STANFORD HUMANITIES CENTER
Letter from the Director
We live in a time of head-spinning complexity for humanists and our institutions. Every day, our interpretive powers confront the tide of efforts to silence analytical voices through distortions of history and culture—by banning books and constricting curricula, but also by cutting budgets for instruction in languages and other kinds of basic knowledge. At the same time, the rise of artificial intelligence demonstrates the urgent need for the skills and perspectives we cultivate, especially judgment. In this moment, the role of our Humanities Center is to demonstrate how advanced research enriches the experience of scholars, educators, students, and the public.
The 2022–23 academic year marked another step in our continuing project of remaking the SHC to meet this future of unprecedented challenges and expanded horizons—intellectual, digital, and international. In January we welcomed a new Associate Director, Helen Malko. An archaeologist with a PhD from Stony Brook University, Helen joined us from the American Center of Research in Jordan, bringing a perspective that strengthens our efforts to internationalize the SHC and reach new audiences.
Two months later, we introduced an entirely new staff role, Digital Manager and Web Editor. The arrival of Rachel Karas, a PhD in English from UC Santa Barbara, in that role coincided with the soft launch of our reimagined digital platform. Now our community may gather not only in person but virtually, and those who lacked access to the ideas produced at the SHC—such as alumni, K–12 educators, or prospective students—are able to participate in the conversation.
Over a year ago, the SHC prompted the creation of a new staff position for a Research Development Specialist, Stanford’s first in the humanities. Madison Priest, a PhD in English from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, started in that role in May 2022. What a difference it makes already to provide support to faculty and graduate students across the humanities in obtaining external funding and, of course, the visibility that comes with it.
Yet another colleague, Svetlana Turetskaya, a scholar of philosophy and a poet, arrived last fall to manage the International Visitors Program and the Hume Honors Program, two programs that connect our work to the world and to the future, respectively.
I’m already looking forward to meeting you here next year for another chapter in the reinvention of our SHC. But please don’t wait for the Annual Report when you can visit us online anytime.
P. Meier Family Professor and Director
Roland Greene
Anthony
Photography by Steve Castillo
Fellows
The Stanford Humanities Center offers residential fellowships to scholars from Stanford and elsewhere at all career stages—from undergraduates to senior faculty— providing time, funding, and a collegial environment in which to pursue their projects, enriched by conversation and critique. Each annual cohort joins our network of Humanities Center alumni, who convene for public events, conferences, celebrations of new books, and other occasions for intellectual renewal.
The Center’s fellowships are made possible by gifts and grants from the following individuals, foundations, and Stanford offices: the Esther Hayfer Bloom Estate; Theodore H. and Frances K. Geballe; Mimi and Peter Haas; Jeff and Sara Small; Marta Sutton Weeks; the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; the Mericos Foundation; the National Endowment for the Humanities; and the Dean of Humanities and Sciences.
“Over the years, I was a fellow at several research institutes, but this has certainly been one of the most enriching and successful academic experiences I had.”
Eduardo Acosta
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of History, Stanford University
A River of Ruined Capitals: History and Environmental Change in Early Modern Bengal
The Mellon Fellowship has provided me the time, tools, and space, both physical and intellectual, to work on my own research and teaching. Over the past year, I started the process of revising my dissertation and writing a book proposal. And the workshops with editors and authors allowed me to write and further refine a draft of that proposal. Overall, being part of the Stanford Humanities Center has been conducive to many fruitful encounters with other scholars.
J. G. Amato
Next Generation Scholar
Department of History, Stanford University
Cosimo’s Church: The Politics of Religious Reform in SixteenthCentury Florence
Because of the constraints of finishing my dissertation and securing a position, I was not as free to mingle as I was during my SHC Dissertation Prize Fellowship. Nevertheless, the research talks were as stimulating as ever, and I still regard the free time and casual conversations that develop in interstitial moments of the fellowship year to be the most fruitful and wonderful parts of serving as a fellow. I have accepted a position in the public policy nonprofit space.
Ashley Attwood
SHC Dissertation Prize Fellow
Department of Philosophy, Stanford University
Aristotle and His Predecessors on the Soul: The Argument of De Anima 1
Because of this fellowship, I was finally able to focus all my attention on completing my degree and applying for jobs, and I have accepted a tenure-track position at the University of Arkansas. The Stanford Humanities Center far exceeded my expectations, because on top of these professional achievements, I also developed meaningful relationships and had a number of enriching interactions that I likely wouldn’t have otherwise had.
Orit Bashkin
Marta Sutton Weeks
External Fellow
Department of History, University of Chicago
The Ottoman Purims: Political Sovereignty, Imperial Ideology, and Arab-Jewish Coexistence
My project explores how religious minorities make political and military victories of their empires and states their own. I spent this year in a stimulating, challenging, and supportive academic environment, which fostered the process of my manuscript writing and sharpened its arguments and questions. Over the years, I was a fellow at several research institutes, but this has certainly been one of the most enriching and successful academic experiences I had.
Orit Bashkin
Marta Sutton Weeks External Fellow University of Chicago
SHC Dissertation Prize Fellow
Philosophy of Education, Stanford University
Resisting Epistemic Injustice in U.S. Higher Education: A Feminist Reconceptualization of Liberal Education
This academic year, I set out to complete my PhD and secure an academic position to begin after graduation. I am very happy to report that I will be a postdoctoral teaching fellow for Stanford’s Civic, Liberal, and Global Education requirement program. It is my dream job for the next chapter of my career, as it will center undergraduate teaching and enable me to continue my research on epistemic injustice in U.S. higher education, particularly in liberal educational settings.
