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A Letter from the Chair

25 August 2006

Dear Prospective Applicant:

The Rice department of anthropology, of which I have been a member for more than a dozen years, has long had a distinctive place in the broader field.  Its archaeologists are leading experts in sub-Saharan African urbanism.  Its social-cultural faculty have diverse thematic interests and regional specializations, but all share the pursuit of the anthropology of contemporary systems of authority and expertise and of the authorities and experts who populate them.  The subjects whom we and our graduate students engage include natural scientists and social policy-makers; artists, writers, curators and fellow academics; inventors and technicians; corporate executives and public-relations teams; Catholic and Protestant missionaries; and many others.  Historically, the social-cultural program gained its first widespread national and international notice in 1986, with the publication of Writing Culture and Anthropology as Cultural Critique.  Of the contributors to the former volume, Stephen Tyler remains a regular member of our current faculty and George Marcus an adjunct.  Michael Fischer, who co-authored the latter volume with Dr. Marcus, left the department several years ago for MIT.  Fortunately, such changes of staff have led less to the impoverishment of the department’s resources than to the broadening of its collegial networks.  Especially in the past five years, they have also given way to the consolidation and expansion of the project of “studying up” for which Dr. Marcus had set an early and pivotal precedent in his investigation of political and economic elites.  We aim to reinforce that project in adding to the department’s faculty in the next five to ten years.  Following the practice that Dr. Marcus established during his long tenure as chair of the department, we accept applicants first of all for the thematic dimensions of the investigations they propose to pursue for the Ph.D. and only secondarily for the geographical setting or settings of the fieldwork they intend to conduct.  As the department expands, however, we will also be aiming to add to our current strength in the anthropology of Europe and North America a complementary focus on Latin America.  I think that I can speak for the rest of my departmental colleagues in pronouncing that our future looks very bright indeed.

A good number of our students have come to their graduate education only many years after completing their undergraduate education.  Though we expect the students whom we admit into our graduate program to have some background in anthropology or its allied social sciences, we do not require a B.A. in any of the social sciences for admission.  We enthusiastically encourage international and minority students to submit their applications to us.  A series of required courses prepare graduate students for professional careers in the discipline.  Additionally, each of us regularly supervises individual students in courses devoted to topics and readings that are of direct and specific relevance to their individual research projects.  The program indeed has as its first priority the development of individual research projects.  My colleagues and I all serve as resources toward that end.  In contrast to most other graduate faculties, we do not expect students to work primarily with only one of us; seeing our students through their candidacy to the Ph.D. and a professional career beyond it is instead very much a team effort.  Students may sometimes think they’re seeing a bit too much of us.  Rarely if ever do they have to worry about seeing us too little.

We admit to the program only those students whom we can provide with financial support.  We provide each admitted student with the same support.  We were able to offer students admitted in the 2006-2007 academic year six years of a waiver of tuition and four years of a stipend in the amount of $16,000 per year, contingent only on the maintenance of good academic standard (a B average) as the semesters proceed.  In addition, we are occasionally able to offer students extra money for summer research.  We have a limited travel budget that allows students to deliver papers or participate in panels at conferences and meetings away from Houston.  While in residence in the program, each student has the use of a computer and a telephone and a desk in an office that he or she typically shares with one or two other fellow graduate students.  Every year, we are host to a variety of speakers and other visitors and always try to secure four our students opportunities to meet and talk with them.

The spirit of the department is experimental, both methodologically and conceptually.  Its tenor is typically intense.  Its atmosphere is typically warm—and not at all because of Houston’s famous weather.  Any student who is interested in the innovative exploration of and contribution to the dynamic relation between social and cultural theory and the conduct of fieldwork should seriously consider submitting his or her application to us.  With entirely the same seriousness, we will undertake its review.

Please contact me or any of my colleagues should you have questions or concerns that I have failed to address.

Most cordially,

James D. Faubion