If you are looking for something good to read this summer, here are a few recommendations from our very own Rice University deans. Enjoy!
Dean of the School of Continuing Studies Rob Bruce: “Harlem Shuffle” by American novelist Colson Whitehead is the follow-up to Whitehead's 2019 novel “The Nickel Boys,” which earned him his second Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Dean of School of Humanities Kathleen Canning: “South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation” by Imani Perry is a meditation on the complexities of the American South, and thus of America.
Dean of Undergraduates Bridget Gorman: “Thrivers: The Surprising Reasons Why Some Kids Struggle and Others Shine” by Michele Borba dispels the myth that we have to push our kids to do more, achieve more, be more. Research shows it isn’t working.
Dean of the School of Natural Sciences Tom Killian: In anticipation of celebration this fall of the 60th anniversary of JFK's speech in Rice Stadium, “American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race” by Douglas Brinkley.
Dean of the School of Social Sciences Rachel Kimbro: “Just Get on the Pill: The Uneven Burden of Reproductive Politics” by Krystale E. Littlejohn outlines the social history and urgent social implications of gendered compulsory birth control, an unbalanced and unjust approach to pregnancy prevention.
Dean of the Shepherd School of Music Michael Loden: “Bonsai” by Alejandro Zambra is a tale of a young man and his love who mysteriously disappears. In short, it’s a simple story that becomes complicated.
Dean of the School of Architecture Igor Marjanović: “A City Is Not a Computer: Other Urban Intelligences” by Shannon Mattern is a bold reassessment of "smart cities" that reveals what is lost when we conceive of our urban spaces as computers.
Dean of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies Seiichi Matsuda: Rice’s General Announcements define the university’s policies and procedures, and our students’ academic opportunities, rights and responsibilities. Faculty and staff who govern academic programs should read the 2022-23 General Announcements when they are published.
Dean of the School of Engineering Luay Nakhleh: “Language in Our Brain: The Origins of a Uniquely Human Capacity” by Angela D. Friederici is a comprehensive account of the neurobiological basis of language, arguing that species-specific brain differences may be at the root of the human capacity for language, an intrinsic part of us, although we seldom think about it.
Dean of the Jones Graduate School of Business Peter Rodriguez: “Veblen: The Making of an Economist Who Unmade Economics” by Charles Camic is a biography of the thinker who demolished accepted economic theories in order to expose how people of economic and social privilege plunder their wealth from society’s productive men and women.