MLA Faculty

"There is nothing like teaching a group of mature students who come to an evening seminar after a full day of having a life outside of the university. They are among the best, most engaged students I have worked with."

- Paula Findlen, Ubaldo Pierotti Professor of History and, by courtesy, of French and Italian

Stanford's faculty is one of the most distinguished in the nation. It includes 17 Nobel laureates, 4 Pulitzer Prize winners, 18 National Medal of Science winners, 150 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 263 members of the Academy of Arts and Sciences, 94 members of the National Academy of Engineering, and 31 members of the National Academy of Education.

MLA faculty, who are recruited from among Stanford University’s most distinguished professors, are eager to share their own enthusiasm for their subjects with this group of students. In the small group setting of MLA seminars, students have the opportunity to get to know their professors in a way that many students have never before experienced.


	Beverly Allen Visiting Professor in Comparative Literature Beverly Allen is Professor Emerita of French, Italian and Comparative Literature at Syracuse University, where she held the William P. Tolley Distinguished Teaching Professorship in The Humanities, and Visiting Professor at Stanford University. She has taught at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Cornell University, and the University of Zagreb and been a fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center and visiting scholar at the Gothenburg University Humanities Center. She has received numerous fellowships and prizes for her scholarship, literary translations, and screenwriting. Rape Warfare, her investigation of Bosnia in wartime, led to her serving as counsel at the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for The former Yugoslavia.
	Jonathan Berger The Denning Family Provostial Professor in Music and The William R. and Gretchen B. Kimball Fellow in Undergraduate Education Jonathan Berger is a composer and researcher at Stanford's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics. His violin concerto, Jiyeh, is slated for release on Harmonia Mundi's Eloquentia label this Fall. Berger is currently writing a chamber opera that will premiere in April 2013. His research includes studies in music cognition, auditory display of data, and research on musical expectations and timbre. Full bio
	Russell A. Berman Walter A. Haas Professor in the Humanities Russell Berman has been at Stanford since 1979. He is a member of the departments of Comparative Literature and German Studies. He has written widely on modern German and European literature and politics, as well as on issues in contemporary cultural theory. He has been awarded fellowships from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. His publications have twice been awarded the distinguished book award of the German Studies Association. Full bio
	Jay Bhattacharya Associate Professor of Medicine and core faculty of the Center for Health Policy Professor Bhattacharya's research focuses on the constraints that vulnerable populations face in making decisions that affect their health status, as well as the effects of government policies and programs designed to benefit vulnerable populations. He has published empirical economics and health services research on the elderly, adolescents, HIV/AIDS and managed care. He has been at Stanford since his freshman year in 1984, earning an M.D. and a Ph.D. along the way. He teaches MLA courses on the economics of life and death. Full bio
	Eamonn Callan Professor, School of Education and Pigott Family Professor Associate Dean for Student Affairs Dr. Callan is a philosopher of education whose work draws heavily on contemporary moral and political theory. His principal interests are in civic and moral education, and in the application of theories of justice and democracy to problems in educational policy and practice. Full bio
	William Chace Professor of English, Emeritus William Chace teaches courses on James Joyce, Irish Fiction, and Poetry. Professor Chace taught in the Department of English at Stanford for twenty years before leaving to become president of Wesleyan University (1988–1994) and then of Emory University (1994–2003). He has written One Hundred Semesters: My Adventures as Student, Professor, and University President, and What I Learned Along the Way. The author of many articles on multiculturalism, political correctness, consumerism and education, he has written two other books—The Political Identities of Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot and Lionel Trilling: Criticism and Politics.
	Gerald Dorfman Hoover Senior Fellow and Professor, by courtesy emeritus, of Political Science Gerald Dorfman is an authority and does research on British and European politics including the European Union. He is also interested in U.S. foreign policy and international relations. Dorfman served in the Agency for International Development, Department of State. He was a professor of political science at Iowa State University, a visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley, and a distinguished visiting professor at San Jose State University. He co-founded and published the scholarly journals in the social sciences, Politics and Society, Political Methodology, and Educational Policy. Full bio
	Bill H. Durham Bing Professor in Human Biology, Department of Anthropology, and Senior Fellow, Woods Institute for the Environment Bill Durham is an internationally acclaimed human ecologist. His major contributions have been in the theory of coevolution in human populations, in the causes of scarcity and environmental degradation in Latin America, and in the dual challenges of conservation and community development in the tropics. He won a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship in 1983, and has received fellowships from the Behavioral Sciences Center and the Guggenheim, Danforth, and National Science foundations. Among Durham's specialties is indigenous ecotourism, and his contributions to this field include co-founding the Center for Responsible Travel. Full Bio