Je ery
Chun-Jung Chen
Department of History, Stanford University
The First Pacific War: How Britain’s Invasion of China Changed the World
At the beginning of my fellowship year, I had three chapters written, a mass of unprocessed materials, and emerging thoughts on my organizing methodology. Thanks to my time at the SHC, I was able to write three additional chapters, marshal my notes into a clearer narrative, and, courtesy of the interdisciplinary environment at the Center, develop the methodological tools necessary to prosecute my line of thinking. The fellowship community was indispensable to the elaboration of my project.
Álvaro Contreras
Scholar Affiliate
Institute for International Education/Scholar Rescue Fund and the Department of Iberian and Latin American Cultures, Stanford University
Genealogías del relato policial latinoamericano (1870–1910)
I want to express my deepest gratitude to the SHC. Considering the precarious economic and social situation in Venezuela, without this support I would never have reached my academic goals at Stanford. This institution has facilitated dialogue with colleagues and has allowed me to access vital resources related to my studies. These have been crucial for the publications of my academic articles, and for the development of my project on genealogies of the Latin American detective narrative in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow
Program in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Stanford University
The Lure of Origins: Sexology and the Trans Autobiographical Mandate
This year, I composed and presented new writing entitled “Palimpsest,” which emerged as the continuation and elaboration of my dissertation and postdissertation work. The Mellon Fellowship has been a tremendous opportunity, providing me with the time and space to develop my writing and be in conversation with brilliant scholars and thinkers. I also began two reading groups—the Freud Reading Group and the Sex and Psychoanalysis Reading Group, both of which have been absolutely transformative.
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of History, Stanford University
The Saharan Passage: Sugar, Slavery, and Empire in the African Atlantic
I’ve appreciated the opportunity to engage with other scholars in the humanities and receive important feedback on my project, which has helped me think in more critical ways. The experience deepened and expanded my work’s scope to incorporate more Atlantic historiography. I’ve also appreciated the various workshops. Although I was initially intimidated, considering how brilliant everyone is, I was quickly warmly welcomed and integrated into a great community.
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of Iberian and Latin American Cultures, Stanford University
Subjected to Feeling: Slavery and Personhood in NineteenthCentury Brazil and Cuba
The community of scholars at the Stanford Humanities Center and the conversations, advice, and learning that happens in it were definitely the highlight of the fellowship for me. I have learned things that I would never have if it wasn’t for this fellowship, made good friends with other fellows, and got important career advice from senior scholars at the Center. In the fall, I will be starting as an assistant professor of Spanish at Tufts University.
Adom Getachew
Distinguished Junior External Fellow
Department of Political Science, University of Chicago
The Universal Race: Garveyism and the Practices of PanAfricanism
The SHC was such a perfect place. In addition to learning from the work of other fellows, I took away so much from workshops and lectures. For instance, David Sterling Brown’s talk got me on a tangent about Black Shakespearean actors, through which I found out more information about a key figure in the Garveyite movement. And Mary Beard’s lecture on restitution will be incredibly helpful as I return to the classroom and resume teaching a class that engages questions of restitution.
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of Music, Stanford University
Visions of the Pianistic Self: Don Shirley, Rachmaninoff, and Music Performance Studies
The past year has been a whirlwind of growth. I have delved deep into personal questions about my identity as a scholar, concert pianist, and member of the world community, renewing my commitment to social advancement/justice matters. I presented new research on the pianist Donald Shirley at the American Musicological Society Annual Meeting in Denver and am making headway with my book project on his artistry and musical approaches. Already, I have three university press editors seriously interested in my work.
Julien Fischer
Caitlin Murphy Brust
Pheaross Graham Samia Errazzouki
SHC Dissertation Prize Fellow
Isabela Fraga
Claire Grossman
Next Generation Scholar
Department of English, Stanford University
Uncertain Work: Wagelessness and Post-1965 Multiethnic Literary Form
The SHC research talks really inspired me to be more patient with my objects of study. The format encourages curiosity, open-ended questions, and a kind of looseness that is difficult to achieve when I’m sequestered in my own writing process. This was crucial during the (notoriously lonely) final stages of the dissertation-writing process, not to mention the job search. After leaving Stanford, I will be an assistant professor of English at Occidental College.
Hear more about her fellowship experience.
Kantor
Internal Faculty Fellow
Department of English, Stanford University
Figures of Suspicion: Literature, Anthropology, and Regional Voice
The support and community have been instrumental to the success of my research sabbatical. Most significant, I was able to complete a full draft of my book project and submit it for review to the University of Chicago Press. The casual conversations, as much as the official presentation spaces, have offered so many opportunities. Nothing really compares to the sparkle in your interlocutor’s eye when you’ve hit on a successful explanation for your work and why it matters.
Independent Scholar Activist For Reconstruction
I had planned to have the script finished for my second graphic narrative following Wake , but instead I worked with my Hollywood agent on creating Wake the TV show, and it was amazing. The project has evolved and I am now calling the new book For Reconstruction . In addition to highlighting the bottom-up history of women taking freedom, it will engage with the scholarship on “what is to be done” and my personal experience of coming to terms with the fact that, although I am not Indigenous to this place, I am a colonized subject in my own country.
