Mission and History

Mission

The Humanities Research Center fosters scholarly research and intellectual community in the humanities broadly understood, facilitates scholarly work between the School of Humanities and other areas of Rice University, and leads institutional change by partnering with other foundations, centers, research institutions, and universities. The HRC strives to bring a dynamic element to research and teaching by developing "intellectual liquidity" within and between the humanities and the sciences, information and communications technologies, and the professions.

Furthermore, the HRC serves as the nucleus within the University where the disciplinary changes that will shape its future can be profitably reflected on and anticipated. For a university the size of Rice, these collaborations - both within the university and beyond it - are crucial to stimulating innovation and new research. In short, the HRC is an agent of intellectual integration, within and beyond the School of Humanities.

History

Since its establishment in 1987, the Humanities Research Center has been committed to fostering international and interdisciplinary connections to further the research goals of the humanities at Rice University. In addition to bringing international scholars to campus each year through sponsorship of conferences, workshops, and international faculty fellows, the HRC supports research at the faculty, postdoctoral, graduate and undergraduate student levels that bridges national boundaries.

The HRC's main programs include: postdoctoral fellows supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; the Medical Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow supported by the Office of the Provost and the Rockwell Fund; graduate seminars sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; NEH & Lynette S. Autrey Visiting Professors; internal faculty projects, designed to foster current faculty interests; a Public Humanities Initiative; the Emerging Disciplines conference; Our Americas Archive Partnership; the Humanities Research Innovation Fund; and fellowships for graduate and undergraduate students. This year, the HRC is funding seven leaves, eight workshops, and six large-scale conferences, as well as numerous individual speakers and panels organized through faculty-led workshops. Through such activities, the Humanities Research Center has become a primary venue for the advancement of scholarship and teaching.

The HRC is now developing a research lab on “Cultures of Energy.” This collaboratory will use a multi-tiered approach, engaging faculty, postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, and undergraduate students, to explore questions on energy and energy transitions. Grounded in the humanities disciplines of philosophy, anthropology, history, linguistics, religious studies and literature, this collaboratory will bring in outside scholars and propose curricular development in this field.

Another area of focus for the HRC is its Public Humanities Initiatives. In addition to the growing Civic Humanists program, the HRC is also engaging the Houston community through projects such as last February’s Black List Project and this fall’s Discovering the Civil War exhibit.

The HRC has collaborated with Rice's Fondren Library, the University of Maryland’s Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH), and the Instituto Mora in Mexico, to develop the Our Americas Archive Partnership. This project was awarded a three-year $1 million grant from the Institute on Museum and Library Services to create a multi-lingual, international digital archive with a focus on the hemispheric Americas.

Click here to view the HRC's history through its newsletters