Entitled Opinions (about Life and Literature)

Professor Marjorie Perloff is Professor Emerita of English at Stanford and Scholar in Residence at USC. She was educated at Barnard College, where she received her B.A. (1953) and at the Catholic University of America where she received her Ph.D. in English (1965). She teaches courses and writes on twentieth and twenty-first century poetry and poetics, […]

Giovanni Tempesta has been a lecturer in Italian at Stanford University since 1983 and has taught at all levels of language instruction. He is the author of the Italian grammar book “Questa bellissima lingua italiana, impariamola insieme!” and has just published his Italian translation of “The Cremation of Sam McGee” and “Other Verses” by Robert […]

Blakey Vermeule earned her Ph.D. in English Literature at UC Berkeley in 1995, and she has been Professor of English at Stanford University since 2005. Blakey Vermeule's research interests are British literature from 1660-1800, critical theory, cognitive approaches to literature, major British poets, post-Colonial fiction, and the history of the novel. She is the author […]

Laura Wittman received her Ph.D. in 2001 from Yale University where she completed her dissertation in the Department of Italian Language and Literature. The title of her dissertation is “Mystics Without God: Spirituality and Form in Italian and French Modernism,” an analysis of the historical and intellectual context for the self-descriptive use of the term […]

Hayden White is a historian and literary theorist. He is professor emeritus at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he taught for many years in the History of Consciousness program, and he is currently a professor of comparative literature at Stanford University. His many books include Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (1973), […]

Stewart Agras, M.D. (Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry, Stanford University) was one of the early leaders in the field of behavior therapy. At the University of Vermont, in collaboration with Harold Leitenberg Ph.D., he became interested in phobia as a model for psychotherapy research, leading to the discovery that exposure to the feared situation was a […]

Michael Shanks is the Omar and Althea Dwyer Hoskins Professor of Classical Archaeology at Stanford, and co-director of the Stanford Humanities Lab. He received his Ph.d. from Peterhouse Cambridge in 1992. His research interests include the history of archaeological engagements with the past, and design in Graeco-Roman antiquity. His many books include Theatre/Archaeology (2001, with […]

Aron Rodrigue is professor of History, Eva Chernov Lokey Professor in Jewish Studies at Stanford University and the chair of the department of History. He received his PhD from Harvard. His research interests include modern Jewish history; the history and culture of Sephardic Jews; the Jews of modern France; and minority identities. His books include […]

Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul in 1952. His novels include Cevdet Bey and His Sons (1982), The Black Book (1990), My Name is Red (1998), and Snow (2002). Pamuk's most recent book is Istanbul, a collection of the author's early memoirs and an essay about Istanbul. Apart from three years in New York, he […]

Philippe Buc has been at Stanford since 1990. He earned his Ph.D. from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes in Sciences Sociales, Paris. His research has been concerned with religion and power in pre-modern western Europe, principally from Late Antiquity to the High Middle Ages, so the 2nd to 14th centuries of the Common Era. The […]

Andrew J. Mitchell (Ph.D., Philosophy) works in the fields of 19th and 20th century German Philosophy and the Philosophy of Literature, with emphases in the Philosophy of Nature (German Romanticism, American Transcendentalism), Critical Theory, and the History of Philosophy (ancient and modern). His research addresses questions of meaning, mediation, and materiality in philosophy and literature. […]

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 […]

Charitini Douvaldzi holds an M.A. in Comparative Literature from the University of Munich and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Harvard University. Her main field of research is German culture and literature between the 18th and 20th centuries. She works specifically on autobiography, the Bildungsroman, psychoanalytic and cultural theory, narrative, vision, and the arts of […]

Charitini Douvaldzi holds an M.A. in Comparative Literature from the University of Munich and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Harvard University. Her main field of research is German culture and literature between the 18th and 20th centuries. She works specifically on autobiography, the Bildungsroman, psychoanalytic and cultural theory, narrative, vision, and the arts of […]