SHC Dissertation Prize Fellow
Department of German Studies, Stanford University
Credible Witness: Seeking Authenticity in Narrative Representations of Flight
My project has changed over the past year as I have been challenged to be more precise about my use of the term “authenticity,” while also being careful not to overlook the potential relevance my topic might have to other literary genres, traditions, and cultural frameworks. I also found communication among the fellows incredibly helpful while navigating job market uncertainty. I will be teaching at Wake Forest University as a visiting assistant professor in the German and Russian Department.
External Faculty Fellow
Department of Global Studies, UC Santa Barbara
Global Hijra: Muslim Refugee Migration Since 1850
Jeff and Sara Small Next Generation Scholar
Department of English, Stanford University
Anxieties of Abundance: Book and Body in America’s Gilded Age
My goal was to advance my work on a second book, and I have accomplished it. Additionally, my first book came out while I was in residence at the SHC, and I was able to record multiple podcast episodes, do book talks, and give interviews about the book. Reflecting on my earlier book while writing a new one has been very useful and put many goals, themes, and ways of storytelling in perspective for me. The fellowship at the Stanford Humanities Center has been transformative—for my research, my writing, and even my relationship with my topic.
In the process of finishing my dissertation, I have gained a lot of clarity about what my project requires to become a book. Hearing from faculty members about their experiences in writing their first books has been very helpful. The support from the SHC at this moment in my career has been crucial, and I will be in a much better position for the academic job market and other career opportunities.
Hear more about her fellowship experience.
SHC Dissertation Prize Fellow
Department of Anthropology, Stanford University
The Anti-Blasphemy Movement: Dignity, Sovereignty, and Islam in Pakistan
My year at the SHC has been incredibly productive. During this time, I completed two substantial, foundational chapters of my dissertation and made significant progress on four additional chapters, which are nearly complete. These accomplishments would have been unattainable without the time and resources provided by this outstanding fellowship. Furthermore, I plan to submit one of the chapters for publication. The invaluable input from and discussions with my exceptional fellows have been crucial in shaping the arguments and content of my dissertation.
External Faculty Fellow
Department of Modern Languages, Western Oregon University
Translation and Doctrine: Natural Science and the Indies of the West
During my intense and rewarding fellowship, I have come close to finishing my manuscript where I argue that modern naturalism is best understood as processes of epistemic translation in a newly transoceanic world. High-quality time and space are the most prized gifts one gets at the SHC. The vast library resources are just a couple of clicks, or a few steps, away. Answers to questions that usually take days, or even weeks, to get, here often take just a couple of pleasant minutes shared with a member of a richly diverse intellectual community.
Roanne
Saad Lakhani
Vladimir HamedTroyansky
Jaime Marroquín
Jessica Jordan
Marta Sutton Weeks External Fellow
Irene Kuo
Rebecca Hall
SHC Dissertation Prize Fellow
Department of English, Stanford University
Elizabethan Entertainment Policy: The Regulation of Shakespearean Theater
In terms of output, this was a productive year for me: I placed two articles, wrote a short collaborative essay, wrapped up my dissertation, and also managed to do important legal advocacy for the Internet Archive. The SHC was an essential resource for all these accomplishments. It provided a space wherein I could more easily imagine writing more public-facing work, and most important of all, it offered a world-class control group to test some of the knottier aspects of my first book project.
Ellen Andrews Wright Internal Fellow
Department of Art and Art History, Stanford University
AudioVision in the Middle Ages: Music, Poetry, and Image
My goal was to complete a book manuscript on the art and music of Conques. Sparked by conversations with other fellows, my thinking on the topic was reshaped, drawing on performance studies and more specifically Diana Taylor on the role of the repertoire versus the textual archive. I enjoyed all the communal intellectual and social interactions, especially the research talks and stimulating conversations at lunch. It was the best intellectual and social environment I could ever have hoped for.
Fellow
Department of Theater and Performance Studies, Stanford University
Confessional Performance: The Legal and Cultural Arts of Personhood
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of German Studies, Stanford University
Fragments of the Concrete: Ecology and Technical Media in German Romanticism
I am grateful for the Violet Andrews Whittier Fellowship, which provided the gifts of time, space, and community for me to focus on my research for my next book project. During my fellowship, I developed a framework for my new project, tentatively titled Confessional Performance: The Legal and Cultural Arts of Personhood The companionship, the camaraderie, and the formal and informal opportunities for conversation made this past year the most special of my entire fifteen years at Stanford.
This year I published peer-reviewed articles in SubStance , Cultural Politics , and the Journal of Visual Culture . I gave talks at the National Autonomous University of Mexico; the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts; Stanford’s Digital Aesthetics workshop; and the German Studies Association. Two current book projects titled Planetary Idealism: The Technics of Nature in German Romanticism and Salt were submitted for review with Stanford University Press and Bloomsbury’s Object Lessons series, respectively.
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of Linguistics, Stanford University
At the Intersection of Temporal and Modal Interpretation (Essays on Irreality)
At the start of the fellowship, I presented a couple of papers at a conference in New York in October; was published in a conference proceeding (another article is in press); co-organized the Construction of Meaning seminar series—Stanford’s Semantics and Pragmatics workshop; and taught a course called Advanced Semantics. I have been advising on a qualifying paper and have been invited to be the keynote speaker at the Australian Languages Workshop in Fontainebleau, France, in September.
