Future of the Humanities by Turning Points

GATEWAY STUDY OF

LEADERSHIP

TURNING

POINTS

SCHOOL OF

SOCIAL SCIENCES

Future of the Humanities

Turning Points The Turning Points book series is a product of the School of Social Sciences’ Gateway Study of Leadership (GSL) at Rice University. Each year GSL Fellows conduct interviews with faculty from a different school and feature select excerpts in five areas. The books in Seres IV (2014-2015) are dedicated to the Rice University School of Humanities and are grouped as follows: Choosing Academia Insider Perspectives Teaching & Research Maintaining Inspiration Future of the Humanities Previous Turning Points series: Series I (2011-12)– Rice University School of Social Sciences Series II (2012-2013)– Rice University School of Natural Sciences Series III (2013-2014) - Rice University School of Engineering Copyright 2015 Rice University. All rights reserved. No parts of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the School of Social Sciences at Rice University. Requests for permission should be directed to ipek@rice.edu.

Rice University School of Social Sciences

Gateway Study of Leadership TURNING POINTS

{series IV | 2014 - 2015} Humanities

Future of the Humanities

Gateway School of Social Sciences Rice University 6100 Main Street Houston, Texas 77005-1827 U.S.A.

GATEWAY DIRECTOR

Ipek Martinez GATEWAY ADMINISTRATOR

Alex Wyatt TURNING POINTS DIRECTOR

Mary Charlotte Carroll EDITORS

Amber Lo, Matthew McGee, Sevita Rama COPY EDITOR

Emma Hurt COVER DESIGNER

Cindy Thaung

GATEWAY STUDY OF LEADERSHIP CO-DIRECTORS

Nitin Agrawal, Cathy Hu, Tanya Rajan GATEWAY STUDY OF LEADERSHIP SENIOR FELLOWS

Mary Charlotte Carroll, Sai Chilikapati, Giray Ozseker, Andrew Ta GATEWAY STUDY OF LEADERSHIP FELLOWS

Thomas Bennett, Adam Cleland, Hanna Downing, Bradley Hamilton, Aaron Huang, Elisabeth Kalomeris, Amber Lo, Matthew McGee, Neeti Mehta, Kevin Pang, Sevita Rama, Rebecca Satterfield, Tejaswi Veerati, Bridget Youngs

REFLECTIONS ON: FUTURE OF THE HUMANITIES Some have argued that the humanities today are frivolous, self-serving or a “waste of time.” So why do they still matter? What could possibly be their future? In a collection of anecdotes from humanities faculty across different disciplines and backgrounds, this book explores these questions and combats preconceived notions about the value of the humanities. Let these professors, as the field’s best advocates and most candid narrators, tell you about what they see for the future and role of humanities. Through their stories, we learn that life is not about our immediate utility, but rather about the big picture. In seeking the future of the humanities, we discover the importance of learning from the past. These stories have been carefully selected from a number of interviews conducted with faculty from the Rice University School of Humanities by the 2014-2015 Gateway Study of Leadership fellows.

As we probed through the life stories of our teachers and mentors, we learned about the passion with which they pursue their careers every day. As you read this book, I encourage you to think deeply about the stories presented here and consider how the humanities define the world, the people around us, and most importantly â&#x20AC;&#x201C; you. - Sevita Rama, Editor

CONTENTS

Nicolas Shumway, Ph.D. No Right Answers

2. Paul Hester, M.F.A. 3 Documenting What Exists 3.

Harvey Yunis, Ph.D. Complacent to Reality

JosĂŠ Aranda, Jr., Ph.D. About Being Human

Terrence Doody, Ph.D. Einstein and Shakespeare

Richard J. Smith, Ph.D. The Value of the Humanities

7. 8.

Steven Crowell, Ph.D. University and the Humanities

Melissa Weininger, Ph.D. Thinking Critically

9. 10.