	Dan Edelstein Associate Professor of French and, by courtesy, of History Dan Edelstein focuses on eighteenth-century France, with research interests at the crossroads of literature, history, and political theory. He teaches courses on the literature, philosophy, culture and politics of the Enlightenment; on nineteenth-century novels; the French Revolution; and early-modern political thought. In 2006 he was awarded the Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching, and received the Dean’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 2011. His published works include The Terror of Natural Right: Republicanism, the Cult of Nature, and the French Revolution, and The Enlightenment: A Genealogy. Full bio
	Paula Findlen Ubaldo Pierotti Professor of History and Professor, by courtesy, of French and Italian Paula Findlen's main interests are in Italian history, 1300-1800 and the early history of science and medicine, including the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution. Findlen specializes in the rise of modern science, medicine, and technology during the European Renaissance, especially in Italy, by looking at the intersection of science, art, and technology, the history of museums and collecting, and at the relations between knowledge and faith in the age of Galileo. Findlen received her Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley and taught at the University of California at Davis and as a visitor at Harvard before coming to Stanford in 1996. Full bio
	Larry Friedlander Professor of English (teaching), Emeritus Larry Friedlander has been at Stanford since 1965, where his specialty has been Shakespeare and performance. In addition to his academic and critical activities, Friedlander worked in the professional theater as an actor and director for many years. He has participated in major research laboratories on a wide variety of projects connected to the arts, technology, and education, including work at the Apple Multimedia Lab and has created innovative interactive designs for many museums internationally. Full bio
	Al Gelpi Coe Professor of American Literature, Emeritus From 1968 through 2002 Albert Gelpi taught Stanford undergraduate and graduate courses in American literature that ranged from its Puritan beginnings to the present day. He has written and edited books on Emily Dickinson, Wallace Stevens, Robinson Jeffers, C. Day-Lewis, Adrienne Rich, William Everson, Denise Levertov, and Robert Duncan. As a student of Perry Miller at Harvard, he became interested in the intellectual backgrounds of literary expression, and he has become increasingly interested in the connections between American letters and American painting. He has served as Associate Dean of Graduate Studies, Chairman of the American Studies Program, and Chairman of the English Department. He received the Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching in 1996. Full bio
	Barbara Gelpi Professor of English, Emerita Barbara Charlesworth Gelpi is a Victorianist by training. Her first area of interest was the 1890's, and her first book was Dark Passages: The Decadent Consciousness in Victorian Literature (1965). Her growing interest in feminist theory and feminist literary criticism led to the editing, with Albert Gelpi, of Adrienne Rich's Poetry, which was expanded and revised as Adrienne Rich's Poetry and Prose in 1993. She has also worked with the group of editors at the Center for Research on Women at Stanford who published Victorian Women: A Documentary Account of Women's Lives in Nineteenth-Century England, France, and the United States. Full bio
	Clarence Jones Scholar in Residence, The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute Clarence B. Jones was a speechwriter and counsel for Martin Luther King, Jr. His work in the civil rights movement dramatically impacted the course of American history, and he has received numerous state and national awards recognizing his significant contributions to American society. Jones was the first African-American partner in a Wall Street investment banking member firm of the New York Stock Exchange, was selected twice by Fortune Magazine as "A Business Man of the Month," and founded several corporate and media-related ventures. Full bio.
	Charles Junkerman Associate Provost and Dean, Continuing Studies Charles Junkerman received his PhD in comparative literature from UC Berkeley, and has been at Stanford since 1983. He has served as Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Studies, Associate Director of the Humanities Center, and has been Dean of Continuing Studies since 1999. He teaches courses on American literature (especially Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman) as well as cultural studies and cultural history from the Enlightenment to the present.
	Nancy Kollmann William H. Bonsall Professor of History Nancy Kollmann focuses on how politics worked in early modern Russian autocracy. She received her Masters and Ph.D. from Harvard University, and has been at Stanford since 1982. From 1995-2007 she served as the Director of the Center for Russian, Eastern European and Eurasian Studies. She has taught classes in early modern Russia and Eastern Europe, covering topics such as governance, identity and national consciousness, and social values. She has taught Enlightenment in Russia for the MLA Program. Full bio
	Herbert Lindenberger Avalon Foundation Professor of Humanities, Emeritus Professor Lindenberger taught at the University of California, Riverside, at Washington University, St. Louis, before coming to Stanford in 1969 to found and be the first chair of Stanford's program in Comparative Literature. His books have been on a wide variety of topics: Wordsworth, Georg Büchner, Georg Trakl, historical drama, critical theory, and opera. His current project centers around his own family's history during the Holocaust. Full bio
	Scotty McLennan Dean for Religious Life Scotty McLennan's duties as Dean for Religious Life include providing spiritual, moral, and ethical leadership for the university; teaching, encouraging a wide spectrum of religious traditions on campus; serving as the minister of Memorial Church; and engaging in public service. He holds M.Div. and J.D. degrees from Harvard University, and since 1975 has been a Unitarian Universalist minister and an attorney. Dean McLennan is the author of Jesus Was a Liberal: Reclaiming Christianity for All (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) and Finding Your Religion: When the Faith You Grew Up With Has Lost Its Meaning (HarperSanFrancisco, 1999). Full bio
