The Center for
the Study of Cultures, the Computer & Information Technology Institute,
and the Office of the Chief Information Officer at Rice University present a joint lecture series:
Arthur I. Miller
Professor of History and Philosophy of Science
University College of London
Title TBA
Wednesday, November 17, 2004
4 p.m.
Duncan Hall, McMurtry Auditorium
A reception in Martel Hall will follow the lecture.
Stephen Murray
Professor of Medieval Art, Gothic Architecture
Columbia University
Medieval Architecture and the New Media: Representing and Creating Knowledge in Cyberspace
Tuesday, November 4, 2003
4 p.m.
Duncan Hall, McMurtry Auditorium
A reception in Martel Hall will follow the lecture.
Abstract
Medieval architecture, equipped with its painted sculpture and colorful stained glass, provided the three-dimensional virtual reality of the Middle Ages. Yet art historians have remained content with traditional means of representation: the printed page, the photograph, the slide shown in the classroom. For more than thirty years I have experimented with a range of ways both to bring the work of architecture to the student and to bring the student to the architecture. I will demonstrate a range of productions, from the presentation in virtual reality of ideas that were formed in an entirely traditional way, to my current project, which involves the interaction of hundreds of Romanesque churches in a fully databased medium.
About Stephen Murray
Stephen Murray was educated at Oxford and the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London. He joined the Columbia faculty in 1986 and currently serves as Director of the Media Center for Art History, Archaeology & Historic Preservation. His publications include books on the cathedrals of Amiens, Beauvais and Troyes; his current work is on medieval sermons, story-telling in Gothic, and the Romanesque architecture of the Bourbonnais. His field of teaching includes Romanesque and Gothic art, particularly involving the integrated understanding of art and architecture within a broader framework of economic and cultural history. He is currently engaged in projecting his cathedral studies through the electronic media using a combination of three-dimensional simulation; digital imaging and video.
Edward Ayers
Professor of History
University of Virginia
Processing the Past: The American Civil War as Information
Thursday, March 20, 2003
4 p.m.
Duncan Hall, McMurtry Auditorium
A reception in Martel Hall will follow the lecture.
Abstract
About Ed Ayers
Ayers has won four teaching awards, including the Outstanding Faculty Award from the Virginia State Council of Higher Education.
Ayers’s current work is a multidimensional effort called “The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War.” The World Wide Web version of the project has attracted more than 3 million visitors. The web and CD ROM version published by W. W. Norton and Company in 2000 won the first annual eLincoln Prize for best digital work on the era of the American Civil War.
President Clinton appointed Ayers to the National Council on the Humanities in 2000. Ayers has been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Palo Alto (1999-2000) and has served as the Fulbright Commission’s John Adams Professor of American Studies, University of Groningen, The Netherlands (1995).
N. Katherine Hayles A reception in Martel
Hall will follow the lecture.
Abstract
Neal Lane A reception in Martel
Hall will follow the lecture.
Edward Ayers has overseen the creation of a large digital archive, the Valley of the Shadow Project, which has won a number of prizes and which has appeared in several different forms: a continually evolving website, a CD-ROM, a native-digital scholarly article sponsored by a leading print journal, and a trade book to be published by W. W. Norton this spring: In the Presence of Mine Enemies: War in the Heart of America, 1859-1863. In his talk, Ayers will reflect on what this experiment tells us about the way the content and the form of history define one another and what new directions digital history might take.
Edward Ayers is the Dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the Hugh P. Kelly Professor of History at the University of Virginia. He was educated at the University of Tennessee and Yale University, where he received his Ph.D. in American Studies. He has written and edited seven books. Vengeance and Justice: Crime and Punishment in the Nineteenth-Century American South (1984) won the 1986 J. Willard Hurst Prize for best book in American legal history. The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction (1992), a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, was named the best book on the history of American race relations and on the history of the American South. Ayers is the senior editor of the The Oxford Book of the American South (1997) and co-author of All Over the Map: Rethinking American Regions (1996) and American Passages: A History of the United States (2000).
Professor of English
University of California-Los Angeles
Literature in the Twenty-first Century: A Technological Revolution
Thursday, October 24, 2002
4 p.m.
Duncan Hall, McMurtry Auditorium
Technology has always played a key role in the development of the arts and humanities. Modern literature has been so deeply influenced by the printing press, for example, that it can scarcely be conceived without this technology. Now another revolution is underway as writers create literary works for digital media. The digital computer, with its ability to simulate almost everything, has already radically changed what "literature" means in an electronic context. Electronic literature, written on computers and meant to be read on them, has moved into multimedia, combining the traditional art of language with animation, graphics, images and sound. Far from being a passive delivery vehicle, the technology has actively changed the look, feel, and content of these electronic works. This conjunction between literary art and technology is apparent, for example, in works that combine natural language with code to re-imagine the past and future of human identity. This talk, richly illustrated with examples, will explore the cultural and critical issues raised by electronic literature, particularly connections between the means of representation (that is, digital technology) and what is represented.