Cyrus C. M. Mody, Ph.D. University is Not a Business

Terrence Doody, Ph.D. Becoming Trade Schools

11.

John Boles, Ph.D. Learning to Make a Life

12. Charles Dove, Ph.D. 27 Film and Society 13.

John Hopkins, Ph.D. Most Misunderstood

14.

Maya Soifer Irish, Ph.D. Pose the Critical Questions

15.

Deborah Harter, Ph.D. Learning from Literature

16.

Geoffrey Winningham, M.S. Moments of Surprise

About the Contributors 37 41 Acknowledgements

TURNING POINTS ONE

No Right Answers Nicolas Shumway, Ph.D. Dean of Humanities and Frances Moody Newman Chair in Humanities, Rice University

Work in the humanities is very open-ended. There’s no such thing as an absolutely right answer. Everything is mediated by interpretation. Humanists are not indifferent to empirical evidence, but we work a lot with the interpretation of evidence and sometimes in a world where plausibility is more important than a narrowly defined truth. For example, Shakespeare’s Macbeth is much more interesting and profound than anything we can say about the historical Macbeth based on the evidence. Or said differently, Shakespeare’s play offers a kind of truth that cannot be gleaned from historical fact. Another element in the humanities that is absolutely different from the sciences is that there’s no such thing as obsolescence in the humanities. Nobody would say, for example, that Plato is obsolete, or that Shakespeare has been disproven. Scientific method insists that you have a hypothesis, that you 1

prove the hypothesis through evidence and reason, and that you continue testing the hypothesis until its disproven. One can talk easily about scientific progress. Those kinds of concepts don’t exist in the humanities at all. We demonstrate things. We provide evidence for things. But our subjects don’t become obsolete. A sense of history and of the past are always present in humanities classes. I believe this to be one of the humanities’ unique strengths. If you take a philosophy course, you’re studying the history of philosophy. If you take an English Literature course, you’re studying the history of English Literature and its contexts. The past is not involved in other disciplines in the same way. I hope that students become conversant with the humanities because that dialogue with the past is a very important part of being human. We do not live solely in the present; we live in the context of previous generations. We stand on their shoulders. And how can we not be moved by the fact that our predecessors also knew love, fear, hope, kindness, evil, happiness, and temptation? The humanities, more than other disciplines, give us a sense of our connection to the past and to a human community that transcends generations. 2

TURNING POINTS TWO

Documenting What Exists Paul Hester, M.F.A. Lecturer of Traditional and Design Photography, Rice University

I am always looking at the way the built environment appears. Sometimes that’s called architecture, sometimes it’s called slums, sometimes it’s called suburbia. My interest in buildings and architecture, which led me to come to Rice and study architecture as an undergraduate, is still with me. But I’ve decided I am not going to be the personinvolved in the building process or design process. I’m much more interested in documenting and looking at things as they exist. So rather than using those categories of subject matter of nature, or animals, or portraits, I divide my varying interest into two broad categories. One is photographing things the way they are and the other is changing things to the way I wish they were. Photoshop has made that really interesting, 3

a really delightful kind of process on a pixel level but it’s not only in that way. There are other ways to intervene in a photograph. There’s a pretty long tradition of this. It was not the tradition that I learned when I was studying photography and had the mentor that I had, but it is called theatrical photography. People set things up, build things and photograph them or even modify what’s in front of them. Even though that’s not my first impulse, it’s really a lot of fun to do, so I’m always experimenting with that, too.