	Eric Morris Practitioner-in-Residence and Lecturer at Stanford's Ford Dorsey Program in International Studies Most recently Eric Morris served as the United Nations Recovery Coordinator for Aceh and Nias following the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004. He headed the New York office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees from 2002 to 2005. In 2000-2001, he served simultaneously as Special Envoy in the Balkans of the High Commissioner for Refugees and as UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Kosovo. In 1998-1999, he was Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary General for the UN Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina, focusing on police and judicial reform issues. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell University, an MA from Yale University and a BA from Baylor University. Full bio
	David Palumbo-Liu Professor and Director of Comparative Literature David Palumbo-Liu's research interests include race and ethnicity, culture and society, social theory, and globalization. He has published six books on these subjects, the latest being Immanuel Wallerstein and the Problem of the World: System, Scale, Culture, and The Deliverance of Others: Reading Literature in a Global Age. He also blogs for Truthout and The Boston Review. He has taught at Stanford for twenty-two years, and has taught many times for the Continuing Studies and MLA programs. Full bio
	Linda Paulson Associate Dean and Director, MLA Program Linda Paulson has her PhD in Comparative Literature from UCLA. She has taught at Stanford since 1985. Her research focuses on the Victorian social novel, particularly on the works of Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Anthony Trollope; and on the development of the British woman's novel from Jane Austen to Doris Lessing. In 1989, she received Stanford's Dinkelspiel Award for distinguished teaching and service to Stanford.
	David Riggs The Mark Piggott OBE Professor of English, Emeritus David Riggs is a biographer and film critic who specializes in Renaissance literature. His first book, Shakespeare's Heroical Histories: Henry VI and Its Literary Tradition (1971), traces the influence of Shakespeare's grammar school education and apprentice work in the theater on his earliest plays. Ben Jonson: A Life (1989), is a biography of Shakespeare's most famous rival. His recent biography, The World of Christopher Marlowe, was published by Faber and Faber (2004) in the U.K. and Henry Holt (2005) in the U.S. Riggs is currently working on the life of Shakespeare. Full bio
	Paul Robinson Richard W. Lyman Professor in the Humanities, Emeritus Paul Robinson has written extensively on the history of European and American thought in the 19th and 20th centuries. His books include, Opera, Sex, and Other Vital Matters; Gay Lives: Homosexual Autobiography from John Addington Symonds to Paul Monette; Freud and His Critics; and Opera and Ideas: From Mozart to Strauss. Professor Robinson describes his writing as primarily 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 intellectual history and the history of opera. Full bio
	Jeremy Sabol Lecturer in Stanford's Program in Structured Liberal Education (SLE), and Lecturer in MLA Jeremy Sabol majored in physics and literature as an undergraduate, then received his Ph.D. in French. His dissertation examined the conceptual role of fiction in Descartes' physics and philosophy, as well as the impact of this use of fiction in later 17th-century French literary texts. Jeremy specializes in early modern literature and philosophy, Cartesianism, and existentialism. He is currently working on the later writings of Jean-Paul Sartre. Full bio
	Peter Stansky Frances and Charles Field Professor of History, Emeritus Peter Stansky has been at Stanford since 1968. He has written extensively on modern Britain, particularly about William Morris, George Orwell, the Bloomsbury Group as well of other aspects, political, cultural, and social, of modern Britain. He has taught three MLA courses and directed seven MLA theses. Full bio
	Edward Steidle Lecturer in CSP and MLA Edward Steidle pursued his MA degree in Comparative Literature at the Johns Hopkins University and the University of California, Berkeley. He completed his PhD in Medieval Literature at UC Berkeley, and joined the Stanford faculty in 1984. He has taught for the English department, the Graduate Program in the Humanities, and the Continuing Studies Program. His area of study is Late Antiquity and the Middle ages, and he has lectured on the arts and literatures of Europe, the Middle East and Asia. He has also been the faculty leader for Stanford Travel Study groups in Europe and the Mediterranean. He is currently working on the epic traditions of Europe, India and Japan.
	Peter Vitousek Clifford G. Morrison Professor in Population & Resource Studies, and Senior Fellow, by courtesy, at FSI and the Woods Institute Peter Vitousek has been on the faculty at Stanford University since 1984. His research interests include: understanding how the interaction of land and culture contributed to the sustainability of Hawaiian agriculture and society before European contact; and working to make fertilizer applications more efficient and less environmentally damaging (especially in rapidly growing economies). He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was awarded the 2010 Japan Prize. He is director of the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources and co-director of the First Nations Futures Institute.
	Caroline Winterer Professor of History and, by courtesy, of Classics Professor 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 currently working on Stanford’s collaborative Mapping the Republic of Letters project, which is digitally mapping some of the major European and American correspondence networks and libraries of the early modern scholarly world (1500-1800). As part of this project she is mapping the extensive correspondence network of Benjamin Franklin, as well as the holdings of the Library Company of Philadelphia, the leading library of Enlightenment America. Full bio

