Dean, School of Humanities
Andrew W. Mellon Professor of History
As another year comes to a close, we look back on a semester of new achievements, but also of unprecedented new experiences for higher education and for the humanities in particular.
We are excited about our 10 new faculty hires this year, bringing the total number to 60 new faculty since 2018. The magnificent Susan and Fayez Sarofim Hall is advancing by the week and will open for the start of classes in late August, providing a new state-of-the-art home for the student arts. A new Media Studies major, designed by faculty from four departments, is set to launch in fall 2025, and a new Creative Writing MFA will begin the approval process in fall 2025 with the goal of enrolling students in fall 2026. English and History, two of our largest departments, have made significant strides in national rankings, while our interdisciplinary programs and our centers — Environmental Studies; African and African American Studies; and Latin American and Latinx Studies — are growing with the support of funding from the Office of Research. Humanities majors continue to grow and our interdisciplinary minors in Medical Humanities; Politics, Law and Social Thought; and Environmental Studies have experienced soaring enrollment growth. Four of our faculty have won significant Rice awards and several others have garnered national recognition through fellowships or book prizes.
Indeed, this good news provides a ground for us to stand on as we face challenges to the premises and principles of higher education. While federal support for scientific and medical research has severely diminished, the very existence of key fields of humanistic inquiry have been placed in question and positioned as detrimental to a new national narrative. Museums, libraries and archives, including the National Archives and the Library of Congress, are in peril, while faculty in Humanities have lost their hard-won research fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and seen applications for the National Endowment for the Arts turned back in the face of funding cuts. We salute our Rice administration’s strong statement in favor of academic freedom and recognize that many of our fields of expertise and curricular innovation in the School of Humanities are those in question these days — from the study of global slavery and its aftermath, to African American, Latin American and Asian American studies, to the study of human origins and human impacts of climate crisis and the fields of gender and sexuality studies.
In this moment, it seems particularly significant to reaffirm our dedication to the values and principles of our humanities foundations, most especially, reading closely and deeply, analyzing, comparing, interpreting evidence, embracing generosity of mind, and seeking to grasp the context and consequences of current and future changes and challenges to our democracy. And above all, let us consider that which conjoins us rather than that which divides us in these times.
NEW APPOINTMENTS
We welcome the following scholars to our school:
Faculty:
ART HISTORY
Lori Diel (PhD, Tulane University, 2002) joins the Department of Art History from Texas Christian University as the L. H. Favrot Professor of Humanities in pre-modern art, Aztecs and Incas. She the author of three books, including the groundbreaking The Codex Mexicanus: A Guide to Life in Late Sixteenth-Century New Spain. Diel has most recently served as Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development in the College of Fine Arts and previously served as chair of the Art History Department at TCU.
Ana Franco (PhD, New York University, 2012) joins us from Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia, as Associate Professor of Modern Latin American art. She is currently President of the Association of Latin American Art. Her interdisciplinary scholarship conjoins 20th-century Latin American art, global postwar abstraction and feminist perspectives within art history. Franco is the author of Neoclásicos: Edgar Negret y Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar entre París, Nueva York y Bogotá, 1944-1964. She has also co-edited New Geographies of Abstract Art in Postwar Latin America, and is currently working on a new project on female abstract artists in Latin America during the second half of the 20th century.
ENGLISH
Andrew Kraebel (PhD, Yale University, 2014) is appointed as Associate Professor of English. He joins us from Trinity University where he taught in the fields of Medieval English literature and digital humanities. His first book, Biblical Commentary and Translation in Later Medieval England, won two major book prizes. His forthcoming second monograph, "Before Theory: Four Medieval Ideas about Poetry," is in progress. Kraebel was awarded a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support production of an edition of Richard Rolle’s Fire of Love (Incendium Amoris), which aimed to produce three print volumes and an open-access website, exemplifying his commitment to advancing accessible and impactful scholarship, particularly in the field of digital humanities.
Phillip Williams (MFA, Washington University in St. Louis, 2014) joins the Creative Writing faculty in the Department of English as full professor. He is the author of the novel Ours, and two collections of poetry: Thief in the Interior, winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and a Lambda Literary Award, and Mutiny, a finalist for the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry Collection and winner of a 2022 American Book Award. He has taught Creative Writing at New York University and Bennington College and co-founded the MFA program at Randolph College.