TURNING POINTS THREE

Complacent to Reality Harvey Yunis, Ph.D. Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Humanities and Classics, Rice University

Society is mostly ignorant of my academic field, which is okay. Society is what it is. On the other hand, many people have been exposed in some very basic way to things about Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. I’m a Hellenist, which is someone who studies Ancient Greece. People are aware to some extent of the foundation of Western civilization in Ancient Greece, whether it’s democracy or philosophy or science, etc. And to that extent, people do express the idea that this is important and needs to be maintained. That’s almost a reflex reaction. And it’s okay. It is what it is. My field is a fractured one, meaning it would be very difficult, almost impossible to characterize easily in one or two ways. It is fractured, I believe, because of all the pressures on it for being small, obscure, and struggling to survive in a modern world where it’s often not appreciated. 5

TURNING POINTS FOUR

About Being Human José Aranda, Jr., Ph.D. Associate Professor of English, Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies, Rice University

We ask all the hard questions: What does it mean to be a human being? What’s right? What’s wrong? What’s the quality of life? What makes a good society? All those classical questions still are appropriate. At the same time, I think what we should be doing at the School of Humanities is saying: learn more languages. Don’t be comfortable with only one language. If you are comfortable with two languages, find a third. It’s about interacting with the world or the people you come in contact with. It’s so surprising what you can learn from people who are different from you. So we need to be teaching more languages, we need to be sending students to study abroad. We need to internationalize our faculty but I also think we need to have more underrepresented domestic faculty. 7

Humanities can teach us about having fun: what is the good life? Why is something funny? Why does irony work? The whole idea of comedy is not something you learn or think about when you are a chemical engineer. I’m sure they have fun, but it’s not in the curriculum to have fun. The humanities are about being human in the end. Perhaps for a first-world nation, the humanities are at a historic low point. It doesn’t seem to be something that can get you a job. People ask if you read Descartes or Sartre or Kierkegaard or Jane

Eyre, I mean, that’s all nice, but what are you going to do with your life? And this is a good question if you are an English major, Philosophy major, etc. But the other thing I tell students that’s important is your life isn’t just the first ten years after Rice. Your life is the next...60 years after Rice. For four years, you really have a chance to open up your mind unless you go to graduate school. So when you are in your late seventies, eighties, what are you going to want to talk about, engage with, look at? You’re not always going to be on top of a rocket ship or an oil refinery 8

or underneath some kind of fancy sea-lab. What are you going to be doing? How will you understand yourself when you are seventy-five?

TURNING POINTS FIVE

Einstein and Shakespeare Terrence Doody, Ph.D. Professor of English, Rice University

Creativity is a word I don’t like or trust. I think it’s a buzz word and it’s pretty empty. In a certain sense, creativity is being able to answer problems that other people don’t even know exist. That’s one definition of creativity, but another distinction involves comparing two great creative geniuses—to my mind, Einstein and Shakespeare come first. If Einstein hadn’t formulated the laws of relativity, somebody else would have eventually. Maybe not as elegantly, and maybe it would have taken another generation or two, but the scientific community would have gotten there. If Shakespeare had not existed, nobody would have written Hamlet or King Lear. Without Michelangelo there would have been no Sistine Chapel. That’s the distinction I make between the two different kinds of creativity. Einstein knew that there was a question about 11

relativity, and he answered it. None of us knew that

Hamlet posed a question except Shakespeare, and he understood and answered it.

TURNING POINTS SIX

The Value of the Humanities Richard J. Smith, Ph.D. George and Nancy Rupp Professor of Humanities and Professor of History, Rice University

What I have learned in my study of Chinese history is that we need to have a view of the world that extends beyond our own Western cultural conceit. Fields of human activity such as philosophy, art, music, religion, language, literature and history belong in a universal world of discourse. This is not to say that individual cultures need to be bleached of their distinctive color and significance, but neither should they be left out of the mosaic of human achievement. And even if we are inclined to explore our own culture, there is no better way to do this than to put that culture in conversation with another one. A fomer colleague of mine in German Studies used to say that “you don’t know one language until you know two.” The same point holds, I think, for the study of culture. People naturally take for granted the utility of math and science but they are less inclined to see the value in topics such as philosophy, art, literature and history. “What practical use are these subject?,” the question often goes. One answer is: a broader 13

