External Faculty Fellowships

With generous funding from the Lynette S. Autrey Endowment and the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Humanities Research Center hosts up to four visiting professors for one semester each academic year. The fellows teach a course affiliated with a humanities department and take part in the intellectual life of the Center. The HRC sponsors special symposia or conferences centered on their research. These programs give Rice faculty and students significant exposure to eminent scholars from around the world.  
In 2013-14, the HRC will restructure the External Faculty Fellowship program, allowing faculty to come to Rice for semester- or year-long terms. Along with the change in length in term, the program will also be renamed the Autrey Visiting Scholar program. 

2012-2013 Fellows


 Simon Keller, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Victoria University of Wellington (Fall 2012)
Understanding Disagreement about Climate Change: Skepticism, Ideology, and Experts

The disagreement about climate science is a stark feature of political debate and an obstacle to meaningful action on climate change. To understand why people of different political views disagree about climate change, Keller argues that we must understand our relationship with experts and how ideological commitments can rationally influence decisions about which experts to trust. His project specifically examines the disagreement about climate change as a manifestation of rational attitudes to expertise. He examines the types of arguments offered, the sources of argumentation, and the channels through which a concerned non-expert should decide which sources to trust.
 
 
 May
 John J. May, Assistant Professor Architecture, Landscape, and Design, University of Toronto (Fall 2012)
Spectral Visions: The Birth of the Energetic of Environment
 
May’s project focuses on the historical relationship between Postwar scientific instruments and the changing composition of the concept of environment. Examining imaging as a form of environmental representation, he argues that our understanding of the environment is fundamentally inseparable from the emergence of imaging. His project aims to produce a technical and conceptual genealogy of the environmental image, a theory of representation commensurate with questions and problems being posed around the concept of environment, which are today reshaping both the humanities and design practice. In so doing, this research shows how imaging has reorganized and restructured the entire scientific-bureaucratic apparatus that today takes ‘the environment’ as its object of concern.
 

Jaskot		 Paul B. Jaskot, Professor of Art and Architecture, DePaul University (Spring 2013)
Cultural Fantasies, Ideological Goals, Political Economic Realities in the Built Environment of Auschwitz

This project examines the archive of Auschwitz’s architectural office, one of the largest collections of evidence of a single building office’s activity during the Nazi regime. Using art historical tools to analyze the construction of this politically charged institutional environment, Jaskot explores the intersection of the cultural priorities of the SS, the organization of forced labor for construction, as well as the intertwines goals of racist genocide and imperialist expansion. The SS designed and planned hundred of vernacular structures for the camp that changed dynamically in form and function with war conditions. He argues that the SS building at Auschwitz became a deadly intersection of delusional planning, pragmatic realities, and destructive capacities.

 

Autrey Visiting Scholar Award Information

The Humanities Research Center grants external faculty fellowships for one semester or a full academic year. Autrey Visiting Scholars will receive a stipend of up to $60,000, depending on the length of the fellowship, as well as funds for relocation and research.

In 2012-13, the HRC restructured the External Faculty Fellowship program to allow faculty to come to Rice for semester or yearlong terms. Along with the change in length in term, the program will also be renamed the Autrey Visiting Scholar program.

General Requirements:

  • Teach one course affiliated with a humanities department
  • Be in residence at Rice throughout the length of the appointment
  • Participate in the intellectual life of the HRC by attending and presenting their research at a brown bag series with other center affiliates
  • Scholars also have the option of organizing or participating in a conference during the academic year

Eligibility:

  • Fellowships are awarded to support research projects in the humanities. This includes, but is not limited to history, philosophy, languages, literature, linguistics, religious studies, art history and the arts. Proposals employing humanistic approaches are welcome from anthropology and other social sciences, natural sciences, music, architecture, engineering, and other fields.
  • Both junior and senior scholars with tenured or tenure-track appointments at colleges and universities other than Rice are eligible to apply. Applicants must be at least three years beyond receipt of the PhD or terminal degree for their field at the beginning of the fellowship term.
  • In the event that a proposal is not funded, the candidate is welcome to resubmit an updated proposal in any subsequent year.
  • Rice University is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity employer. Scholars who are members of traditionally under-represented groups are encouraged to apply.
  • There is no citizenship requirement or restriction for this fellowship. Non-U.S. nationals are welcome to apply.
  • Employment eligibility verifications are requested upon hire.
  • This fellowship position at Rice does not provide medical or other benefits.

The call for applications will be posted mid-August and outlines all of the required materials. Applications are due at the end of October and decisions are announced in late December.

Applications will be evaluated by an interdisciplinary committee, which considers the scholarly promise of the research project and its potential contribution to the intellectual community of Rice.

Click here to see a list of past External Faculty Fellows.

Click here to see publications from our past External Faculty Fellows.