HISTORY
Julia Tomasson (PhD, Columbia University, 2025) will join the Department of History as Assistant Professor in January 2026. She studies the interconnected histories of science, philosophy, mathematics and information technologies across early modern Western/Central Eurasia and North Africa.
MODERN AND CLASSICAL LANGUAGES, LITERATURES AND CULTURES
Tabea Linhard (PhD, Duke University, 2001) will hold the Joseph and Joanna Nazro Mullen Professor in Humanities as full professor in Latin American Studies in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages, Literatures and Cultures. She joins us from Washington University in St. Louis, where she was professor of Spanish, Comparative Literature and Global Studies and served most recently as director of the Global Studies Program. Her scholarly expertise encompasses Latin American studies, migration studies, Jewish history and memory studies. She is the author of three monographs: Unexpected Routes: Refugee Writers in Mexico; Jewish Spain: A Mediterranean Memory; and Fearless Women in the Mexican Revolution and the Spanish Civil War, with a new book in progress and numerous co-edited essay collections.
Nicole Sütterlin (PhD, University of Basel, 2013) is appointed as Associate Professor of German in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages, Literatures and Cultures. Joining us from Harvard University, her research and teaching interests include German and European literature and culture from the 18th century to the present, with particular emphasis on Romanticism, contemporary literature, trauma and memory studies, posthumanism, poetics and politics of the body, ecocriticism and environmental humanities, history of science, and literature and social justice. She is the author of Poetik der Wunde: Zur Entdeckung des Traumas in der Literatur der Romantik, a landmark study of trauma, memory and narrative in Romantic literature and is at work on a new book, "Monstrous Microbes? Multispecies Bodies in the Posthuman Novel."
PHILOSOPHY
Santiago Amaya (PhD, Washington University in St. Louis, 2012) joins us from the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia, as Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy. His fields encompass the interdisciplinary study of ethics, cognitive science and philosophy of mind. Amaya has published widely on moral judgment and responsibility, forgiveness and memory, agency and intentions. His lab on “Moral Judgment and Emotion,” which has garnered substantial grant funding, will be reconstituted at Rice.
RELIGION
Eziaku Nwokocha (PhD, University of Pennsylvania, 2019) joins us from University of Miami as Assistant Professor in the Department of Religion. She previously held a postdoctoral fellowship at Princeton University. Her scholarly focus is African diasporic religions and her first book, en Vogue: Fashioning Black Divinities in Haiti and the United States, was published in 2023.
TRANSNATIONAL ASIAN STUDIES
Sourav Chatterjee (PhD, Columbia University, 2024) is appointed as Assistant Professor of South Asian Studies in the Department of Transnational Asian Studies. His fields of expertise include the literary and cultural history of South Asia from the perspective of print media, gender politics and colonial discourse. His first book is in progress and is entitled "Ephemeral Empire: Printing Pessimism in Colonial South Asia, 1855-1945."
Lecturers:
MODERN AND CLASSICAL LANGUAGES, LITERATURES AND CULTUERS
Marcus Valadares (PhD candidate, Texas Tech University), joins us as a lecturer in Spanish in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages, Literatures and Cultures.
MEDICAL HUMANITIES
Cameron Dezen Hammon (MFA, Seattle Pacific University, 2015), who has been a part-time lecturer in Creative Writing in the Department of English, joins us as a full-time lecturer in the Program in Medical Humanities.
THEATRE
Kyle Clark (MA, University of Houston), who has been a part-time lecturer in the Program in Theatre, joins us as a full-time lecturer.
Robert Kimbro ’95 (MA, University of Houston), who has been a part-time lecturer in the Program in Theatre, joins us as a full-time lecturer.
Amber Stepanik (MFA, University of Houston), joins us as a lecturer and the costume shop manager in the Program in Theatre.
Postdoctoral Associates:
Ido Telem (PhD, University of Chicago, 2025), whose research explores the influences and exchanges between modern Hebrew and German literature and culture, with an emphasis on Zionist cultures, joins us as the Samuel W. and Goldye Marian Spain Postdoctoral Associate in the Program in Jewish Studies.
Rebecca Potts (PhD, Yale University, 2025), whose research focuses on religious materiality in the United States and US-Mexico border, settler colonialism and the built environment, joins us as a Humanities Research Center postdoctoral associate.
