Master Classes are for undergraduate and graduate students in the humanities and humanistic fields. Students meet regularly to study critical questions using a variety of methodologies, forms, and historical contexts. Master Classes expose Rice students to a wide variety of innovative research in the humanities and to both scholars and practitioners from the Texas Medical Center or Houston’s Museum District.
HURC 306/506 - Health and Humanities Master Class [Fall 2018]
Instructor(s): Melissa Bailar, Professor in the Practice of Humanities
Speakers from local hospitals and medical colleges, medical archives, and Rice University present medical humanities lectures in a variety of specialized areas, on Thursday evenings at the Health Museum. Tuesday afternoon seminars set up these expert lectures with readings and discussion.
HURC 311/511 - Futures of Architectural Exhibit [Fall 2018]
Instructor(s): Reto Geiser, Professor of Arichitecture
This Public Humanities Master Class will launch a larger research project dedicated to the importance of exhibitions for architectural discourse. The course will involve four external speakers who will offer diverse perspectives on the history of curatorial practices and approaches to the presentation of architecture through exhibitions.
HURC 401/601 - Media Archaeologies: From Cameras to Algorithms [Spring 2018]
Instructor(s): Judith Roof, William Shakespeare Chair, Professor of English
What we think of as “media” is much older than we think. Media historian, Siegfried Zielinski, traces it back to the digital drum messages sent from Greek hill tops. Complementing the Spring “Film Theory” class, this one-hour Spring, 2019 Masterclass, open to all undergraduate and graduate students, will examine the emergences of various modes of media and media apparatuses from early photography, telegraphy, telephones, and gramophones to animation, cinema, radio, television, and digitally-transduced phenomena (i.e., the internet, digital recordings, digital imaging, CGI).
HURC 306/506 - Health and Humanities Master Class [Fall 2017]
Instructor(s): Melissa Bailar, Professor in the Practice of Humanities
Speakers from local hospitals and medical colleges, medical archives, and Rice University present medical humanities lectures in a variety of specialized areas, on Thursday evenings at the Health Museum. Tuesday afternoon seminars set up these expert lectures with readings and discussion.
Fall 2017 Speaker List: For a full list of speaker affiliations and talks, visit our History and Culture of Disease and Healing Seminar Series annoucement page.
Chip Carson, MD, PhD, Associate Professor, UT Health; Clint Wilson III, MA, MSc, Rice University PhD Candidate in English; Mary Ann Smith, PhD, Assistant Professor, UT Health; Philip Lee Montgomery, MLIS, CA, Head of the McGovern Historical Center at the Texas Medical Center; Kirsten Ostherr, PhD, MPH, Rice University Professor of English; Robert Emery, DrPH, CHP, CIH, CBSP, CSP, CHMM, CPP, ARM, Professor of Occupational Health, UT Health; Judith Roof, PhD, Rice University Professor of English; Catherine Troisi, PhD, Associate Professor, UT Health; Melissa Bailar, PhD, Rice University Professor in the Practice and Assistant Director of the Humanities Research Center; Doug Tynan, PhD, ABPP, Director of Integrated Healthcare, American Psychological Association; John Mulligan, PhD, Rice University Lecturer, Humanities Research Center; Els Woudstra, MA, Rice University Graduate Student in English; Niki Clements, Rice University Assistant Professor of Religion.
HURC 401/601 - Media Transformations: Drama, Film, Criticism, Production [Spring 2018]
Instructor(s): Judith Roof, William Shakespeare Chair, Professor of English
This course examines the relationships among texts, ideas, and media representations that have become central to 20th century and contemporary popular culture. Taking into account both the specific protocols and the possibilities offered by theatre, cinema, and even critical analyses, it also offers students the opportunity to use these combined insights to mount small productions of their own. Instead of seeing these transformations from medium to medium as “ adaptations ” — a blanket concept that obscures the complexity of the intersections of texts, ideas, productions, and media — “ Media Transformations ” delves into the ways media themselves operate so as to offer a far more complex account of how the ideas of one text in one medium may become manifest (or not) in another text in a different medium. Having students deploy these concepts in their own small productions enables students to resolve the problems and complexities of any mode of producti on from the page to any other medium.
Spring 2018 Speaker List: Aaron Jaffe, Florida State University, Jonathan Eburne, Penn State University, and Chalres Tung, Seattle University.
HURC 311/HURC 511 - Drama Lab Master Class [Spring 2017]
Instructor(s): Joseph Carson, Graduate Student in English
From Alred Jarry to Susan Lori-Parks, Jerzy Grotowski to Robert Wilson: the theatre has been an experimental, vivid space in which we push boundaries of what we know, what we think and how we think. In this tradition, DramaLab is a workshop-based course in which students will read, write and perform experimental theatre while also attending to methods of production and criticism. Over the course of the semester, we will have a variety of guest speakers—ranging from playwrights to designers to theatre historians—to assist in our process of developing original work.
HURC 306/HURC 506 - Health and Humanities Master Class [Fall 2016]
Instructor(s): Melissa Bailar, Professor in the Practice of Humanities
A medical archivist, a current medical student, an epidemiologist, and a hospital case manager will lead class discussions on different aspects of the health industry today. The class will also go on field trips and read a short essay and watch a film to prepare for each discussion.
Fall 2016 Speaker List: Doha Aboul-Fotouh, Rice University graduate (BA English 2015), recipient of Academy of American Poets Prize 2015, first-year medical student at Baylor College of Medicine; Masako Sakata, Director of Journey Without End, Agent Orange: A Personal Requiem, and Living the Silent Spring; Philip Montgomery, Head of the John P. McGovern Historical Collections and Research Center at the Texas Medical Center Library; Renata Domatti, LMSW, CCM, Lead Case Manager at Cornerstone Hospital of Austin.
HURC 408/HURC 608 - Futures of the Book Master Class [Fall 2015]
Instructor(s): Reto Geiser, Wortham Assistant Professor of Architecture
From an ongoing interest in the book as a physical object, to the exploration of its potentials expanding into a four-dimensional digital realm, to rapidly changing demands for the storage and retrieval of knowledge, this master class will provide a platform to engage experts from various disciplines in a debate on the shifting futures of the book.
Invited Speakers: Lars Müller, Guest Lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and president of Alliance Graphique Internationale; Robert Wiesenberger, Stefan Engelhorn Curatorial Fellow at the Harvard Art Museum; Jeffrey Schnapp, Faculty Director of MetaLAB at Harvard University and Co-Director of the Berkman Center for the Internet and Society; Jon Evans, Chief Librarian of the Hirsch Library at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston; Sara Lowman, Vice Provost and University Librarian at Rice University; Eric Wolf, Head Librarian of the Menil Collection.