Internal Faculty Fellow
Department of Art and Art History, Stanford University
The Surface of Things: Cinema and the Devices of Interiority
Since my project is a speculative one, my fellowship year entailed more than a straightforward writing up of facts gleaned from discrete research. The SHC gave me the space, time, and companionship I needed to write in a way that was intensely focused, but also felt playful and creative. Engaging in casual conversation, attending formal talks, and exchanging work with others have all, in many and various ways, enriched my thinking and writing over the course of the year.
Internal Faculty Fellow
Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Stanford University
How to Know Everything: Encyclopedic Works, Technical Knowledge, and Cultural Warfare in Early Medieval Japan
My project went from an imperfectly conceived set of insights about disparate primary sources to a twenty-three-thousand-word English article and a five-thousand-character Japanese article, both ready for submission to peer-reviewed academic journals. This would not have been possible without the input, encouragement, and criticism of fellows and visitors. I think that the role of the SHC as a venue for interdisciplinary dialogue is what helped me most.
SHC Dissertation Prize Fellow
Program in Modern Thought and Literature, Stanford University
Damaged Form: Literature After Material Culture
This year, I completed and successfully defended my dissertation. More granularly, this involved completing revisions on my third chapter; researching, writing, and revising my fourth chapter; writing an introduction; and preparing and filing the manuscript. An article based on my third chapter, “The Ambient Mode,” won the inaugural Post45 Mary Esteve Emerging Scholar Prize. In addition to this work, I published several essays and reviews in Bookforum, Pitchfork, and TANK . I also have an essay forthcoming in The New Yorker.
Bissera Pentcheva
Michael Menna
Ariel Stilerman
Bryan Norton
Mitch Therieau
Karla Oeler
Violet Andrews Whittier Internal
Joshua Phillips
Jisha Menon
Joseph
Wager
SHC Dissertation Prize
Fellow
Department of Iberian and Latin American Cultures, Stanford University
Between the Informe and the Inconforme: Disappearance, Gender, and Law in Contemporary Latin American Cultural Production
Chun-Yu (Jo Ann) Wang
The fellowship enabled me to strengthen ties with activist networks, mentor a diverse group of students, and prepare robustly for the academic job market, where I’ve made significant strides. Looking ahead, the fellowship provided me the essential tools to enter the academic job market in a strong position next year. It also gave me the intellectual space and that immensely precious resource of time to continue refining my research.
Department of Anthropology, Stanford University
Refining Politics: Oil Development, Environmental Activism, and Political Improvisation in Rural Malaysia
Hershini
I hoped to complete my PhD dissertation and get a tenure-track job—I achieved both and will be joining Pitzer College as a tenure-track assistant professor in the Environmental Analysis field group. The SHC supported me by granting me total freedom and trust to do what I needed and wanted to do in ways that worked for me. I love how the Center connects all its present and past fellows and commits to nurturing long-lasting relationships.
Marta Sutton Weeks
External Fellow
Department of African and African Diaspora Studies, University of Texas at Austin
Breaking the Surface: Performances of Salvage in the Black Migratory World
Young Ya Zuo
External Faculty Fellow
Department of History, UC Santa Barbara
A Thousand Streaks of Tears: Emotion, Identity, and Society in Medieval China (600−1400)
My project has been substantively revised due to the help of the Humanities Center. I came here with a very narrow range of source material. I learned that while various genocides have vastly different contexts, the ways in which we have conceptualized and dealt with the aftermath of the massacre in Srebrenica, for example, shape how racialized bodies are being treated around the Mediterranean and various other parts of Africa. Also, watching some of the most eloquent academics talk about their work taught me invaluable lessons.
I am delighted to report that I have not only met but surpassed my writing goals. I have also resolved a thorny issue that has concerned me from the inception of the project: Can historians write a history of emotions without relying on a subject-object binary? It is now a common argument in literary theories that emotion is not merely a phenomenon enclosed in one’s subjectivity, a point well resonated in the historical understandings of emotions in premodern China.
Next Generation Scholar
Hume Honors Fellows
What began as a three-year pilot program more than ten years ago has become part of the fabric of the Humanities Center. Since 2013, the Center has been awarding fellowships to outstanding seniors writing an honors thesis in one of Stanford’s humanities departments. Hume Honors Fellows are chosen from candidates nominated by faculty each fall. They receive a stipend for research, space in a dedicated undergraduate office at the Center, and opportunities for group activities throughout the year, such as the annual Hume Symposium, where they preview their work for peers, advisors, and the program benefactors.
The Hume Honors Fellowships are made possible by a gift to endowment by Mr. George and Dr. Leslie P. Hume.
Nitara Connally
Comparative Literature
Advisors: David Palumbo-Liu and Aileen Robinson
Poetics of Annihilation: On Black Messianic Nihilism and the Ruse of Teleology
After serving as a summer residential advisor at Stanford, while preparing the first chapter of her thesis for publication, Connally will be applying to PhD programs. By gaining admission to graduate school, she hopes to continue her work in critical Black theory and political theology.
French; Minor in History
Advisors: Fatoumata Seck and Richard Roberts
“Poor Souls” and “Dangerous Vagabonds”: The Enslaved Pursuit of Liberation in PostAbolition Senegal, 1848–1865
De Los Santos’s postgraduation plans include moving to Atlanta, Georgia, attending the Olympics in France, and turning her thesis into an article. In the fall, she starts a doctoral program in history at Emory University. She will also continue her work on the Senegal Liberations Project and start researching post-abolition labor in the French empire.