FEATURED NEWS
English, History excel in U.S. News rankings
As our graduate programs continue to advance and innovate, we are proud to see our departments of English and History earning high marks in U.S. News & World Report’s latest rankings, with English surging 15 spots to 26, and History rising from 38 to 34. See Rice News Story >
Higher education under repair (under assault)
Joining us were Patricia Okker, higher education consultant, former president of New College of Florida, and former dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Missouri; Holden Thorp, Editor-in-Chief, Science journals, former provost of Washington University in St. Louis and former University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill chancellor; and Rice’s Ruth Simmons, the President’s Distinguished Fellow and former president of Brown University, Smith College and Prairie View A&M University. They reflected on what unites public and private universities, and humanists and scientists in these times. Few conversations could have been more urgently relevant to the current state of challenge and uncertainty in higher education.
Celebrating student voices in award-winning publications
R2: The Rice Review, the student literary journal founded by Department of English Writer-in-Residence Justin Cronin and championed today by faculty adviser and Associate Teaching Professor of English Ian Schimmel, was named runner-up for the Association of Writers and Writing Programs’ national award for Best Undergraduate Literary Journal. Learn more about R2 and another student publication, Rice Historical Review, guided by faculty adviser Tani Barlow, the George and Nancy Rupp Professor of Humanities in the Department of History. See Rice News Story >
Study: Climate change absent from most films
How have popular films responded to — or avoided — climate change and environmental crises? Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, Associate Professor of English, and his research collaborators conducted a large-scale analysis of the most-watched movies of the past decade and found that even when films depicted climate change and other environmental problems, they downplayed their severity and urgency, missing a crucial opportunity for public engagement. See Rice News Story >
New Media Studies major launches this fall
In response to overwhelming student interest, the School of Humanities is launching a Media Studies major this fall. Designed and led by faculty from English, Art, Art History, and Modern and Classical Languages, Literatures and Cultures, this new interdisciplinary major invites all Rice students to explore film and media history, critical media analysis and media literacy, and production of technologically driven visual media, including film, television, video art and digital media.
Building better AI starts with asking better questions
As artificial intelligence transforms society at a breakneck pace, are we asking the right questions about what it’s for and whom it serves? The answer depends on when and how humanists are brought into the process, says Kirsten Ostherr, the Gladys Louise Fox Professor of English and founding director of the Medical Humanities Program in the School of Humanities and Rice’s Medical Humanities Research Institute. See Rice News Story >
Series: 'What can you do with a humanities degree?'
Did you know the top skills employers look for when evaluating candidates — communication, critical thinking, professionalism and teamwork — are fostered and foregrounded in our humanities and arts classrooms? But don’t just take our word for it. See and hear what some of our graduates have to say about majoring in fields like Philosophy and History or pursuing our most popular interdisciplinary minor, Politics, Law and Social Thought, which provides compelling preparation for the study of law.
24-Hour Challenge: Goal surpassed!
Many of you participated in the 24-Hour Challenge, Rice’s annual day of giving, and we thank you for your generosity. We are especially grateful to John Eldridge ’75, chair of the Humanities Advisory Board, whose $50,000 challenge gift prompted 200 donors to give in support of the School of Humanities Excellence Fund. Your support propelled us to raise nearly $100,000 from 216 donors!
Pursuing the Big Questions
Anticipation is already building for our Big Questions courses offered in fall 2025: Who Should Vote? (HUMA 122), taught by W. Caleb McDaniel, Mary Gibbs Jones Professor of Humanities and Professor of History; and Where Is Asia? (HUMA 138), which is co-taught by Sidney Lu, Annette and Hugh Gragg Associate Professor in the Department of Transnational Asian Studies, and Paula Park, Associate Professor of Latin American Studies in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages, Literatures and Cultures.
Kazimi Lecture in Shi’i Studies with Syed Akbar Hyder
The story of Karbala has reverberated across centuries and continents. In his Kazimi Lecture in Shi’i Studies held April 14 at Rice, scholar Syed Akbar Hyder of the University of Texas at Austin turned the spotlight toward a key force behind the story’s legacy and transmission largely overlooked: its women and the way they mourn. See Rice News Story >
RESEARCH EXCELLENCE
PUBLICATIONS AND EXHIBITIONS
Andrea Bajani’s recently published novel, The Anniversary (L’anniversario), which immediately became a bestseller and is under contract for publication in 25 countries and nearly as many languages, was named a finalist for the Strega Prize, the most important literary award in Italy. A Professor in the Practice and International Writer-in-Residence in the Department of English, Bajani teaches in the Creative Writing Program and is one of the most acclaimed and award-winning Italian authors in Italy and abroad.