Pierre Saint-Amand holds joint appointments with French Studies and Comparative Literature at Brown University. A graduate of the University of Montreal, he received his Master's and doctoral degrees in Romance Languages. from The Johns Hopkins University . Before taking a tenured position at Brown in 1986, he taught as assistant professor of French at Yale […]

Karen Feldman teaches in the Departments of Rhetoric and German. Her areas of specialization include hermeneutics and phenomenology, the Frankfurt School, German Idealism, feminist theory, literary theory and aesthetics. She is the author of Binding Words: Conscience and Text in Hobbes, Hegel and Heidegger (Northwestern University Press, forthcoming in 2005) and co-editor of Continental Philosophy: […]

Karen Feldman teaches in the Departments of Rhetoric and German. Her areas of specialization include hermeneutics and phenomenology, the Frankfurt School, German Idealism, feminist theory, literary theory and aesthetics. She is the author of Binding Words: Conscience and Text in Hobbes, Hegel and Heidegger (Northwestern University Press, forthcoming in 2005) and co-editor of Continental Philosophy: […]

Troy Jollimore is an External Faculty Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center, Associate Professor of Philosophy at California State University, Chico, and author of the poetry collection, Tom Thomson in Purgatory. Jollimore studied in the Philosophy Department at Princeton University, receiving his Ph.D. in 1999. His dissertation, on the relation between normative theories of ethics […]

Josiah Ober holds the Constantine Mitsotakis Chair in the School of Humanities and Sciences. He divides his time and academic appointment between the Departments of Classics and Political Science, and has a courtesy appointment in Philosophy. He writes and teaches courses on various topics conjoining Greek history, classical philosophy, and political theory and practice. His […]

John L. Hennessy joined Stanford’s faculty in 1977 as an assistant professor of electrical engineering. He rose through the academic ranks to full professorship in 1986 and was the inaugural Willard R. and Inez Kerr Bell Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from 1987 to 2004. From 1983 to 1993, Dr. Hennessy was director […]

Rachel Jacoff is Margaret E. Deffenbaugh and LeRoy T. Carlson Professor in Comparative Literature and Professor of Italian at Wellesley College where she has been a member the faculty since 1978. She has also taught at the University of Virginia, Cornell University, and Stanford University. She received her B.A. with High Honors and Distinction in […]

The Only Way Up is Down: Rachel Jacoff on Dante's Inferno The world of Dante scholars is a small and close-knit one, and Rachel Jacoff is one of its leading luminaries. In this Entitled Opinions conversation, she discusses The Divine Comedy, and more particularly The Inferno, with her former student, our Entitled Opinions host Robert Harrison, himself a major Dante scholar. They begin with […]

Rachel Jacoff: Hell Is Other People in Dante's Inferno Rachel Jacoff is one of the leading lights in the small, close-knit world of Dante scholarship. In this Entitled Opinions episode on The Divine Comedy, she continues her conversation on The Inferno, with her former student, our Entitled Opinions host Robert Harrison, himself a major Dante scholar. Harrison begins by […]

Irish novelist and journalist Colm Toibin was born in Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford in Ireland in 1955 and was educated at University College Dublin where he read History and English. After graduating, he lived and taught in Barcelona, a city that he later wrote about in Homage to Barcelona (1990). He returned to Ireland and worked […]

Drew Gibson is a principal of Gibson Speno, LLC, a real estate investment and investment company. The company owned approximately 1,800 apartment units and has also developed approximately 7,000 residential lots in the San Jose area over the past 8 years. He is also a Director and co-owner of Preferred Community Management, Inc., a real […]

Pianist and composer Ken Berman has appeared on the famed stages of Carnegie Hall in New York, Detroit's Fox Theater, The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and The Sunside in Paris; he's equally at home in the bohemian grooves of the Knitting Factory and Smoke. Ken Berman has performed and recorded with Bob Moses, […]

Bissera Pentcheva is Assitant Professor of Art History at Stanford University. She received her B. A. from Dartmouth College and Ph.D. from the Dept. of the History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University. She was a pre-doctoral fellow at Dumbarton Oaks Research Institute at Washington D.C., a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University at the […]

