Caroline Levander

Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Initiatives

The Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Initiatives develops programs, collaborations, and initiatives that cross schools and that advance the university's academic and research profile. These initiatives are aimed at bridging the cultures of humanism and science and technology with research partnerships, joint recruiting strategies, curricular revision and interdisciplinary opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students. Levander will work closely with the provost and the vice provost for research to implement these university-wide initiatives.

During the 2011-12 academic year, Levander, the Carlson Professor in the Humanities and Professor of English, will be on sabbatical.  During this time, she will limit her vice provost activities to planning new collaborative initiatives in energy studies and digital humanities and running the Faculty Initiatives Fund.

The Faculty Initiatives Fund is a competitive fund for Rice faculty in all disciplines that provides seed money for ambitious new interdisciplinary research projects, collaborations, or pedagogical models. The FIF awards of $5000-$75,000 support projects that might lead to larger endeavors, external funding opportunities, or unusually innovative collaborations.

Before joining the Rice faculty as an assistant professor in 2000, Levander was assistant professor at Trinity University. She was promoted to associate professor at Rice in 2001 and promoted to full professor in 2006. She was named to the Carlson Chair in Humanities in 2009.  Levander directed the Humanities Research Center at Rice from 2005-2011, expanding it into a premier center that engages faculty and students at all levels within and beyond the university. She has been awarded grants and fellowships from the National Humanities Center, the Mellon Foundation, the Huntington Library, the Gilder Lehrman Institute, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute for Museum and Library Services. She is author of two books, four edited collections, and numerous articles; co-edits a book series; and has served on numerous advisory boards.  
 
During her sabbatical, Levander plans to write two books – one for Oxford University Press on the hemispheric dimensions of the U.S. Civil War, and one for an interdisciplinary book series on the question of where American literature is at the current moment. She will also serve as a faculty fellow at the Huntington Library in Pasadena, California, and lecture at Yale, USC, the State University of New York’s University at Buffalo and the Freie University of Berlin.