Marcia Brennan, Carolyn and Fred McManis Professor of Humanities and Professor of Religion and Art History, has published a new textbook, The Colors of Life: Exploring Life Experience Through Color and Emotion. It features many original illustrations produced by Rice students Madison Zhao ’25 and Hannah Li ’25.
Peter C. Caldwell, Samuel G. McCann Professor of History, recently published the second edition of his co-authored interpretive textbook, Germany Since 1945: Politics, Culture and Society.
Azucena Castro, Assistant Professor in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages, Literatures and Cultures, has published her first monograph, Posnaturalezas poéticas: Pensamiento ecológico y políticas de la extrañeza en la poesía latinoamericana contemporánea, which investigates the environmental, cultural, and political significance of the postnatural turn in contemporary Latin American poetry.
Sophie Crawford-Brown, Assistant Professor of Art History and Director of the Program in Ancient Mediterranean Civilizations, has published her first book, Religious Architecture and Roman Expansion: Temples, Terracottas, and the Shaping of Identity, 3rd-1st c. BCE, which uses architectural terracottas as a lens for examining the changing landscape of central Italy during the period of Roman military expansion, and for asking how local communities reacted to this new political reality.
Farshid Emami, Assistant Professor of Art History, received the inaugural 2025 International Journal of Islamic Architecture (IJIA) Book Award for his book, Isafahan: Architecture and Urban Experience in Early Modern Iran. This recently published work reconstructs the spaces and senses of the city of Isfahan, a vibrant urban settlement from medieval times and the royal seat of the Safavid dynasty.
Julie Fette, Associate Professor of French Studies in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages, Literatures and Cultures, has published her latest book, Gender by the Book: 21st-Century French Children's Literature.
Eli Greene, a lecturer in the Department of Art teaching photography, mounted a solo exhibition, Floods, at Houston-based gallery, F. Floods consisted of interrelated photographic and sculptural works that folded together sites in Galveston and Columbia, Tennessee, where Greene’s family has lived for generations.
Rosa Boshier González, a lecturer in Creative Writing in the Department of English, was recently awarded a short-form writing grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for a series of essays examining how two generations of artists from Colombia and its diaspora have engaged the body’s viscera.
Shih-shan Susan Huang, Professor of Transnational Asian Studies, has published a new book, The Dynamic Spread of Buddhist Print Culture: Mapping Buddhist Book Roads in China and its Neighbors, which includes more than six hundred images, some of which are highly detailed historical maps that Huang designed herself.
Sidney Lu, Annette and Hugh Gragg Associate Professor of Transnational Asian Studies, has published his second book, Collaborative Settler Colonialism: Japanese Migration to Brazil in the Age of Empires, which explores the intersections in the histories of Japan and Brazil, and the historical convergence of Asia and Latin America in general through the lens of modern settler colonialism.
Joseph Manca, Nina J. Cullinan Professor of Art and Art History, has published a new book, Virtue in the Garden: Writing about Designed Landscape in Britain. Fine gardening flourished in Britain from Elizabethan times to the Victorian era and beyond. Virtue in the Garden focuses on original, primary texts that expressed period aesthetic, moral and political ideas. Manca also published a book, Free Thinking: How to Educate Yourself in the Liberal Arts, which provides listings and commentaries to help readers study and enjoy high-quality texts, works of art, film and classical music.
Brian Ogren, Anna Smith Fine Professor of Judaic Studies and Chair of the Department of Religion, published a new book, Reel Kabbalah: Jewish Mysticism and Neo-Hasidism in Contemporary Cinema.
Fay Yarbrough, William Gaines Twyman Professor of History and Senior Associate Dean of Faculty and Graduate Programs in the School of Humanities, and Michael Maas, William Gaines Twyman Professor of History Emeritus, co-edited the book, Empires and Indigenous Peoples: Comparing Ancient Roman and North American Experiences.
CONFERENCES AND WORKSHOPS
Professor of Art History and Director of the Humanities Research Center Graham Bader; Associate Professor of History and Vice Provost of the Office of Access and Institutional Excellence Alexander Byrd; Associate Professor of Art History Fabiola López-Durán; and Mary Gibbs Jones Professor of Humanities and Professor of History W. Caleb McDaniel played crucial roles in guiding conversations about the university’s complex past and the role of monuments in public memory as part of "Monuments Symposium," an event earlier this year that coincided with the reopening of Rice’s reimagined Academic Quadrangle.