University Professor
Rice University
Two Cultures--Plus One
Tuesday, April 2, 2002
4 p.m.
Duncan Hall, McMurtry Auditorium
In 1959, C.P. Snow published a small book entitled The Two Cultures in which he argued that a communications gap had formed between the scientists and humanists in England and that this gap was dangerous for society. Much has changed in five decades. The world is a great deal more complex today, in part due to the impacts of technology--and it is more crowded, noisy, and dangerous. Science, engineering and technology have become a nearly seamless enterprise. And the scientists have gone directly to the public--a "third culture"--without worrying about trying to close Lord Snow’s two-cultures gap, hence without having the benefit of perspectives from the humanists, social scientists and the broader scholarly community. In turn, most people, convinced of the value of science and technology, have welcomed the changes science and technology are making in their lives and tend to give their elected policy makers almost carte blanche to sort out the good from the bad. Unfortunately, at a time when the pace of discovery and technological innovation are accelerating, neither the public nor the policy makers know much about science and technology. This state of affairs is unsustainable. The goal of this talk is to address this "third culture"--society at large--and the need for a conversation involving the public, their elected policy makers, scientists and other scholars. Fortunately, at Rice, the conversation has already begun. I will use, as examples of policy issues the public ought to care about, a few that I dealt with in Washington, e.g. global climate change, human genome (and biomedical research), and missile defense.
About Neal Lane
Before becoming the NSF Director, Lane was Provost and Professor of Physics at Rice University in Houston, Texas, a position he had held since 1986. He first came to Rice in 1966, when he joined the Department of Physics as an assistant professor. In 1972, he became Professor of Physics and Space Physics and Astronomy. He left Rice from mid-1984 to 1986 to serve as Chancellor of the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. In addition, from 1979 to 1980, while on leave from Rice, he worked at the NSF as Director of the Division of Physics.
Lane has received many awards and honorary degrees and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a number of professional associations. He serves on several boards and advisory committees.
Neal Lane, Edward A. and Hermena Hancock Kelly University Professor at Rice University, holds appointments as Senior Fellow of the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, where he is engaged in matters of science and technology policy, and in the Department of Physics and Astronomy.
Prior to returning to Rice University in January 2001, Lane served in the Clinton Administration as Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, from August 1998 to January 2001, and as Director of the National Science Foundation (NSF), from October 1993 to August 1998.
Mark C. Taylor
Cluett Professor of Humanities
Williams College
Monday, October
22, 2001
4 p.m.
Duncan Hall, McMurtry Auditorium
Minding Bodies
Abstract
Drawing on insights from
complexity studies, theoretical biology, and cognitive psychology, as well
as theology and philosophy, Taylor develops a theory of culture in terms
of distributed information processing. As the lines separating the biological,
mental, and technological dimensions of experience become increasingly obscure,
it is necessary to rethink the multiple functions of cultural systems. Taylor
is the author of many books in which he attempts to bring together the discourses
of sciences, the arts, and humanities. "Minding Bodies" probes
issues discussed at length in his forthcoming book The Moment of Complexity:
Emerging Network Culture.
About Mark Taylor
Mark C. Taylor
is the Cluett Professor of Humanities at Williams College where he is also
director of the Center for Technology in the Arts and Humanities. He received
a Doktorgrad (Philosophy) from the University of Copenhagen in 1981, a Ph.D.
from Harvard in 1973, and a B.A. from Wesleyan University in 1968.
In 1997 Taylor cofounded the Global Education Network (GEN) with Herbert Allen. The GEN is a web-based company that strives to develop the highest quality college-level courses in the humanities, liberal arts, social sciences, and sciences, and distribute them online for an affordable price. He is a member of the American Academy of Religion, was elected a member of the Soren Kierkegaard Academy, and holds memberships in many other professional organizations. Taylor has written numerous books and articles on a variety of topics, from tatoos to architecture, to theology and creating global classrooms. He has collaborated on works in a variety of media, including CD ROM and film.
Taylor has received many awards including the Distinguished Alumnus Award from Wesleyan University, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching National College Professor of the Year award, and the Nots American Academy of Religion Award for Excellence.
For more information on Taylor's work, see reviews of his upcoming book, The Moment of Complexity and a recent feature article from the New York Times Sunday Magazine.
Directions to Duncan Hall and information on parking
Center
for the Study of Cultures
Computer & Information Technology
Institute