Recent MLA courses have been taught by such eminent Stanford faculty as:


	Marc Bertrand Professor of French, Emeritus Professor Marc Bertrand was raised in France and obtained his Ph.D. in Romance Languages at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of L'Oeuvre de Jean Prevost and editor, contributor, and co-author of a number of other publications concerning French literature and cultural history. He is working on Le Roman du bâtard, a book on the contemporary French novel. A recent essay in French Cultural Studies, "L'Ecrit et l'image populaires dans les études d'histoire culturelle," advocated the inclusion of new material from popular culture (17th to 19th century) in the teaching of French cultural history. Professor Bertrand loves Paris past and present: Parisian cultures of the 19th & early 20th century is one of his favorite courses to teach. He has participated in the Stanford in Paris program, lecturing on contemporary French society and culture.
	George Hardin Brown Professor of English, Emeritus George Brown did his undergraduate studies as a Jesuit at St. Louis University, and, after gaining an advanced degree in philosophy, he received an M.A. in English. In Innsbruck, Austria, he studied theology for four years. After further studies in Europe, he went to Harvard for his doctorate in English. He has studied paleography (Greek and Latin manuscripts) in St. Louis, Los Angeles, Oxford, London, and Rome. Following two years teaching at St. Louis University, Brown came to Stanford in 1971. Recipient of the Dinkelspiel award for his contribution to Stanford education, he teaches Old and Middle English language and literature, history of the English language, post-classical Latin, theology and medieval literature, monasticism, Arthurian literature, humanities, and (in the library department of Special Collections) paleography and codicology.
	Bliss Carnochan Richard W. Lyman Professor in the Humanities, Emeritus Bliss carnochan is the Richard W. Lyman Professor of the Humanities, Emeritus, and was director of the Stanford Humanities Center from 1985 to 1991. Carnochan's research and writing has focused on 18th-century literature in its cultural and historical settings. Other research interests include prison literature, Victorian culture, and American higher education.
	Gordon Chang Professor of American History and Director, Center for East Asian Studies Gordon Chang’s research focuses on Asian American history, U.S.-East Asia relations, and U.S. diplomatic history. He is the author of Chinese American Voices: From the Gold Rush to the Present (2006), Asian Americans and Politics: An Exploration (2001), Morning Glory, Evening Shadow: Yamato Ichihashi and His Wartime Writing, 1942-1945 (1997), Friends and Enemies: The United States, China, and the Soviet Union, 1948-1972 (1990), and senior editor for Asian American Art: A History, 1850-1970 (2008).
	Michele Elam Martin Luther King, Jr. Centennial Professor of English Michele Elam, Martin Luther King, Jr. Centennial Professor and Olivier Nomellini Family University Fellow in Undergraduate Education, is Professor of English and Director of Curriculum at Stanford University. She is the author of Race, Work, and Desire in American Literature, 1860-1930, and The Souls of Mixed Folk: Race, Politics, and Aesthetics in the New Millenium. She has taught "Slave Narratives" and "The Harlem Renaissance" for the MLA Program. Full bio
	Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht Albert Guérard Professor in Literature in the Departments of Comparative Literature, of French & Italian, of Spanish & Portuguese (by courtesy) Hans Gumbrecht focuses on the histories of the national literatures in Romance languages (especially French, Spanish, and Brazilian), and on German literature, while, at the same time, he teaches and writes about the western philosophical tradition with an emphasis on French and German nineteenth- and twentieth-century texts. Over the past forty years he has published more than sixteen hundred texts, including books, translated into more than twenty languages. In Europe and in South America, he has a presence as a public intellectual; in the academic world he has been acknowledged by nine honorary doctorates. Full bio.
	Van A. Harvey Professor of Religious Studies, Emeritus After serving in the Navy in World War II, Professor Harvey earned his Ph.D. at Yale University. He has taught at Princeton, Southern Methodist, and the University of Pennsylvania. He has twice been awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship as well as an honorary doctorate from Occidental College and a Dean's award at Stanford for outstanding teaching. As well as having written many articles, he is the author of A Handbook of Theological Terms, The Historian and the Believer, and the award-winning Feuerbach and the Interpretation of Religion.
	Rush Rehm Professor of Classics and Drama Rush Rehm has worked extensively on Greek tragedy. As well as directing many productions of ancient Greek plays (including Stanford Summer Theater's Lysistrata, translated by Amy Freed), Rush has written several books on Greek tragedy, including Radical Theatre: Greek Tragedy in the Modern World (London 2003); The Play of Space: Spatial Transformation in Greek Tragedy (Princeton 2002); Marriage to Death: The Conflation of Wedding and Funeral Rituals in Greek Tragedy (Princeton 1994); Greek Tragic Theatre (Routledge 1992); and Aeschylus' Oresteia: A Theatre Version (Melbourne 1978). For Stanford Summer Theater, Rush has produced summer festivals on many great playwrights, including Chekhov, Brecht, Beckett, Ionesco, Aristophanes, Sophocles, Pinter, Friel, and Shepard.