Natasha Bowdoin, Associate Professor of Art and a member of the Humanities Research Center Faculty Council, organized the Abolitionist’s Tea Party, immersive workshops that welcomed artists jackie summell and Natalie Romero to campus. Framed around abolition as a commitment to ending cycles of harm, the sessions invited participants to consider how the natural world models and informs abolitionist principles.
Jacqueline Couti, Laurence H. Favrot Professor of French Studies and Chair of the Department of Modern and Classical Languages, Literatures and Cultures, and Linsey Sainte-Claire, Assistant Professor of French Studies, organized "Haiti and the World: Global Encounters of the Past, Present and Future," a two-day symposium that brought experts together to explore Haiti’s colonial past, its revolution and independence, and themes such as migration, political resilience, economic struggles and environmental concerns.
Daniel Domingues da Silva, Associate Professor of History and host of SlaveVoyages, the world’s largest database on the history of slave trade, co-organized the conference “SlaveVoyages: New Directions and Uncharted Waters” with Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Four Rice graduate students presented papers at the conference: Dionne Babineaux (History), Gabriel de Souza Miguel (History), Taylin Nelson (English) and Gabriel Seghetto (History). Rice alumna Victoria Zabarte (History) also participated.
Matthias Henze, the Isla Carroll and Percy E. Turner Professor of Biblical Studies and Director of the Program in Jewish Studies, organized with Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine, and in collaboration with the Holocaust Museum of Houston, the conference “Antiscience and Antisemitism: An Alarming Convergence.”
Jeffrey J. Kripal, J. Newton Rayzor Professor in Philosophy and Religious Thought; William B. Parsons, Harry and Hazel Chavanne Professor of Religion; Archives of the Impossible project manager Karin Austin; and University of North Carolina Wilmington religion professor Diana Pasulka organized the third installment in the Archives of the Impossible conference series. This year’s gathering at Rice took aim at a question once confined to the fringes of scientific and religious thought: What does it mean that credible witnesses are now speaking openly about unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAPs?
The interplay between African American literature and the other arts took center stage at a two-day symposium organized by Hayley O’Malley, Assistant Professor of Art History, and featuring a number of Humanities faculty. The event, which provided a platform for scholars, poets and artists to explore the aesthetic, cultural and political dimensions of Black creative expression, was supported by the Center for African and African American Studies; the Center for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality; the departments of Art, Anthropology, Art History, English, and Modern and Classical Languages, Literatures and Cultures; the Humanities Research Center; the Humanities Dean's Office; the Moody Center for the Arts; and the Creative Ventures Funds.
Christopher Sperandio, Associate Professor in the Department of Art, and Ofra Amihay, the Anna Smith Fine Lecturer in the Program in Jewish Studies, with support from across campus, organized “Comics Sans Frontières: Border Defiance in Graphic Narratives.” The comics conference brought together an international roster of artists and scholars for panels, exhibitions and workshops that positioned the graphic narrative at the heart of contemporary discourse. The keynote conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Art Spiegelman packed the Moody Center for the Arts. The author of Maus was honored with Rice’s inaugural Comic Art Teaching and Study Workshop (CATS) Comics Pioneer Award, affectionately nicknamed the “Yoink!”
FACULTY SPOTLIGHT
'What does it mean to think across disciplines?'
Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan, Assistant Professor of English, affiliated faculty member in the Department of Transnational Asian Studies and the Center for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality, and council member of the Chao Center for Asian Studies and Humanities Research Center, has spent much of her career exploring the boundaries of disciplines.
