Entitled Opinions (about Life and Literature)

Caroline Winterer is an intellectual and cultural historian of early America in its transatlantic contexts. Her focus is the history of scholarship, books, reading, libraries, and education, as well as the history of art and material culture. She is also interested in the many ways in which early Americans have made sense of the past, […]

Andrea Nightingale has worked primarily on Greek and Roman philosophy and literature. She is currently researching and writing on the philosophy and literature of ecology (in the modern and postmodern periods). She has been awarded a fellowship at the Stanford Humanities Center, an ACLS Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She is presently serving as a […]

The Ethos of “Cool”: Robert Harrison on Jim Morrison and The Doors “Hot is momentary. It quickly turns to ashes. But cool stays cool.” Fifty years ago, the award-winning album The Doors was released into the world – a landmark debut for what would become L.A.’s biggest band. The Doors and its lead singer Jim Morrison have […]

Laura Wittman primarily works on 19th- and 20th-century Italian and French literature in a comparative perspective, and in particular is interested in connections between modernity, a new spirituality, the twentieth century religion of politics, and the literary expressions thereof. She is also interested in exploring the role of the ineffable, the mystical, and the body in […]

Thomas Sheehan is Professor of Religious Studies at Stanford and specializes in contemporary European philosophy and its relation to religious questions, with particular interests in Heidegger and Roman Catholicism. Before coming to Stanford he taught at Loyola University of Chicago since 1972. He received his B.A. from St. Patrick's College and his Ph.D. from Fordham […]

Thomas Harrison is Professor of Italian at UCLA, where he has been since 1994. He received his B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and his M.Phil. and Ph.D in Comparative Literature from CUNY. Before joining the faculty of UCLA in 1994 he taught in Italian and comparative literature programs at the University of Pennsylvania, New York […]

Rush Rehm, Professor of Drama and Classics at Stanford, engages members of the cerebral rock band Glass Wave in a conversation about the transubstantiation of literature into music. The group discusses their new self-titled album “Glass Wave,” which recasts great works of literature from the Western canon into the genre of cerebral rock. The conversation […]

JOSHUA LANDY is associate professor of French and co-director of the Literature and Philosophy Initiative at Stanford. Professor Landy is the author of Philosophy as Fiction: Self, Deception, and Knowledge in Proust (Oxford University Press, 2004) and the co-editor of two volumes, Thematics: New Approaches (SUNY, 1995, with Claude Bremond and Thomas Pavel) and The […]

Paula Findlen's main interests are the scientific revolution, natural history before Darwin, and the history of medicine; her regional emphasis is on Italy in the age of Galileo. She is a scholar of the history of science and medicine and teaches history of science before it was “science” (which is, after all, a nineteenth-century word). […]

Mark Mancall is an expert on the history, religions and cultures of central and southeast Asia. Arriving at Stanford in 1965, Professor Mancall directed the Overseas Studies Program at Stanford from 1973 to 1985, and has led numerous Stanford Travel/Study journeys to China, India, Nepal, Central Asia, Indonesia, Tibet and Bhutan. Positions: Founder and Director, […]

Vincent Barletta specializes in Iberian literatures and cultures of the medieval and early modern periods. He is the author of Covert Gestures: Crypto-Islamic Literature as Cultural Practice in Early Modern Spain (U of Minnesota P, 2005), for which he was awarded the 2007 La corónica International Book Award. He is also the editor and translator of Francisco Núñez […]

Giuseppe Mazzotta is Director of Graduate Studies and the Sterling Professor of Humanities for Italian and the Director of Graduate Studies at Yale University. He has written a number of essays about every century of Italian literary history. His books include: Dante, Poet of the Desert: History and Allegory in the Divine Comedy. (Princeton, 1979); […]

Jay Kadiswas born in Oakland, California. He has played guitar since high school, initially with Misanthropes, a popular bay area band of the late 1960s, whose highlights included playing the Fillmore Auditorium and opening for Muddy Waters. Jay has written and performed original rock music with several bands, including Urban Renewal and Offbeats. He has […]

Gwyneth Lewis, the first poet laureate of Wales, has published seven books of poetry, including Parables & Faxes (1995), Zero Gravity (1998), Y Llofrudd Iaith ('The Language Murderer,' 1999), and Chaotic Angels (2005) . Her poetry collections have won prestigious awards, such as the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival Prize and the Welsh Arts Council Book of […]

Gwyneth Lewis, the first poet laureate of Wales, has published seven books of poetry, including Parables & Faxes (1995), Zero Gravity (1998), Y Llofrudd Iaith ('The Language Murderer,' 1999), and Chaotic Angels (2005) . Her poetry collections have won prestigious awards, such as the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival Prize and the Welsh Arts Council Book of […]