perspective on the world. Math and science are concerned with understanding the natural order; they do not deal with questions of value. The humanities, by contrast, have nothing to do with mathematical formulas and laboratory experiments, but they have much to say about the ethics of experimentation and the actual application of mathematical and scientific techniques. The causes and effects of global climate change are matters for scientists alone to determine, but policy decisions regarding climate change inescapably involve political, social and ethical values. There is obviously much to commend mathematics and the sciences; the high-tech world we know today would be unimaginable without them. But we need to discuss how best to manage the knowledge that science has yielded. If we canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think carefully, critically and creatively about the human condition, whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the point of it all? There is more to the humanities than an abstract and academic understanding of human problems and possibilities. Humanistic studies also remind of our obligation to assist in the betterment of society by using the tools that we have acquired in our respective fields of knowledge. For example, I am very interested in community outreach and in transmitting my specialized knowledge to high school and elementary teachers in the Houston area. This impulse is, in part, the legacy of my family life, with its three generations of highly committed public school teachers. 14

TURNING POINTS SEVEN

University and the Humanities Steven Crowell, Ph.D. Joseph and Joanna Nazro Mullen Professor in Humanities, Rice University

The university as we know it today was modeled in the 19th century after the so called, Humboldt University in Germany. The whole of reason for its existence was to combine the benefits of research and teaching and really foster that. At the time they thought the model was really driven by a picture of philosophy as a kind of master discipline. Philosophy organized the whole system of sciences into one coherent whole, so philosophy was sort of at the core of the meaning of the university. I think that is no longer the case. There isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t any one discipline that is sort of holding everything together. As a result thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a big effort to try to develop networks that pop up spontaneously and foster interdisciplinary research. I think this pop up model of the synergy errs too far on the other side. 15

There’s really no support or real appreciation for the need to have thoughtful people just pursuing their own perplexing questions on their own time and without a lot of demand for outcome assessment. I mean it’s a really solitary and independent thing that has been incredibly valuable throughout human history. If we lose that ability to think, which is best cultivated in certain areas of philosophy, we’d lose something that is going to be irreplaceable.

TURNING POINTS EIGHT

Thinking Critically Melissa Weininger, Ph.D. Lecturer, Center for Lanuages and Intercultural Communication, Rice University

The role of the humanities and therefore also the field of Jewish Studies that I pursue is to advance knowledge, to encourage people to think critically, to give them examples and critiques and context for approaching real world problems, ultimately to help people to understand that the kinds of things that we face outside the academy, we don’t face in isolation: they occur in specific contexts. Humanities teach people to take those contexts into consideration and to think analytically and critically about things beneath the surface rather than just on the surface. I don’t think this is considered something of great value in society at the moment, and it may never be again. That’s partly because of a technological climate that doesn’t favor deep contemplation. It’s partly because of a political climate that values things according to their 17

economic benefit to the society, and of course humanities just do not produce any product. It doesn’t make anyone any money, at least I would argue it probably does in the long run, but it doesn’t immediately produce anything, and so I think it’s been highly devalued and I think we see all the time the ways that that has detrimental effects. You probably can trace some of the political gridlock and polarization that we see in political culture to the same trends that devalue things like humanities: the rise of sound bites and things like that, easy ways for people to think about things rather than difficult ways. It’s mutually reinforcing: it’s a chicken and egg problem, and unfortunately it’s a bit of a cycle.