Her book, Thinking with an Accent: Toward a New Object, Method and Practice, crystallized her commitment to interdisciplinary inquiry. See Rice News Story >
'Rap meets rhetoric'
Kiese Laymon, the Libbie Shearn Moody Professor of Creative Writing and English, changes the focus of his course comparing iconic artists and albums across eras each time it’s offered. For fall 2025, ENGL 309: Verses/Versus will center on the beef between Kendrick Lamar and Drake, a cultural moment that’s still reverberating in real time. See Rice News Story >
'A scientific reckoning returns'
Fifty years after the milestone Asilomar conference to discuss matters arising at the dawn of genetic engineering, a broader assembly organized by Luis Campos, the Baker College Chair for the History of Science, Technology and Innovation, Associate Professor of History and Co-Director of the Program in Science and Technology Studies, convened to address topics and puzzles arising today, including artificial intelligence, pathogens research and biological weapons, deployment of biotechnologies beyond conventional containment, bioeconomic framing and flourishing. See Rice News Story >
FACULTY AWARDS
We extend our warmest congratulations to our faculty on the following awards:
Fay A. Yarbrough ’97, William Gaines Twyman Professor of History and School of Humanities Senior Associate Dean, for the George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching
Josh Bernstein, Associate Teaching Professor in the Department of Art, for the Trenton W. Wann Award for Excellence in Teaching and Mentorship
Jacqueline Couti, Laurence H. Favrot Professor of French Studies and Chair of the Department of Modern and Classical Languages, Literatures and Cultures, winner of the Provost’s Award for Outstanding Faculty Achievement
Julie Fette, Associate Professor of French Studies in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages, Literatures and Cultures, recipient of the Graduate Liberal Studies John Freeman Faculty Teaching and Mentoring Award
FACULTY PROMOTION
We are pleased to congratulate Farshid Emami in the Department of Art History and Samuel Reis-Dennis in the Department of Philosophy on their promotion to associate professor with tenure.
Congratulations as well on the promotion to full professor of G. Daniel Cohen, Samuel W. and Goldye Marian Spain Professor in the Department of History, and Shih-shan Susan Huang, Professor in the Department of Transnational Asian Studies.
FACULTY LEADERSHIP
We extend our warmest gratitude to Peter C. Caldwell, Samuel G. McCann Professor of History, for his many years of service as director of the Program in Politics, Law and Social Thought, and we welcome Aysha Pollnitz, Associate Professor of History, as the next director starting July 1.
We are grateful to Claire Fanger, Associate Professor of Religion, for leading the Program in Medieval and Early Modern Studies and thank her for officially assuming the director role July 1.
We are excited to welcome Michael Dango, Associate Professor in the Department of English with an affiliation in the Center for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality, as director of the new Program in Media Studies.
STUDENT SPOTLIGHT
Dasseny Arreola ’25
Dasseny Arreola, who double majored in English and Anthropology and minored in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, credits her Moody (School of Humanities), Carlson (Humanities Research Center) and Mellon Mays (Provost Office) research fellowships for helping her chase her dreams and ask the questions that matter most about the larger questions of power, class and identity in Victorian novels. See Rice News Story >
Zeisha Bennett ’25
From discovering her passion for fashion photography to finding her creative voice, Zeisha Bennett’s journey at Rice and the School of Humanities is a testament to the power of pursuing your artistic dreams. “Getting a degree from Rice means defying odds of coming from a small city and being able to pursue a creative and interesting degree at a university that has so many resources and opportunities."
Next up for this Visual Arts and Transnational Asian Studies double major from Tempe, Arizona? Following her passion as a studio assistant at Sanman Studios in Houston. See Rice News and Video Story >
Daniela Bonscher ’25
The Underground Railroad typically conjures up images of northbound journeys to freedom, but for some enslaved people in Texas, liberation lay across the Rio Grande in Mexico. Daniela Bonscher, who majored in History and in Latin American and Latinx Studies and served as a member of the Humanities Dean’s Undergraduate Advisory Council, worked to uncover the lesser-known history that exemplifies the resilience and agency of those who sought freedom through this southern route. “As someone from El Paso, it’s meaningful to uncover these histories of cross-border solidarity … this project has opened my eyes to how much we don’t know. There’s so much history that just doesn’t get taught.” See Rice News Story >
Sarah Davidson '25
When a dam fails, most would turn to scientists and engineers. But what happens when the problem isn’t concrete and steel? Research by Moody Humanities Research Fellow and History major Sarah Davidson illustrates that humanists play a vital role in understanding how economic development and the built environment can impact society. See Rice Magazine Story >
Learn about Sarah’s interdisciplinary work as told by Hugo Gerbich Pais ’25, a fellow member of the Moody research cohort who double majored in European Studies and English and minored in History and Politics, Law and Social Thought.
Lucy Bozinov '25
Lucy Bozinov majored in History, minored in German Studies and in Politics, Law and Social Thought, was a member of the Dean’s Undergraduate Advisory Council and a Moody Humanities Research Fellow. And if that wasn’t enough, she served as the sole Rice undergraduate on the university’s strategic planning committee. Hear Lucy describe her many experiences on campus and beyond. See Rice Public Affairs Video >
Maya Harpavat '26
For Maya Harpavat, who is double majoring in English and Health Sciences, and minoring in Medical Humanities, her interest in writing’s healing potential started during the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic when she found solace in creative nonfiction. Today as a Moody Humanities Research Fellow, she’s exploring writing as a therapeutic tool for others by building an expressive writing program for patients and their families in the Texas Medical Center. See Rice News Story >
“Because of the generous support of the fellowship ... I was able to see research in a completely new, different and exciting way, and as a future physician, this completely shaped the way I view person-based medicine in the future.”
