Rice University History Department records

Collection

Identifier: UA 0026

Staff Only

Finding aid note: Stored off-site at the Library Service Center. Please request this material via woodson@rice.edu or call 713-348-2586.

Scope and Contents

These administrative files of the Rice University History Department reflect the daily business of the department, including meeting minutes, memos, correspondence, program and committee files, faculty files, Rorschach Lecture files and CHLI project files. This material begins with the 1960s and goes through the 1980s, when the department was significantly expanded.

Faculty Files are restricted for privacy reasons and include correspondence with faculty and administration, including various Rice presidents, conference papers/articles/publications, CVs, research/travel funding requests, student evaluations, hiring and promotions, and personnel/salary information.

The Center for the History of Leadership Institutions (CHLI) was established in the early 1980s to meet the need for written histories of business, professional and public sector organizations in the Southwest. The Center produced written histories for corporations and served both to teach an organization about itself and to provide a basis for better public understanding. The Center was founded by Rice history professor Harold M. Hyman. The CHLI material includes business invoices, correspondence, funding requests for research and travel, and short corporate histories. It is restricted for privacy reasons but can be prepared for access upon request.

Dates

Creation: 1962 - 2006

Creator

Rice University. Department of History (Organization)

Conditions Governing Access

This material is open for research except for the Faculty Files and CHLI files, which contain personnel information. Access to those files must be approved by written permission. Contact woodson@rice.edu for assistance.

Conditions Governing Access

Stored off-site at the Library Service Center. Please request this material via woodson@rice.edu or call 713-348-2586.

Conditions Governing Use

Permission to publish from this material must be obtained from the Woodson Research Center. Contact woodson@rice.edu for assistance.

Biographical / Historical

The department of history at Rice University was established in 1912 with the founding of the university itself (then named Rice Institute). The humanities, and especially historical studies, were a substantial component to the university's original founding purpose. Edgar Odell Lovett, the first President of Rice Institute, envisioned that the department would offer courses in ancient and modern history, as well as specializations in American, Texas, South American, and legal history. The department's first history professor was Robert G. Caldwell.

The department awarded its first doctorate in history in 1933 to Albert Grant Madison, but did not do so again for nearly three decades. As the department grew, it gained national prominence in the fields of the history of the American South and Civil War. Two widely-regarded editing projects, the Journal of Southern History and Papers of Jefferson Davis, have been housed at Rice for more than five decades.

The department's size expanded in the early 1980s. The faculty was comprised of leading scholars in the fields of American, European, intellectual and cultural, African, Caribbean, Jewish, and world history.

The department today is considered one of the largest and strongest at Rice and also enjoys national prestige. The history of the American South continues to be the department's strongest area of concentration; however, the department also offers formidable specialties in European and world history. The graduate program is designed to train professional research scholars who seek employment at academic institutions and has enjoyed an unusually successful placement record in the midst of a demanding job market. Graduate students have traditionally received generous funding packages with the intention of reducing time-consuming teaching loads.