“I loved my cohort and they provided a wonderful humanities-minded community that I had not been able to find prior to joining the Humanities Center.”
Hear about her path to the humanities.
Julia Karig Feinberg
English; Minor in Mathematics
Advisor: Blair Hoxby
Dryden’s Civic Muse and Poetic Constitution: A Treatise on the Political Poetics of the Reigning Public Poet
Feinberg is dedicating the next six months to honing her dramatic writing skills. Her goal is to break into television writing and eventually become a showrunner. Additionally, she is considering undertaking some academic writing on the side, researching questions about Edmund Spenser, Alexander Pope, Henry James, and Emily Dickinson.
Briana Garcia
English
Advisor: Paula Moya
Rhetorics of Hair and Skin
Tone: Racialization and Identity Formation in Mexican American and Dominican Diasporic Literature
After moving back home to Los Angeles, Garcia will be starting a PhD program in English literature at the University of Southern California in the fall. There, she hopes to continue the research she began in her honors thesis, now with a primary emphasis on texts based in Los Angeles.
Becca De Los Santos
Serena Zhou Hume Honors Fellow
Baird Johnson
History
Advisors: Jonathan Gienapp and Josiah Ober
Perpetuating the Union: The Struggle for American Federalism
Johnson spent most of his time on the Farm immersed in the 1780s, poring over the arguments that led to the Constitutional Convention and the subsequent ratification debates. Not quite ready to leave his relationship with the founders and their ideals, he has chosen to pursue a career in constitutional law and is a member of the Stanford Law School class of 2027.
Hear about his path to the humanities.
Nicholas Rosenbaum
Comparative Literature and German Studies; Minors in History and Political Science
Advisors: Russell Berman and Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht
“At Moments, the Gods Were There”: A Lineage of German Thinkers on the Denial of the Human (as δεινός) Since the Pre-Socratics
Ethan Strombeck
History; Minor in Computer Science
Advisor: Mikael Wolfe
Fever Dreams: Chilean Migration and the Making of Gold Rush California
After graduation, Rosenbaum will be moving to Germany to begin his studies in Berlin on the German Academic Exchange Graduate Study Scholarship.
In the fall, Strombeck will be moving to Washington, DC, to pursue work. He will also spend the coming months preparing applications for a history PhD program either for Latin America or transnational/global history. Prior to that, he plans to apply for a Fulbright Grant to conduct a research project in Chile.
Noah Sveiven
History
Advisors: Caroline Winterer and Jessica Riskin
Model Humans: Interpreting Apes, Creating Data, 1960–1979
After leaving Stanford, Sveiven is planning to pursue a master of divinity degree at the University of Chicago Divinity School. Eventually, he hopes to complete a PhD in history.
Cindy Xin
Philosophy and Symbolic Systems
Advisors: Antonia Peacocke and David Hills
Boredom as a Fitting Response
Xin plans on writing short stories and reading philosophy papers in preparation for graduate school. She will be starting a PhD program at UC Berkeley and hopes to concentrate on philosophy of mind and epistemology.
Serena Zhou
Philosophy; Minor in Math and Honors in Ethics in Society
Advisor: Michael E. Bratman
From Retribution to Forgiveness: Justifying Punishment Through Relational Egalitarianism
Zhou spent the summer working as an advocacy intern for the Orange County Jails Team of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. Starting in the fall, she will be attending Harvard Law School to pursue a career in public defense and legal academia.
International Visitors Program
This year’s International Visitors Program hosted scholars from Austria, France, Germany, Greece, India, and the United Arab Emirates. The Center also welcomed a previous International Visitor from Brazil for a longer-term Scholar Affiliate visitorship. During their stay, the visitors were able to connect with faculty, students, and other fellows through lectures, presentations, workshops, and other, sometimes unexpected, ways.
Since 2009, more than sixty visitors—from more than thirty countries, representing over sixty institutions— have come to Stanford for monthlong residencies at the Humanities Center.
“This was my first time in the United States, and the SHC visitorship helped me establish connections and expand my networks in American academia.”
Karthick
Ram Manoharan
Bliss Carnochan International Visitor
Arab Emirates University University of Patras, Greece University of Tours, France
Sahera Bleibleh is an associate professor at the United Arab Emirates University specializing in architecture, urban design, and planning. Currently at work on a book manuscript, Bleibleh is the author of numerous academic articles, most recently “The Everyday Art of Resistance: Interpreting ‘Resistancescapes’ Against Urban Violence in Palestine.”
Driven by her interests in informalities, social justice, and urbanism, Bleibleh’s research explores critical areas within colonial settings, such as the production of power and space; social equity; community resistance and resilience; and the impacts of war, urbicide, and urban violence on civilian spaces. Her work explores the intricate dynamics of everyday spaces, examining how they are assembled, reproduced, contested, and transformed.
Bleibleh was nominated by the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, which sponsored her talk “Heritage Destruction in Gaza.”