HUMANITIES DAYS
Now in its second year, Humanities Days drew students from Art, English, History, Medical Humanities and much more. The April 14-15 showcase and celebration of undergraduate student research and creative expression included oral presentations, research posters and mixed-media installations spanning topics from women’s reproductive health and the Underground Railroad to artificial intelligence and ethics. “This is an occasion for us to make visible to our campus partners, and to make visible to the wider Houston public the kind of rich, intellectual, vibrant, creative life that is the hallmark of the School of Humanities,” says Nicole Waligora-Davis, the Alan Dugald McKillop Associate Professor of English and Associate Dean for Undergraduate Programs and Special Projects.
Congratulations to all our Humanities Days award winners:
Chloé Maëllys Serna
Best Poster Presentation
“The Problem of Past Values for the Value Fulfillment Theory of Well-Being”
Annie McKenzie
Best Oral Presentation
“Woman's Work: Jacqueline Kennedy's Cultural Diplomacy and Cold War Femininity”
Emelia Gauch
Best Pecha Kucha Presentation
“Fetish Objects”
Humanities Research Center award:
Annika Bhananker, Imogen Brown, Abigail Proell, Miranda Xing
For their work relating to crisis pregnancy centers
Medical Humanities session awards:
Angelo Chen
Best Oral Presentation
“Impact of Narratives from Pediatric ICU Patients on Medical Provider Perspectives on Care”
Nihar Shetty and Catherine Zhou
2nd Pace, Oral Presentation
“Integration and Efficacy of Volunteer-Based Spiritual Care Services in Hospice and Long-Term Care Settings: A Mixed-Methods Analysis “
Hamza Saeed, Sanjay Soni, Andrew Sun, Priyanka Subramanian
Best Poster Presentation
“Clinical Immersion as a Catalyst for Equity-Driven Healthcare Innovations”
Sam Balakrishnan, Annesha Dey
Second Place, Poster Presentation
“Assessment of Family-Caregiver Collaboration in Pediatric Pain Management”
Ayra Badarpura
3rd Place, Poster Presentation:
“Evaluating Physician Readiness for the Integration of Psychedelic Therapeutics in Clinical Settings”
Cayla Xue, Tegan Tien
3rd Place, Poster Presentation:
“Entanglements of Endometriosis: Biomedical Knowledge and Clinical Guidelines”
UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT RECOGNITION
Charlotte Heeley '25
Charlotte Heeley ’25, who studied Arabic in the Center for Languages and Intercultural Communication (CLIC), has been awarded a Critical Language Scholarship from the U.S. Department of State. While at Rice, she enrolled in every Arabic course available, including Critical Analysis of Media Arabic, the university’s most advanced course offered in the language.
“Despite the considerable challenge of adapting to a rigorous academic environment where both modern standard and colloquial Arabic are taught concurrently, Charlotte demonstrated exceptional dedication, excelling in each of her Arabic courses,” says her lecturer, Hossam Elsherbiny, CLIC associate director. “As faculty, it’s particularly gratifying to witness students like Charlotte progress from minimal Arabic proficiency to advanced coursework and ultimately to such a prestigious and competitive scholarship.” See Rice News Story >
Roselyn Ovalle '25
Roselyn Ovalle ’25, who majored in Political Science and minored in Poverty, Justice and Human Capabilities, has been named a Thomas J. Watson Fellow, one of the nation’s most prestigious postgraduate awards. She will spend her fellowship year exploring how survivors of gender-based violence navigate healing across health care, legal and social systems in six countries: Mexico, Argentina, France, the United Kingdom, South Africa and Australia. See Rice News and Video Story >
“This project is deeply personal. I want to understand not just how survivors seek justice but how they find healing, especially when facing systemic barriers or navigating identities that are often overlooked.”
GRADUATE STUDENT RECOGNITION
A warm congratulations to Paul Burch ’24 and Dasol Kim ’24, winners of the John W. Gardner Award in the School of Humanities for their doctoral dissertations.