Dr. Michael Hendrickson is Professor of Pathology at the Stanford University Medical School and Director Surgical Pathology Laboratory at the Stanford Medical Center. His research interests in this field include: diagnosis of progressive stages of uterine cancer; classification of ovarian tumors; breast cancer diagnosis and prognostic factors, soft tissue neoplasm, uterine mesenchymal neoplasm. In addition […]

Dr. Michael Hendrickson is Professor of Pathology at the Stanford University Medical School and Director Surgical Pathology Laboratory at the Stanford Medical Center. His research interests in this field include: diagnosis of progressive stages of uterine cancer; classification of ovarian tumors; breast cancer diagnosis and prognostic factors, soft tissue neoplasm, uterine mesenchymal neoplasm. In addition to […]

Professor Marjorie Perloff is Professor Emerita of English at Stanford and Scholar in Residence at USC. She was educated at Barnard College, where she received her B.A. (1953) and at the Catholic University of America where she received her Ph.D. in English (1965). She teaches courses and writes on twentieth and twenty-first century poetry and poetics, […]

Professor Sullivan is the Stanley Morrison Professor of Law at Stanford University. She received a B.A. from Cornell in 1976 and a B.A. from Oxford in 1978 where she was a Marshall Scholar. She received her J.D. from Harvard in 1981. Her broad experience in the practice of law includes being a clerk to Judge […]

Thomas Sheehan has been Professor of Religious Studies at Stanford since 1999. 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 University. He has been the recipient of many academic honors including: Ford Foundation Fellow (1983-85), Resident Scholar […]

Thomas Sheehan has been Professor of Religious Studies at Stanford since 1999. 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 University. He has been the recipient of many academic honors including: Ford Foundation Fellow (1983-85), Resident Scholar at […]

A former student at the École Normale Supérieure rue d’Ulm, Professor Alduy received her Ph.D. in French Literature from the University of Reims in June 2003, where she wrote her dissertation on Renaissance poetry. Entitled “Nation, Self, and the Lure of Unity. Poetics and Genesis of a New French Genre, the “Amours” (France, 1544-1560),” her […]

Seth Lerer holds a B.A. from Wesleyan University, a B.A. and M.A. from Oxford University, and he received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1981. He joined the Stanford faculty as Professor of English in 1990, received a joint appointment in Comparative Literature in 1996, and served as Chair of the Department of […]

Decca is the host of At the Cafe Bohemian, a world music show on KZSU, Stanford, where she is also the Public Affairs Director. She received a B.A. in Classics and an M.A. in Art History from San Francisco State University. When not on the air she can usually be found in a bookstore, a […]

Thomas Harrison is Professor of Italian at UCLA, where he has been since 1994. He recieved 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 […]

Dr. Marilyn Yalom grew up in Washington D.C. and was educated at Wellesley College, the Sorbonne, Harvard and Johns Hopkins. She has been married to the psychiatrist Irvin Yalom for fifty years and is the mother of four children and the grandmother of five. She has been a professor of French and comparative literature, director […]

Paul R. Ehrlich received his Ph.D. from the University of Kansas. Co-founder with Peter H. Raven of the field of coevolution, he has pursued long-term studies of the structure, dynamics, and genetics of natural butterfly populations. He has also been a pioneer in alerting the public to the problems of overpopulation, and in raising issues […]

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 […]

Thomas Sheehan has been Professor of Religious Studies at Stanford since 1999. 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 University. He has been the recipient of many academic honors including: Ford Foundation Fellow (1983-85), Resident Scholar […]

Kathryn Todd is a graduate student in the Physics Department at Stanford University. She completed her B.S. in Physics and Literature at Caltech in 2001. She is also the current Program Director at KZSU 90.1 FM.

Gregory Freidin is Professor of Slavic at Stanford University. He was educated first in the USSR and then went on to receive his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California – Berkeley in 1979 with a thesis on Osip Mandelstam. He has been at Stanford since 1978. He was chair of the Slavic Department […]