TURNING POINTS NINE

University is Not a Business Cyrus C. M. Mody, Ph.D. Associate Professor of History, Rice University

If you think of the university as a factory that makes something, I think it’s important to keep in mind that universities make several different things. We produce students who then go into lots of different sectors of society and who draw on lots of different aspects of their experience at the university in their later pursuits. We produce knowledge. We produce things that get published in peer review journals and books and so forth. We produce stuff. There are small-scale factories at a lot of universities. Even if you think of a research laboratory in chemistry or material science, it’s making stuff that then in some way or another ought to be translated into society. We are making intellectual property as well; we’re getting patents and Materials Transfer Agreements. We’re making creative compositions. The trick needs to be to ensure that the production of all these different 19

things is mutually reinforcing that weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re not focusing on producing just the intellectual property at the expense of the production of well-trained students. Instead, the production of intellectual property should benefit the production of good students, and the production of the students should allow us to make better intellectual property. The university is not a business. We should not think about which products to focus on as though we were in the free marketplace. Instead, we should recognize that we are a different kind of organization than a business, and we need to preserve the diversity of our product line.

TURNING POINTS TEN

Becoming Trade Schools Terrence Doody, Ph.D. Professor of English, Rice University

I think that the university is very important because it should, number one, teach people to think critically for themselves. Number two, it should give them a sense of the entire culture in which they exist. I think what’s happening to a lot of schools like Rice is they’re becoming trade schools. They’re training engineers and chemists who just know engineering and chemistry. Both of them are very highly rewarded and both of them are thought necessary, as being a doctor is, by the whole society. But a lot of them don’t have the cultural background that they need to understand everything. Many Americans have almost no understanding of the rest of the world. That’s why we’ve lost the wars we’ve lost, because we simply did not understand the Vietnamese for example. And we have no understanding of the Islamic World, which is why we expect they all want to be Christians and 21

democratic. The university should provide a much broader sense of history and culture that gives an understanding of our place, not just at work, but in the world. Intrinsic to both of those goals is reading and writing, period. Because if you can’t write, you can’t think. You don’t know what you’re thinking unless you can say it. There is no such thing as an unexpressed idea. If unexpressed, it is not an idea. An idea exists in the public world, in the social order.

TURNING POINTS ELEVEN

Learning to Make a Life John Boles, Ph.D. William Pettus Hobby Professor of History, Rice University

Obviously academia provides job skills. If you are going to have engineers, lawyers, doctors, and so forth, people have to learn how to do that. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s just basic competence that has to be taught, but I think also that academia teaches insight, patience, willingness to understand and accept change, and willingness to understand and interact with people of different backgrounds. That kind of broadening is important for college to do. I think that in some sense itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s maybe the most important thing that college does and maybe you can learn basic skills other ways. I do think that living and interacting with people and dealing with different ideas and different concepts is an essential skill. I think everybody who comes to college should live with roommates of different backgrounds, and be exposed to ideas in the classroom that they have not heard before or that they initially find upsetting. I 23

don’t think college is just learning facts and data, and narrow jobs skills. You go to college to learn how to live. It might have been Churchill that said something about the difference between making a living and making a life. I think we go to college to learn how to make a life. Ironically, people as they get older tend to appreciate history a lot more. I constantly run into scientists and engineers who will say, “When I was in college, I didn’t take any history classes” or “I steered clear of history classes,” and so forth. And now, our readings are all news to them. I think it is in part because they go to college when they are vocationally oriented, and they are only interested in learning more about economics or more about quantum theory. They don’t see how history relates to them getting a job and making a living. Often times, they get out and they realize that there is more to life than just making a living. History broadens your expectations and teaches you more about contemporary culture. I can’t imagine a person trying to understand world politics and world religion without having some sort of understanding of history. I can’t imagine a person today, growing up in Houston and going to Rice, getting a job, and all of sudden finding himself 24

working in India, or England, or Germany or Japan without appreciating a history and the knowledge of the history and the literature of that other culture. If you are going to come out of Rice, then chances are that you will be living some part of your life abroad. Knowing something about world cultures and world religions is an essential life skill.