Philippe Canguilhem is a professor of musicology at the University of Tours, France, as well as a researcher at the Centre d’études supérieures de la Renaissance. His research focuses on Italian music in the sixteenth century, with an emphasis on Florentine musical life. He has published two books on this topic. His most recent book on music in Florence at the time of Cosimo came out in 2023 from Brepols. Canguilhem is also interested in improvised counterpoint in the Renaissance, and he has published an edition and translation of Vicente Lusitano’s counterpoint treatises and a book on polyphonic improvisation in the Renaissance.
Canguilhem has been a senior member of the Institut Universitaire de France, a fellow and visiting professor at Villa I Tatti–the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, and a fellow at the Italian Academy of Columbia University.
Last year, he was an honorary fellow at the Historisches Kolleg in Munich.
Canguilhem was nominated by the Department of Music, which sponsored his workshop
“Singing Upon the Book from the Sources: A Practical Introduction” as part of the Bay Area Early Music Consortium as well as his talk “Cosimo I de Medici and the Creation of a Ducal Music in 16th-Century Florence,” part of a workshop for the Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies.
Pavlos Kontos is a professor of philosophy at the University of Patras. His research focuses on Aristotle’s practical philosophy and phenomenology. While at the SHC, Kontos worked on an edition he is co-editing with C. D. C. Reeve titled Aristotle: The Complete Works, which is set to be published by Hackett. Kontos, an expert on Aristotle, has published many books, including Aristotle on the Scope of Practical Reason , Evil in Aristotle , and Aristotle’s Moral Realism Reconsidered , among others.
Nominated by the Department of Philosophy, Kontos gave a talk titled “Aristotle on the Unity of Virtue.” He also contributed to the SHC’s digital salon Arcade with an essay titled “The Humanities as a Hope Educator.”
International Visitor
International Visitor International Visitor
Sahera Bleibleh Pavlos Kontos Philippe Canguilhem
United
National Law School of India University
Karthick Ram Manoharan is an assistant professor of political science at the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru. He was previously the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions Individual Fellow at the University of Wolverhampton. While at the SHC, Manoharan worked on a new research project, an essay titled “The Indian Emergency and Its Challenge to Schmittian Theory.” Manoharan is the author of Periyar: A Study in Political Atheism and Frantz Fanon: Identity and Resistance , and the co-editor of Rethinking Social Justice
Manoharan was nominated by the Center for South Asia, which sponsored his talk “An Account of Periyar’s Anti-Aryanism.”
Central European University, Vienna University of Brasília American Studies at Leibniz University Hannover
Ruth Mayer holds the chair of American Studies at Leibniz University in Hannover, Germany. Her research focuses on transnationalism, seriality, the formation of modernities, and mass culture. During her residency at the SHC, she worked on a project called “Multiplication: Modernity, Mass Culture, Gender, 1910–1930,” as well as “Backwardness: Rethinking Modernity, Conceptualizing Change,” which she shared in a presentation to SHC Fellows. Mayer’s most recent book is Serial Fu Manchu: The Chinese Super-Villain and the Spread of Yellow Peril Ideology. She also recently co-edited Modernity and the Periodical Press: Trans-Atlantic Mass Culture and the Avant-Gardes, 1880–1920
Mayer was nominated by the Program in Modern Thought and Literature, which sponsored her talk “The ‘Girl’ in Weimar Germany.”
Yektan Türkyilmaz is a visiting professor and research fellow at the Central European University in Vienna. Türkyilmaz is a cultural anthropologist researching the notions of collective violence, memory making and reconciliation, and the politics of music. While in residency at the SHC, he worked on a project addressing the emergence of the sound-recording industry and its implications on the remaking of public space in the broader Ottoman and post-Ottoman world. Türkyilmaz is currently finishing the book Rethinking the Armenian Genocide Beyond Inevitability: Ideologies, Collective Actors, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians.
Türkyilmaz was nominated by the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, which co-sponsored his talk “Reassessing the Route to the Armenian Genocide (1913–15).”
Nitza Tenenblat is an artist and currently teaches at the Theatre Arts Undergraduate and Graduate Programs of the University of Brasília, Brazil, where she leads the Criação em Coletivo para a Cena Research Group. Tenenblat is a also founding member of Coletiva Teatro, a group theater in residence at the university. Her directing credits of devised pieces with Coletiva Teatro include O Amor Que Habito and Uma Sonata Familiar (co-directed with Stanford Professor Michael Rau and Luar de Contos). Her work has been successfully presented at local, national, and international conferences and venues.
Tenenblat was an International Visitor at the SHC in 2021, nominated by the Department of Theater and Performance Studies. She returned to Stanford to collaborate on a new project, Biofeedback in Performance, with Professor Michael Rau, Department of Theater and Performance Studies. This project’s goal is to create a telematic biofeedback device that can be used in theatrical performances with a view to furthering research on the human body as it performs in a play.
Hear more about Tenenblat’s visitorships.
Bliss Carnochan International Visitor
Aron Rodrigue International Visitor
Scholar Affiliate International Visitor
Karthick Ram Manoharan
Yektan Türkyilmaz
Nitza Tenenblat
Ruth Mayer
Research Workshops
Bay Area Latinx Art and Activism
The legacy of Latinx art isn’t centered at mainstream museums or galleries. Instead, it lies at community centers, libraries, artist cooperatives, and other grassroots spaces. This workshop highlights the important work of artists and provides audiences with a deeper understanding of the people and programs that have been longtime supporters of the community.
