Entitled Opinions (about Life and Literature)

Professor Andrei Linde, a native of Moscow, is one of the authors of inflationary cosmology and of the theory of the cosmological phase transitions. His current research involves the theory of dark energy, investigation of the global structure and the fate of the universe, and quantum cosmology. He is the author of more than 200 papers on particle physics, phase transitions, and cosmology, as well...

Karen Feldman is a professor in the Department of German Studies at UC-Berkeley. Her areas of specialization include hermeneutics and phenomenology, the Frankfurt School, German Idealism, literary theory and aesthetics. She received her B.A. from the University of Chicago (1989) and her Ph. D. from DePaul University (1998). Her current research concerns aesthetics and historiography from Kant to B...

Dr. Pierson received her Ph. D. in Italian Studies from New York University in 2009. She has been a Post-doctoral Fellow in the Humanities at Stanford University where her teaching responsibilities cover interdisciplinary introductory seminars such as “Humans and Machines” and “Epic Journeys, Modern Quests," and is currently a Lecturer in the Thinking Matters program (formerly IHUM). Previously sh...

Michael Leigh Hoyer received her PhD in Comparative Literature from Stanford University in 2012. She specializes in 19th- and 20th century French literature, the history of the novel, and narrative theory. Her dissertation, "Project Fiction, A User's Manual: Readings in a Subgenre," offers a new historically-informed philosophical aesthetics for analyzing novels that exhibit a projective impulse,...

Marisa Galvez is Associate Professor of French at Stanford University. She specializes in medieval literature and culture, especially the lyric and romance of Continental Europe during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Her scholarship focuses on such topics as crusade, performance, and the European lyric tradition from the Middle Ages to the present day. In addition to completing a book on cru...

Ray Manzarek (born Raymond Daniel Manczarek, Jr.; February 12, 1939– May 20, 2013) was an American musician, singer, producer, film director, and author, best known as a founding member and keyboardist of The Doors from 1965 to 1973. He was a co-founding member of Nite City from 1977 to 1978, and of Manzarek–Krieger from 2001 to his death. For more information, please visit the following links: ht...

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 University. He has been the...

Amir Eshel is Edward Clark Crossett Professor of Humanistic Studies; Professor of German Studies and Comparative Literature; Chair of Graduate Studies, German Studies; and, since 2005 the Director of The Europe Center at Stanford University’s Freeman Sopgli Institute for International Studies. His research focuses on the contemporary novel, twentieth century German culture, German-Jewish history a...

Tamara Kayali completed her PhD at Cambridge University in 2011. Her PhD dissertation focused on issues of control, responsibility and the self in depression and used qualitative interviews with women to explore this topic. She completed a Bachelor's in Biotechnology from the Australian National University before studying Bioethics in her Honours year at the Unit for History and Philosophy of Scie...

Lena Herzog is a visual artist and photographer who develops thoughts and ideas as well as images. In his introduction to the conversation, Entitled Opinions host Robert Harrison suggests that her camera follows Joseph Conrad's aesthetic creed to "render the highest kind of justice to the visible world."   Harrison and Herzog discuss the cultural transition to digital photography and Herzog's penc...

Paul Robinson has been teaching at Stanford since 1967 and is the Richard W. Lyman Professor in the Humanities (Emeritus) in the Department of History. Before coming to Stanford, he studied at Yale and Harvard, where he got his PhD. He 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...

Martin Lewis is a Senior Lecturer in International History in the Department of History at Stanford University. He studied at UC-Santa Cruz and UC-Berkeley, receiving his PhD in Geography in 1987.  His dissertation, and first book, examined the interplay among economic development, environmental degradation, and cultural change in the highlands of northern Luzon in the […]

Chloe Veltman's articles have appeared on both sides of the Atlantic in such publications as The New York Times (Bay Area culture correspondent,) The Los Angeles Times, American Theatre Magazine, BBC Classical Music Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, San Francisco Magazine, The Economist, The Financial Times, The Guardian, Gramophone Magazine, Angeleno Magazine, Dwell Magazine, The Believer and SF...

Ewa Domanska is affiliated with the Anthropology Department, CREEES and Europe Center at Stanford. Her teaching and research interests include comparative theory of the human and social sciences, history and theory of historiography, posthumanities and ecological humanities. She is cooperating with Stanford since 2000.  Domanska holds her permament position at the Department of History, Adam Micki...

Gabriella Safran received her BA with honors in Soviet and East European Studies from Yale University and her PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures from Princeton University in 1998.  Safran has written on Russian, Polish, Yiddish, and French literatures and cultures.  Her most recent book, Wandering Soul:  The Dybbuk's Creator, S. An-sky (Harvard, 2010), is a biography of an early-twentieth-cen...

Andrew Hui received his PhD in comparative literature from Princeton in 2009. Since then, he has been teaching at Stanford’s Introduction to Humanities program. In July he will join the inaugural faculty of the new Yale-NUS College, a joint collaboration between Yale U and National U of Singapore to create a liberal arts college in Asia. He is at work on a book manuscript entitled The Poetics of R...

Sasha was born in western Ukraine when it was a part of the Soviet Union.  In early youth, he recognized the deficiencies of the communist system and found his refuge in the vast corpus of Russian literature.  After a fall-out with the pro-communist administration of his university in Moscow in 1989, he had illegally crossed the Soviet border and moved to Prague. With the support of former Czech d...

Leah DeVun is an Associate Professor of History at Rutgers University, where she teaches women's and gender history. She received her PhD from Columbia University in 2004. Her first book, "Prophecy, Alchemy, and the End of Time: John of Rupescissa in the Late Middle Ages," was published by Columbia University Press in 2009. She has also published several essays in journals and edited collections,...

Tanya Marie Luhrmann is the Watkins University Professor in the Stanford Anthropology Department. She also holds a courtesy appointment in the Stanford Psychology Department.  She received her PhD from Cambridge University in 1986. Her books include "Persuasions of the Witch’s Craft," (Harvard, 1989); "The Good Parsi" (Harvard 1996); "Of Two Minds" (Knopf 2000) and "When God Talks Back" (Knopf 201...

Debra Satz, the Marta Sutton Weeks Professor of Ethics in Society, is the senior associate dean for the humanities and arts. Satz, a philosophy professor, directs the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society. She earned a bachelor’s degree from City College of New York and a doctorate in philosophy from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After teaching at Harvard and Swarthmore College, Satz...