Have you ever wanted to know what goes on behind the scenes at museums? Why do people destroy and loot cultural heritage sites and why does that affect the public so much? How and why do we preserve heritage sites like historical buildings and towns? Why are debates over the provenance and even existence of historical artifacts so heated and sometimes violent?
The Minor in Museums and Cultural Heritage minor draws from an array of disciplines and departments, from Anthropology and Art History to Religion, Architecture and Cultural Studies to study the identification, preservation, and (re-)presentation of heritage materials. Such materials often serve as the evidentiary basis for humanistic, architectural, and social science disciplines. Students will learn about the preservation and use of tangible and intangible cultural heritage for study, archival purposes, and public display through the study of cultural heritage institutions, new digital analysis tools and media, and traditional methods of preservation and analysis.
Browse the Menu above or follow the links below to find out more about the following:
For questions about the minor, please contact the directors, Kerry Ward (kward@rice.edu).
Faculty
Leo Costello
Associate Professor of Art History
Steering Committee Member
Research Interests:
Leo Costello teaches eighteenth and nineteenth century European painting, with a focus on Marxist theories and ideas of social justice. Before coming to Rice he also worked for 2 years at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and is interested in how how display and institutional discourse affects the production and viewing of art objects.
Fabiola López Durán
Assistant Professor of Art History
Steering Committee Member
Research Interests:
Adopting a transnational and interdisciplinary perspective, Fabiola López-Durán’s research and teaching focuses on the history and theory of modern and contemporary European and Latin American art and architecture.
Jeffrey Fleisher
Associate Professor
Steering Committee Member
Research Interests:
As an archaeologist of Africa, Fleisher's past research has focused on two distinct, but related issues: the role of rural and non-elite populations in the political economy of small-scale complex societies, and the way that people use material culture and space in the establishment and maintenance of social inequality and power.
Kariann Fuqua
Lecturer, Program in Writing and Communication and Visual and Dramatic Arts (VADA)
Affiliated Faculty
Research Interests:
As a visual artist, Fuqua is interested in the origins of museum collections, how those objects have been used in modes of display, and how education of the public happens through exhibition design.
Reto Geiser
Gus Wortham Assistant Professor
Steering Committee Member
Research Interests:
Reto Geiser is a designer and scholar of modern architecture with a focus on the intersections between architecture, pedagogy, and media. He is teaches architectural history, theory, and design.
Caleb McDaniel
Associate Professor of History
Steering Committee Member
Research Interests:
Dr. McDaniel is an historian of slavery, abolitionism, transatlantic reform, and the nineteenth-century United States.
Susan McIntosh
Herbert S. Autrey Professor of Anthropology
Steering Committee Member
Research Interests:
Because of the growing problem of looting of terracotta statuettes from Middle Niger sites, Dr. McIntosh became involved in issues of archaeological heritage and cultural property and has published and lectured widely on these topics.
Linda Neagley
Associate Professor of Art History
Steering Committee Member
Research Interests:
Dr. Neagley's research interests include late gothic architecture of northern Europe, late medieval urban planning, vision and visuality in the Middle Ages, and medieval pictorial narrative and space. She is the author of Disciplined Exuberance.
Kerry R. Ward
Associate Professor of History
Director of Steering Committee
Research Interests:
Dr. Ward’s major areas of research include museums and public history in South African and in world history, imperialism and colonialism, forced migration in the Indian Ocean, transnationalism and oceanic history, comparative slavery and modern human trafficking.
Museums and Cultural Heritage Minor Steering Committee
Melissa Bailar
Lisa Spiro
Kerry Ward