and how they were resolved, explaining how and "why women's leadership was erased from the Christian tradition." She argues that this knowledge will be significant to today's Christian chuch. In Spring 2010, she organizes a conference, "Histories of the Hidden God: Mysticism in Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity."
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Rebecca Goetz, Spring 2010
Assistant Professor of History
Potential Christians and Hereditary Heathens: Religion and Race in Early America, 1550-1800
Goetz is completing a book project that places English Christianities at the center of both the history of colonial North America and the history of race. She provides an important analysis of the specific connections between religion and race in England's earliest New World colonies. Her work elucidates the influential role played by Christian belief – often overlooked – in explaining human difference, showing that race as a concept emerged far earlier than historians have previously thought, and supporting her claims through analysis of legal documents and court records of the day.
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Joseph Manca, Fall 2009
Professor of Art History
George Washington's Eye: Architecture, Landscape, and Art at Mount Vernon
Having established a superior record of publication in Italian Renaissance art history, Manca now turns his attention to American art and architecture with his current book project, the first sustained study of George Washington’s aesthetics as found at Mount Vernon. He will analyze and interpret Washington’s estate in its historical and artistic context, as he puts it, “during a seminal generation in the formation of American culture and values.” The book will shed light not only on the intellectual qualities of Washington himself, but on the vibrant intellectual culture of 18th-century America.
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