Humanities NOW

In an age where artificial intelligence can write term papers, drive cars and determine medical procedures, what role is there for ethical deliberation and decision-making? Is it possible to program ethics into an algorithm? When might it be appropriate to defer to AI when it comes to morally weighty decisions? Robert J. Howell, the Yasser El-Sayed Professor and Chair of Philosophy at Rice University, discusses these issues and argues that now, more than ever, it is important for us to understand ethical dilemmas and the reasons that help us resolve them. Far from relegating philosophy and the humanities to the sidelines, the age of AI will be a time when we need these disciplines most.

Sidney X. Lu, the Annette and Hugh Gragg Associate Professor in the Department of Transnational Asian Studies, presented "Settlers, Communists and Empire-Builders: A Global History of Japanese Rice Farming in Texas" on March 23, 2022, as part of a Humanities NOW conversation hosted by Fay Yarbrough ’97, professor of history and associate dean for undergraduate programs and special projects in the School of Humanities. This talk sheds new light on the history of Japanese rice farms in Texas at the beginning of the 20th century by exploring their connections with social campaigns in domestic Japan and the expansion of the Japanese colonial empire in Asia and South America.

Jaymin Kim ’08, the T. T. and W. F. Chao Assistant Professor in the Department of Transnational Asian Studies, joined Humanities NOW host, History Professor and School of Humanities Associate Dean Fay Yarbrough ’97, on Nov. 18, 2021. In "A Tale of Two Criminals: Elastic Sovereignty in Asian Borderlands," Kim compared two criminal cases in the mid- 18th-century China-Korean borderland and China-Vietnam borderland. In doing so, he highlighted the norms of interstate jurisdiction between Qing China (1636–1912) and its tributary states: multiple and shifting conceptions of jurisdiction, an asymmetrical relationship between Qing and tributary states, and elastic sovereignty in early modern Asia.

Laura Correa Ochoa, Rice Academy of Fellows Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of History, presented "Redefining Peace: Black and Indigenous Activism and Racial Justice in Colombia" on Sept. 23, 2021, as part of the Humanities NOW conversation series. Humanities NOW conversations are hosted by Fay Yarbrough '97, associate dean for undergraduate programs and special projects in the School of Humanities and professor of history. These conversations — open to all current and prospective students, and all other members of the Rice community — give students a sense of the wide variety of work scholars in the humanities are engaged in and how this work connects to current problems we face in society.

How are American notions of health and disease bound up with race and sexuality? That is the central question animating this April 7, 2021, talk, and it gains a particular urgency in the age of COVID, police violence and the ongoing HIV/AIDS crisis. In this Humanities NOW conversation with Travis Alexander, a Rice Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in Medical Humanities, students learned how de facto linkages between health and white heterosexuality, on the one hand, and between disease and queerness and raced bodies, on the other, have taken root in American culture over the last two centuries.

W. Caleb McDaniel, the Mary Gibbs Jones Professor of Humanities, Professor and Chair of the Department of History, and winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for History for "Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America", explored the topic "Who Should Vote?" on March 11, 2021 as part of the Humanities NOW conversation series in the School of Humanities. Humanities NOW conversations are hosted by Fay Yarbrough '97, associate dean for undergraduate programs and special projects in the School of Humanities and associate professor of history. These conversations — open to all current and prospective students, and all other members of the Rice community — give students a sense of the wide variety of work scholars in the humanities are engaged in and how this work connects to current problems we face in society.

Kirsten Ostherr, the Gladys Louise Fox Professor and Chair of the Department of English and founding director of the Medical Humanities Program at Rice University, presented "Translational Humanities for Public Health" on Feb. 11, 2021 as part of the Humanities NOW conversation series in the School of Humanities. Humanities NOW conversations are hosted by Fay Yarbrough '97, associate dean for undergraduate programs and special projects in the School of Humanities and associate professor of history.

By taking a global perspective on what is commonly known as “Chinese” medicine — or even “traditional” Chinese medicine — in the form of acupuncture analgesia, this Jan. 28, 2021 conversation with Lan Li, assistant professor in the Department of History and affiliated faculty in the Medical Humanities Program, explored questions in the history of medicine to understand what it means for communities around the world to share, what seems at the surface, a common medical practice. Who is medicine for? Who is allowed to practice it? What kinds of practices should we consider within (and without) the Asian diaspora?

What are our duties to others in a time of crisis? On what basis should scarce medical resources be deployed? What is the appropriate role for individuals and for the government? How do we weigh the values of life and health against other values? Timothy Schroeder, professor and chair of the Department of Philosophy at Rice University, addressed these and other ethical questions raised by the coronavirus pandemic as part of "The Ethics of the Pandemic," the Humanities NOW conversation on Nov. 11, 2020, hosted by Fay Yarbrough '97, associate dean for Undergraduate Programs and Special Projects in the School of Humanities and associate professor of history.

Many people want to do the right thing, but it’s not always clear what that is. As individuals and as a society, we face complicated ethical dilemmas with limited knowledge. In this Oct. 22, 2020 conversation with Philosophy professor Elizabeth Brake, Humanities NOW host Fay Yarbrough, ’97, associate dean for undergraduate programs and special projects in the School of Humanities and associate professor of history, explores how we might approach the question of reparations for the practice of slavery.

Jacqueline Couti, the Laurence H. Favrot Associate Professor of French Studies in the Department of Modern and Classical Literatures and Cultures and associate director of the Center for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality, helped to kick off Humanities NOW, a series of conversations open to all Rice undergraduates hosted by Fay Yarbrough, ’97, associate dean for Undergraduate Programs and Special Projects in the School of Humanities and associate professor of History. In this Sept. 25, 2020, conversation, Professor Couti presented "Race and Policing in France and Beyond," the topic of an international panel discussion she led later that afternoon.