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, from the deep past of earth history to the more recent antiquit...

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 Harvard Senior Fellow for the Hellenic Ce...

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 few champions as articulate and passionate as Entitled Opinions host Robert...

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 modern poetry and philo...

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...

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 University, Louisiana State University, and the University of Uta...

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 includes close readings of the lyrics of so...

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 Re-Enchantment of the World: Secu...

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). Findlen specializes in the rise of modern science, medicine,...

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, Stanford Program in Structured Libe...

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); The World at Play in Boccaccio's Decameron (Princ...

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 built home studios, recorded and produced d...

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 the Year Prize. She has published two non-fiction...

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 the Year Prize.  She has published two non-ficti...

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 Short Stories, The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Short Stories, and A Do...

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 is the author of The Aut...

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 Philoso...

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 de Montréal, Directeur d'étud...

  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 talk show entitled “The Lunch Special,” which can be heard on Mondays from noon to 3 pm.  

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 talk show entitled “The Lunch Special,” which can be heard on Mondays from noon to 3 pm.  

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. He mentored and coached tennis greats such as John McEnroe, Rosc...

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) and drama. He is interested in avant-ga...