Faculty Co-Chair: Rose Salseda (Art and Art History)
Graduate Student Co-Chair: Javier Arellano Vences (Art and Art History)
Critical Carceral Studies Collective
In this workshop, graduate students and faculty share research with each other, read new and foundational texts in the field together, and host carceral studies scholars and abolitionist organizers at Stanford while supporting communities of currently and formerly incarcerated people.
Faculty Co-Chairs: Matthew Clair (Sociology) and Destin Jenkins (History)
Graduate Student Co-Chairs: Nicole Carroll (Religious Studies) and Natasha Patel (Political Science)
The Research Workshop Program, now in its thirtieth year, brings together faculty, students, and scholars from Stanford and beyond to discuss current research and explore topics of common intellectual concern. The 2023–24 program hosted over 134 events with more than 2,600 in-person and online attendees. Our interdisciplinary workshops broke new ground in experiential learning by highlighting creative and intellectual practices in fields such as materials crafting, data analytics, and artistic performance and production.
Colonialism, Post, and Anti, in the Digital Age
This workshop brings together scholars who use computational methodologies, challenge the replication of inequalities in the digital space, observe human-AI relations, and question the digital infrastructures of scholarship. It aims to unite the tools and knowledges of multiple disciplines to train the eye on colonialism even as it dissipates into the cloud.
Faculty Co-Chair: Usha Iyer (Art and Art History)
Graduate Student Co-Chair: Carmen Thong (English)
Digital Aesthetics
From IBM punch cards to digital census forms, from ASCII art to Oculus Rift, how do we think and feel on screens and online, on disk or in the cloud, at the keyboard or off the grid?
Faculty Co-Chair: Shane Denson (Film and Media Studies)
Graduate Student Co-Chairs: Grace Han and Hank Gerba (Art and Art History)
Education and the Humanities
Claire and John Radway Research Workshop
Education is one of the most contested spaces in American society today. Drawing on an interdisciplinary community, we strive to uncover the roots of current debates about educational institutions and ideas, promote pathbreaking scholarship, and create opportunities for collaboration.
Faculty Co-Chairs: Michael Hines and Emily Levine (Education)
Graduate Student Co-Chair: Caitlin Murphy Brust (Education)
Ethics and Politics, Ancient and Modern
Marta Sutton Weeks Research Workshop
The workshop provides a focus for Stanford faculty and students to better understand classical texts and to explore the enduring relevance of classical ethical and political thought in the modern world today.
Faculty Co-Chairs: Chris Bobonich (Philosophy) and Josiah Ober (Political Science)
Graduate Student Co-Chairs: Malloy Thomas Owen (Political Science), Rupert Sparling (Philosophy), and Aaron Spikol (Political Science)
Eurasian Empires
Eurasian Empires explores the history of empires from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, combining histories of global and regional imperial formations including the Russian, Ottoman, Safavid/Qajar, Uzbek, Mughal, Chinese, Dutch, Portuguese, British, French, and Spanish empires.
Faculty Co-Chairs: Nora Barakat and Partha Shil (History)
Graduate Student Co-Chair: Julia Fine (History)
Fiber Optics: Plant Fiber Materials and Visuality
Research Workshop in Honor of John Bender
Despite their ubiquity, fibers are often overlooked as serious objects of study. This workshop unites scientists, humanists, and practitioners to participate in hands-on research activities highlighting the materiality and social importance of fibers in everyday life.
Faculty Co-Chairs: Liisa Malkki (Anthropology) and Thomas Mullaney (History)
Graduate Student Co-Chair: Michelle Ha (Modern Thought and Literature)
The Medical Humanities
The intersections between medicine and the arts/humanities/social sciences matter because they show that the object of medicine is cultured, gendered, and historically specific.
Faculty Co-Chairs: Tanya Luhrmann (Anthropology), Daniel Mason (Psychiatry), Laura Wittman (French and Italian), and Audrey Shafer (Medicine)
Graduate Student Co-Chair: Bilal Nadeem (Anthropology)
Facing the Anthropocene: Interdisciplinary Approaches
Humanities Center Fellows Research Workshop
The sustainability crisis is one of the most significant existential threats ever to face humanity. Addressing this crisis requires examining many aspects of nature and society, from agriculture to politics to ecosystem management to energy grid construction to immigration policy to psychology.
Postdoctoral Co-Chairs: Shannon Sylvie Abelson (Philosophy) and Ann C. Thresher (Sustainability)
Administrator: Anne Newman (Ethics in Society)
Faculty Co-Chairs: Nicole Ardoin (Philosophy), Rob Jackson (Earth Science), and Leif Wenar (Philosophy)
Graduate Student Co-Chair: César Valenzuela (Philosophy)
Matters of Voice
The Matters of Voice workshop aims to support research agendas that engage with both the embodied nature of voice (music, film, sound studies, performance studies, and gender and sexuality) and its relational nature (literature, linguistics, anthropology, and philosophy).
Faculty Co-Chair: Alexander Key (Comparative Literature)
Graduate Student Co-Chair: María Gloria Robalino (Comparative Literature)
Postcolonial Spatialities: Spatial Concepts
Colonialism is conventionally defined as the control of external territories by European nations. The objective of this workshop is to focus on the spatial concepts that might be rigorously applied to studies of colonial and postcolonial societies.