Paul Burch (Department of English): “Bad Roads: Feral Transport Media in American Narrative Art, 1913-1977”
Dasol Kim (Department of Art History): “Muslim, Sub-Saharan African, and Native American Bodies as European Furnishings, 1500–1700”
Congratulations as well to:
Mariah Aliza-Kaye Bender, a PhD candidate in the Department of History, who received a Wagoner Fellowship as well as fellowships to support her research from the Newberry Library and Huntington Library
Xinyu Liang, a PhD candidate in the Department of Art History, who has been awarded the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York
Mai Lootah, a PhD Candidate in the Department of Religion, who has been awarded the Edward F. Chavanne Fellowship
Bohan Zhang, a PhD candidate in the Department of History, who has received the Lodieska Stockbridge Vaughn Fellowship
Morgan Bettin-Coleman, Emily Lampert, Olivier Péloquin and Summer Perritt of the Department of History, as well as Stacie Cruz of the Department of English on their acceptance into the National Humanities Center Graduate Student Summer Residency Program.
ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT
Daisy Chung '14
Daisy Chung, a visual communicator who majored in Visual Arts and Biosciences, and whose work has appeared in Reuters, The Washington Post, Scientific American, National Geographic, Cell Press, The Journal of Neuroscience and various platforms, is among this year’s Pulitzer Prize winners. She was part of the Reuters team awarded the Pulitzer Prize in international reporting for an investigation into the fentanyl trade between China and the United States. Chung’s illustrations helped break down complex chemistry and public health issues for global audiences. See Rice News Story >
“Receiving the Pulitzer Prize is an incredible honor … For a long time, I wasn’t sure if I could build a career at the intersection of art and science let alone in journalism. But this award feels like an affirmation that visual storytelling is essential to investigative reporting.”
Angela Brintlinger '87
Many readers are daunted by Russian novels, as Angela Brintlinger, who majored in English and Russian, is well aware. In her book, Why We (Still) Need Russian Literature: Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov and Others, she makes the case that these novels are a uniquely rich source of intellectual provocation, aesthetic pleasure, psychological insights and emotional resonance. See Rice Magazine Story >
“People are intimidated by the names in Russian fiction, but once you get past that barrier, you find fascinating depictions of a people who have muddled through epic weather, endured heartbreak and experienced everyday joys … Russian writers are known for their insights into the human psyche and condition.”
Thomas Lendvay '95
Thomas Lendvay, who double majored in German and Biology, never set out to become an entrepreneur — much less sell his first company to Johnson & Johnson. But as he built a career as a surgeon and professor at the University of Washington, he noticed opportunities for improvement in training and performance in his field. Driven by curiosity and a creative approach to problem-solving, he has founded multiple startups that have introduced bold ideas in health care. See Rice Magazine Story >
“I’m interested in disruptive technologies that are hiding in plain sight. And when someone says, ‘There’s no way this will work,’ that’s when I dig in.”
UPCOMING EVENTS
THURSDAY, SEPT. 11
Susan and Fayez Sarofim Hall dedication ceremony
On the grounds where Rice’s famed Art Barn and Media Center once stood
FRIDAY, OCT. 3 & SATURDAY, OCT. 4
Families Weekend
FRIDAY, NOV. 7 & SATURDAY, NOV. 8
Alumni Weekend
FRIDAY, NOV. 7
School of Humanities reception during Alumni Weekend
Lee and Joe Jamail Courtyard
WEDNESDAY, NOV. 19 & THURSDAY, NOV. 20
School of Humanities Campbell Lectures with Jelani Cobb
Susan and Fayez Sarofim Hall, Rice Cinema
IN REMEMBERANCE
Joan Rea
Joan Rea dedicated more than three decades of her life to Rice, achieving recognition and establishing herself as a scholar, mentor and advocate for Latin American literature and culture. Rea, professor emerita who passed away in January at the age of 95, was among the first faculty members to spotlight the wealth of Latin American literature, earning a reputation for her deep knowledge, passionate teaching and commitment to student success. See Rice News Story >
John Stroup
John Stroup, the Harry and Hazel Chavanne Professor Emeritus, passed away in January at the age of 78. A distinguished scholar of German Protestantism and intellectual history, Stroup is remembered for his wit and passion as well as his impact on academia, his colleagues and his students over a career that spanned more than four decades. See Rice News Story >
With gratitude and best wishes for good health,
Kathleen Canning
Dean, School of Humanities
Andrew W. Mellon Professor of History
Rice University