TURNING POINTS TWELVE

Film and Society Charles Dove, Ph.D. Professor in the Practice and Director of the Rice Film Program, Rice University

Film is world culture. Cinema is world culture. If you teach literature and teach film, the difference between the responses is really striking. People will take literature more seriously right away, but at the same time, they won’t argue about it with each other. But a film, people will argue about. Film is part of their living world of culture. Books, even good books, are rarely treated in the same way. Think of cinema as including TV and all sorts of stories told through moving images. It’s way more important to people, which makes the classes more attractive. Initially you get people to come to the class, but sometimes they’re more resistant, because they have more of an investment, emotionally, in the objects themselves. Last week I had a student talk to me for forty-five minutes after class about Evangelion, which is an anime. I’d never seen it and clearly this was the center of his life. I was impressed. I wish I had filmed him, just him talking, because it was great 27

to see that kind of enthusiasm. At the same time, if you teach something like that to someone, it’s going to be a real problem, because clearly they’ve got all kinds of emotional ties there. It’s like tentacles they can’t get free of easily. So it’s good and bad, but it’s mostly good. Mostly really good. If you think of culture as important to society, and film as important to culture, then dealing with film has some sort of effect on culture, and then therefore some sort of effect on society as a whole. I don’t think it’s the same as medical research or anything like that. I’m not deluded. I think those things are way more important. But there isn’t the same kind of context of success or failure, either, right? It’s much more provisional, everything that goes along in the kind of humanities framework. When I was in grad school I used to play ultimate frisbee with these guys who all worked on the Hubble Space Telescope. And when Hubble went up it didn’t work, because there was a mismatch in the lenses. It destroyed their careers. None of those guys ever completed their Ph.D.s. They work in various jobs now. One guy works for a law firm, a patent firm. They seem happy, but that would never happen in a humanities context. We couldn’t have that. There aren’t those kinds of high stakes. 28

TURNING POINTS THIRTEEN

Most Misunderstood John Hopkins, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Art History and Classical Studies, Rice University

Regarding how the humanities are perceived, I think â&#x20AC;&#x153;frivolousâ&#x20AC;? is not even an exaggeration. Last year, Obama like many others before him commented on art history degrees as essentially being a matron degree. This is a horribly misogynistic idea that women who really just want to marry a rich husband choose it. That image is so powerful though. In the forties and fifties art history actually took a very intellectual turn. Some people today consider it the most artificially cerebral of the humanities disciplines. Now, at this point art history has a two-fold appearance as either a society matronâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s degree, or the intensely theoretical degree so obtuse that it has almost no practical purpose in society. Both of these are terribly misinformed, and fail to recognize that the 29

humanities and art history exist to expand your intellectual capacity and your ability to think on your own.

TURNING POINTS FOURTEEN

Pose the Critical Questions Maya Soifer Irish, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of History, Rice University

I think academics exist not really to teach anything to society specifically, but rather to preserve this idea that things are complicated. There is a tendency in human relations to have a simplistic view of things and not to examine one’s assumptions. It is simply out of intellectual easiness. I’m not saying academics are much different — we’re people too. But our professional task is to pose the critical questions that would push others to check their assumptions. That’s the main matter. Whether it’s economics, politics or history, don’t take anything for granted. Examine, reexamine and again and again. In the society as a whole, we’re the guardians of the idea that simplicity does not equate to truth. The simplistic idea is everywhere now, through media, TV, radio, and the Internet. We academics have the obligation to remind people that things are complicated, that you have to employ critical 31

thinking, not just accept something simple as a given. I think Socrates said, “an unexamined life is not worth living.” I think that’s applicable to anything. We have an obligation to do this for the society as a whole. It’s true that too often we are shut up in our ivory tower and do not communicate effectively. But I really do hope to make an impact in my particular area of work.