Paul Robinson, Chair, MLA Faculty Advisory Committee, Richard W. Lyman Professor in the Humanities, Emeritus

Charles Junkerman, Associate Provost and Dean, Continuing Studies

Linda Paulson, Associate Dean and Director, MLA Program

Russell A. Berman, Walter A. Haas Professor in the Humanities

Jay Bhattacharya, Associate Professor of Medicine and core faculty of the Center for Health Policy

William Chace, Professor of English and President Emeritus, Emory University

Eamonn Callan, Pigott Family School of Education Professor

Gerald Dorfman, Hoover Senior Fellow and Professor, by courtesy emeritus, of Political Science

William Durham, Bing Professor in Human Biology, Dept. of Anthropology, and Senior Fellow, Woods Institute

Barbara Gelpi, Professor of English, Emerita

David Palumbo-Liu, Professor of Comparative Literature

Jeremy Sabol, Lecturer, Structured Liberal Education program

Peter Stansky, Frances and Charles Field Professor of History, Emeritus

Academic Program

Home

MLA Faculty

Beverly Allen

Jonathan Berger

Russell A. Berman

Jay Bhattacharya

Eamonn Callan

William Chace

Gerald Dorfman

Bill H. Durham

Dan Edelstein

Paula Findlen

Larry Friedlander

Al Gelpi

Barbara Gelpi

Clarence Jones

Charles Junkerman

Nancy Kollmann

Herbert Lindenberger

Scotty McLennan

Eric Morris

David Palumbo-Liu

Linda Paulson

David Riggs

Paul Robinson

Jeremy Sabol

Peter Stansky

Edward Steidle

Peter Vitousek

Caroline Winterer

Marc Bertrand

George Hardin Brown

Bliss Carnochan

Gordon Chang

Michele Elam

Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht

Van A. Harvey

Rush Rehm

ALUMNI GIVING