Tobias Wolff's books include two novels, The Barracks Thief and Old School; two memoirs, This Boy's Life and In Pharaoh's Army; and three collections of short stories, In the Garden of the North American Martyrs, Back in the World, and, most recently, The Night in Question. He has also been the editor of Best American […]

Stephen Orgel has published widely on the political and historical aspects of Renaissance literature, theater, art history and the history of the book. His work is interdisciplinary, and is increasingly concerned with the patronage system, the nature of representation, and performance practice in the Renaissance. His most recent book is Imagining Shakespeare (2003), and he […]

Andrea Nightingale is Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature at Stanford University. Her research interests include Greek literature and philosophy, Hellenistic philosophy, and ecological studies. She is currently researching and writing on the philosophy and literature of ecology. Professor Nightingale recieved her BA in Classics from Stanford University and a BA in Classics and Philosophy […]

Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht is the Albert Guérard Professor in Literature in the Departments of Comparative Literature, of French & Italian, of Spanish & Portuguese (by courtesy), and is affiliated with German Studies, and the Program in Modern Thought & Literature at Stanford University. He is also Professeur Associé au Département de Littérature comparée at the […]

Byrd Hale, also known as Byrd of Paradise, has been Blues Director at KZSU 90.1 Stanford radio for fifteen years. For twenty years, Byrd has hosted the blues show “Blues with a Feelin’,” which can be heard live on KZSU 90.1 and at http://kzsu.stanford.edu/ on Saturdays from 9 am to noon. He also hosts a […]

Byrd Hale, also known as Byrd of Paradise, has been Blues Director at KZSU 90.1 Stanford radio for fifteen years. For twenty years, Byrd has hosted the blues show “Blues with a Feelin’,” which can be heard live on KZSU 90.1 and at http://kzsu.stanford.edu/ on Saturdays from 9 am to noon. He also hosts […]

Dick Gould is currently the John L. Hinds Director of Tennis at Stanford University. From 1966 until his retirement in 2004, he coached the Stanford men's tennis team, during which time he led his teams to 17 NCAA Team Championships (10 NCAA singles champions, 7 NCAA doubles championship teams), and coached 50 All American champions. […]

Professor Apostolidès was educated in France, where he received a doctorate in literature and the social sciences. He taught psychology in Canada for seven years and sociology in France for three years. In 1980 he came to the United States, teaching at Harvard and then Stanford, primarily French classical literature (the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) […]

PANAGIOTIS AGAPITOS (Athens, 1959), Professor of Byzantine Literature and Culture at the University of Cyprus, studied Byzantine History and Literature, History of Byzantine Art and Musicology at the University of Munich (M.A. 1984), and Byzantine Literature at Harvard University (Ph.D 1990). He has published Narrative Structure in the Byzantine Vernacular Romances (Munich 1991), The Study […]

KATIE PETERSON was born in Menlo Park, California. She graduated from Stanford in 1996 with a degree in English Literature, and received her doctorate in English and American Literature and Language from Harvard University in 2006. Her thesis, “Supposed Person: Emily Dickinson and the Selflessness of Poetry,” was awarded the Howard Mumford Jones Prize for […]

PANAGIOTIS AGAPITOS (Athens, 1959), Professor of Byzantine Literature and Culture at the University of Cyprus, studied Byzantine History and Literature, History of Byzantine Art and Musicology at the University of Munich (M.A. 1984), and Byzantine Literature at Harvard University (Ph.D 1990). He has published Narrative Structure in the Byzantine Vernacular Romances (Munich 1991), The Study […]

ANDREW J. MITCHELL is assistant professor of Philosophy at Emory University specializing in the work of Martin Heidegger, Friedrich Nietzsche, and the continental philosophical tradition, as well as the relationships between philosophy and literature. Before joining Emory he was post-doctoral Fellow in the Humanities at Stanford University where he taught in the German Studies and […]

JOSHUA LANDY is associate professor of French and co-director of the Literature and Philosophy Initiative at Stanford. Professor Landy is the author of Philosophy as Fiction: Self, Deception, and Knowledge in Proust (Oxford University Press, 2004) and the co-editor of two volumes, Thematics: New Approaches (SUNY, 1995, with Claude Bremond and Thomas Pavel) and The […]

MARÍLIA LIBRANDI ROCHA specializes in Brazilian literature and culture within a comparative framework. She is particularly focused on the modern period, from the nineteenth century to the present. She was born in São Paulo, where she earned her MA and PhD in Literary Theory and Comparative Literature from the Universidade de São Paulo. From 2004-2008, […]

ADRIAN DAUB is Assistant Professor of German at Stanford University. He received his B.A. from Swarthmore College in 2003 and his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Pennsylvania in 2008. His current book project is entitled Uncivil Unions: The Metaphysics of Marriage in Early German Idealism and Jena Romanticism, 1794-1801, and he is […]