TURNING POINTS FIFTEEN

Learning from Literature Deborah Harter, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Classical and European Studies, Rice University

Often in my courses there are students from all different fields. And if they are going to be doctors, engineers or whatever their future, there will be moments where they’re making decisions that will be very personal, sometimes morally, and ethically natured. And I know that when I’m making decisions and when I’m suffering I have images in my head that come immediately into my mind that are tremendous markers of wisdom. All of us have something that we’ll remember from what our grandfathers said, what our mothers said. But I also remember the error of Mrs. Havisham in Dickens’ Great Expectations, who is so bitter when her lover runs off on the day of their wedding that she spends the rest of her life growing more and more and more bitter. There was a moment in my life when I lost 33

someone that I loved a great deal. When I felt myself growing deeply angry my first thought was, “I can’t make the mistake of Mrs. Havisham.” So the lives that we read in fiction are hugely important and they have an impact on us. I think when people understand this they will teach literature more thoroughly, more richly.

TURNING POINTS FIFTEEN

Moments of Surprise Geoffrey Winningham, M.S. Lynette S. Autrey Chair in the Humanities and Professor of Visual and Dramatic Arts, Rice University

In terms of impacting society, I would hope that people look at some of my photographs and have moments of surprise and pleasure. Surprise and pleasure that something they’ve seen often, or never thought about, suddenly seems new and interesting. People look at my photography and read my texts of the Gulf Coast and realize that the region was this hugely important historical avenue through which the New World was discovered. I hope that they would realize that and also look at the photographs and say, “It’s beautiful in parts and another part is being destroyed. It’s a precious landscape and being scarred and destroyed.” So photography can also create an awareness and understanding of what we’re doing to the world. 35

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS JosĂŠ F. Aranda, Jr., Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of English in the Department of English and an Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Rice University. His research areas and specialties include the study of nineteenth century/contemporary Chino literature and early American literature. Dr. Aranda received his B.A. from Yale University in 1984, his M.A. from Brown University in 1988, and his Ph.D. from Brown University in 1995. John Boles, Ph.D. is the William Pettus Hobby Professor of History at Rice University. His primary research interests are focused on the United States South, with an emphasis on religion, culture, and slavery. Dr. Boles received his B.A. from Rice University in 1965 and his Ph.D from University of Virginia in 1969. Steven Crowell, Ph.D. is the Joseph and Joanna Nazro Mullen Professor in Humanities and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Rice University. He studies twentieth century European philosophy, especially phenomenology and its development in Heidegger, existentialism, hermeneutics and post-structuralism. His current research is located in the tradition of phenomenological transcendental philosophy. Dr. Crowell received his A.B. from the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 1974, M.A. from Northern Illinois University in 1976, and Ph.D. from Yale University inâ&#x20AC;¨1981. Terrence Doody, Ph.D. is a Professor of English at Rice University and the Director of the Program in Writing and Communication. He has received NEH and Mellon grants as well as several prestigious teaching awards at Rice. He teaches courses in the modernist period, the novel and narrative theory, and contemporary literature, and he is working on a book on the literature of the city. Dr. Doody holds a Ph.D. from Cornell University.

Charles Dove, Ph.D. is a Professor in the Practice and the Director of the Rice Film Program in the Department of Visual and Dramatic Arts. Charles Dove teaches film courses in the Department of Visual and Dramatic Arts at Rice and literature courses at University of Houston at Clear Lake. His areas of teaching and research are Hollywood, early cinema, genre, 19th and 20th century literature, and film and literary theory. He has taught both graduate and undergraduate courses on both film and literature in Houston since 1993, mostly in the University of Houston system. Raised in Chicago, he received his Bachelor of Arts from the University of Illinois. He studied in Baltimore at the Johns Hopkins University where he received both a Master of Arts and a Doctorate. Deborah Harter, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the Department of Classical and European Studies in the School of Humanities at Rice University. Dr. Harter received her B.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1973, her M.A. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1980 and her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1989. Paul Hester, M.F.A. is received a BA in art from Rice University in 1971 and an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1976. Hesterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s photographs of art and architecture have appeared in many books, magazines, and exhibitions as well as in museum collections. He dreams of a synthesis between his professional (public) images and his imaginative (private) musings and continues to play with the gap between Truth (documentary) and Beauty (fiction), mixing traditional photographic materials with the mutability of pixels. John Hopkins, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Art History and Classical Studies. He works on the art and architecture of the ancient Mediterranean with an interest in the intersection of physical/visual/spatial experience and the diachronic investigation of cultural and societal shift. Dr. Hopkins received his Ph.D. from University of Texas at Austin in 2010.

Maya Soifer Irish, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of History at Rice University and is the Faculty Affiliate for the Medieval Studies Program and Jewish Studies. Her research interests are focused on the history of interfaith relations in medieval Spain and the Mediterranean. Dr. Irish received her M.A. from the University of Colorado in 2000 and her Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2007. Cyrus Mody, Ph.D. teaches the history of science, technology and engineering. His research focuses on the history of very recent physical and engineering sciences (~1970 to the present), with particular emphasis on the creation of new communities and institutions of research in the late Cold War and the post-Cold War periods. Currently, he is working on a history of the communities and institutions of nanotechnology, in collaboration with colleagues at the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at the University of California-Santa Barbara, the Chemical Heritage Foundation in Philadelphia, and at Rice. Dr. Mody earned his A.B. from Harvard University and Ph.D from Cornell University. Nicolas Shumway, Ph.D. is the Dean of Humanities at Rice University and holds the Frances Moody Newman Chair in Humanities. His research and scholarship deals with Latin-American history and culture, ideology and politics of foreign-language education, and ideologies of Hispanism. Dr. Shumway received his B.A. from Brigham Young University in 1969 and his M.A. (1971) and Ph.D. (1976) from the University of California, Los Angeles. Richard J. Smith, Ph.D. is the George and Nancy Rupp Professor of Humanities, a Professor of History, a James A. Baker Institute for Public Policy Scholar, and the Director of Asian and Global Outreach in the Center for Education at Rice University. Smith co-founded the Baker Institute Transnational China Project and served for 15 years as the Director of Asian Studies at Rice. He received his Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Davis, in 1972.

Melissa Weininger, Ph.D., is a Lecturer in Hebrew at the Center for Languages and Intercultural Communication in the School of Humanities at Rice University. Her primary areas of research are Modern Hebrew and Yiddish literature and gender studies. Dr. Weininger received her undergraduate degree from Harvard University in 1995 and her Ph.D. in Jewish Studies from the University of Chicago in 2010. Geoffrey Winningham, M.S. earned his undergraduate degree in English from Rice and his graduate degree in photography from the Institute of Design at Illinois Insttiute of Technology. He has taught photography at Rice since 1969. Geoff is best known for his seven books and three documentary films relating to Texas and Mexican culture. His photographs have been widely exhibited and collected by major museums throughout the U.S. and Mexico. His work in photography and filmmaking supported by numerous fellowships and awards, including two Guggenheim Fellowships and 5 grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. Harvey Yunis, Ph.D. is the Andrew W. Mellon Chair in the Humanities at Rice University. He is also a professor in the department of Classical Studies. His area of interest is Classical Greek Literature. Dr. Yunis received his B.A. from Dartmouth College in 1978, a B.A. from Cambridge University in 1982, and his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1987.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Special thanks to Rice University School of Humanities faculty and Dean of Humanities Nicolas Shumway for making this project possible by sharing career experiences and opinions with the Gateway Study of Leadership fellows through one-on-one interviews. Much appreciation goes to Dean of Social Sciences Lyn Ragsdale for her ongoing support and encouragement, and Dr. Brandon Vaidyanathan for his counsel and guidance this year. Our heartfelt gratitude to the Gateway Associates and supporters of the Gateway programs for making projects like this possible. Many thanks also to the 2014-15 Turning Points team, as well as to current and past Gateway Study of Leadership directors and fellows for their tremendous amount of time and effort to move this project forward with enthusiasm, care and excellence to a new level each year.

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