Denise Gigante, Associate Professor of English, teaches eighteenth and nineteenth-century British literature with a focus on Romanticism. Her books include Taste: A Literary History (Yale UP, 2005), Gusto: Essential Writings in Nineteenth-Century Gastronomy (Routledge, 2005), The Great Age of the English Essay: An Anthology (Yale UP, 2008), and Life: Organic Form and Romanticism (Yale UP, […]

Stephen Hinton is Professor of Music and Senior Associate Dean for the Humanities at Stanford University, where he has been on the faculty since 1994; from 1997-2004 he served as chairman of the Department of Music. After studying at the University of Birmingham (U.K.), where he took both a double major in Music and German […]

Stephen Hinton is Professor of Music and Senior Associate Dean for the Humanities at Stanford University, where he has been on the faculty since 1994; from 1997-2004 he served as chairman of the Department of Music. After studying at the University of Birmingham (U.K.), where he took both a double major in Music and German […]

Professor Michel Serres was born in 1930 in Agen, France. In 1949, he went to naval college and subsequently, in 1952, to the Ecole Normale Supérieure (rue d'Ulm). In 1955, he obtained an agrégation in philosophy, and from 1956 to 1958 he served on a variety of ships as a marine officer for the French […]

Matthew Farley, S.J. is a Jesuit who teaches English at Saint Ignatius College Preparatory in San Francisco, CA. He holds a B.A. from Stanford in English and Masters degrees in Theology and Philosophy, from the University of Notre Dame, and Fordham University, respectively. He has engaged in a variety of missionary works in his Jesuit […]

As a scholar of international and comparative law, legal philosophy, and human rights, Helen Stacy has produced works analyzing the efficacy of regional courts in promoting human rights, differences in the legal systems of neighboring countries, and the impact of postmodernism on legal thinking. Her recent scholarship has focused on how international and regional human […]

Peter Stansky is Frances and Charles Field Professor of History, Emeritus at Stanford University, where has taught since 1968. Stansky specializes in modern British history and he has served as the director of the Stanford Humanities Center. Author of innumerable publications, including Redesigning the World, William Morris, the 1880s, and the Arts and Crafts (1985), […]

Vinton G. Cerf is vice president and chief Internet evangelist for Google, where he has worked since leaving MCI in 2005. At Google, he is responsible for identifying new enabling technologies to support the development of advanced Internet-based products and services from Google. He is also an active public face for Google in the Internet […]

Joshua Landy is Associate Professor of French at Stanford University. He has written Philosophy as Fiction: Self, Deception, and Knowledge in Proust (Oxford, 2004) and has edited, with Thomas Pavel and Claude Bremond, Thematics: New Approaches (SUNY, 1994). This is his first appearance as host of Entitled Opinions. He was a guest of the show […]

Abraham Verghese, MD and MACP, is Professor in Stanford's Department of Medicine, and Senior Associate Chair for the Theory and Practice of Medicine. He previously served for five years as Director of the Center for Medical Humanities and Ethics at the University of Texas. He is the author of two bestselling books: My Own Country: […]

Heather Webb specializes in the literature and cultural history of medieval and Renaissance Italy. Areas of research include Dante, early Italian lyric poetry, devotional poetry and prose and history of the body. Her book manuscript, entitled The Medieval Heart: Circulation before William Harvey, is currently under review. She has published essays on Giovanni da San […]

Dick Davis was born in Portsmouth, England, in 1945, and educated at the universities of Cambridge (B.A. and M.A. in English Literature) and Manchester (PhD. in Medieval Persian Literature). He lived in Iran for 8 years (1970-1978), and also for some time in both Italy and Greece. He is currently Professor of Persian and Chair […]

Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht is the Albert Guérard Professor in Literature in the Departments of Comparative Literature, of French & Italian, of Spanish & Portuguese (by courtesy), and is affiliated with German Studies, and the Program in Modern Thought & Literature at Stanford University. He is also Professeur Associé au Département de Littérature comparée at the Université […]

Nicholas Jenkins writes about and teaches 20th-century culture and literature, especially poetry. After receiving his B.A. from Oxford, Jenkins came to the United States as a Harkness Fellow. He did postgraduate work at Columbia and was then employed as an editor and writer at ARTnews magazine in New York. He received a D.Phil. from Oxford […]

Paul Robinson works on the history of European (and sometimes American) thought in the 19th and 20th centuries. His writing has focused on three topics. The first is the history of psychoanalysis. The second is the history of ideas about human sexuality, especially the experience of gays and lesbians. The third is the connection between […]

Lanier Anderson was educated at Yale (A.B., 1987) and the University of Pennsylvania (M.A., Ph.D., 1993). He works in the history of late modern philosophy, focusing primarily on Kant and his influence on 19th c. philosophy. He is the author of articles on Kant's theoretical philosophy, on Nietzsche, and on the neo-Kantian movement. He is […]