Faculty Co-Chair: Ato Quayson (African and African American Studies)
Graduate Student Co-Chair: Christine Xiong (English)
Producing Knowledge In and Of Africa
Knowledge production in Africa is a contested topic. Recent calls have been made—both within the academy and without—to “decolonize” the production and circulation of knowledge about Africa, and to think about the artistic and cultural aspects of this “production.”
Faculty Co-Chairs: Joel Cabrita (History) and Vaughn Rasberry (African and African American Studies)
Graduate Student Co-Chair: Karishma Bhagani (Theater and Performance Studies)
Religion, Politics, and Culture
Blokker Research Workshop
What role does religion play in human societies? Is religion merely a vehicle to pursue political and economic agendas? Or are politics and the pursuit of power merely a means to serve religious ends?
Faculty Co-Chairs: Jennifer Burns (History) and Lerone Martin (Religious Studies)
Graduate Student Co-Chairs: Austin Clements (History) and Johanna Ines Mueller (Religious Studies)
Slavery and Freedom
The Slavery and Freedom research workshop offers a vital, interdisciplinary space for Stanford scholars to discuss the leading methodologies, approaches, debates, and innovations for the academic study of slavery and freedom in and beyond the Atlantic world.
Faculty Co-Chairs: Zephyr Frank and Kathryn Meyer Olivarius (History)
Graduate Student Co-Chairs: Nina Maria de Meira Borba, Matt Randolph, and Serena Shah (History)
Marta Sutton Weeks Research Workshop
Linda Randall Meier Research Workshop
Digital Humanities
The Stanford Humanities Center embraces emerging digital methods to complement traditional kinds of analysis and interpretation through its ongoing partnership with the Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA). Together we serve as the hub of an international network of fellows, visiting scholars, students, and alumni.
The faculty (Mark Algee-Hewitt, Giovanna Ceserani, Grant Parker, Laura Stokes), postdoctoral scholar (Nichole Nomura), and doctoral fellows (Chloe Brault, Matt Warner) involved in the Mellon-Sawyer Seminar Series, “The Data That Divides Us.”
The Year in Review
New Faces at CESTA
In January 2024, CESTA was pleased to welcome Eyüp Eren Yürek as research and programs coordinator and Chloe Edmondson (acting assistant professor of French and Italian) as undergraduate research program director. Both are former CESTA interns, and Chloe is also a previous CESTA graduate fellow and research associate.
Global Horizons of the Digital and Public Humanities
Undergraduate Research Internship Program
CESTA continued its Undergraduate Research program, through which the Center awarded research opportunities to more than sixty students. Part-time during the academic year and full-time during the summer, our undergraduate researchers advanced digital humanities scholarship and co-created a rich research community in the CESTA space, including spearheading collaborative events with Stanford data science researchers. The program was supported by Chloe Edmondson, Undergraduate Research Program director and acting assistant professor of French and Italian, along with two Stanford graduate student mentors: J. J. Lugardo (PhD student in the Classics Department) and Nicholas Scott-Hearn (PhD student in the Economics Department).
CESTA launched a new international research institute developed in collaboration with the Venice Centre for Digital and Public Humanities, with the support of the Stanford Humanities Center. The institute convened a cohort of graduate students and faculty from Stanford in Venice, Italy, in October 2023. In April 2024, collaborators from the University of Venice visited Stanford for a weeklong series of seminars, roundtables, workshops, and on-campus trips. CESTA is developing plans to reconvene under the theme of sustainability of archives.
Visiting Scholars
Digital Humanities Fellows Program
CESTA welcomed a new cohort of Digital Humanities Fellows, under the leadership of Nicole Coleman (digital research architect for the Stanford University Libraries), with support from Senior Digital Humanities Research Fellow Merve Tekgürler (PhD student in History and MS student in Symbolic Systems). This year’s cohort of six fellows included graduate students from the departments of History, Iberian and Latin American Cultures, Symbolic Systems, and Religious Studies and from the Graduate School of Education. Their research was showcased in an end-of-year symposium. They also co-worked on the project “A Decade of CESTA Data” to visualize and analyze data scraped from CESTA’s websites and newsletters of the last twelve years.
CESTA’s research ecosystem was enhanced by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow, Ilaria Sicari (Department of Linguistics and Comparative Cultural Studies, Ca’ Foscari, Italy), who focuses on social network analysis to study the production and circulation of clandestine Soviet and Eastern European literature in the context of the cultural Cold War. CESTA was also joined by Haifeng Hui (professor of English at the School of Foreign Languages, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China), who works on eighteenth-century British literature and computational stylistics. Hui made various connections at Stanford and will be establishing a digital humanities lab when he returns to his home institution. CESTA was also visited by Jasmine Benhaida (PhD candidate in Near and Middle Eastern studies, University of Basel, Switzerland). She works on the history of the Ottoman legal legacy in Jordan between 1919 and 1929. She collaborated with the Arabic Script OCR/HTR project, led by Assistant Professor of History Nora Barakat, dedicated to making handwritten legal documents of the city of Al-Salt machine-readable.
The Year in CESTA Research
The past year was a productive one for CESTA scholars, with numerous publications and distinctions awarded to affiliate researchers. Read about the highlights.
Mellon-Sawyer Seminar Series: Data That Divides Us
With the support of a Mellon Foundation award—and with CESTA faculty Mark Algee-Hewitt, Giovanna Ceserani, Grant Parker, and Laura Stokes as principal investigators—CESTA hosted the yearlong Mellon-Sawyer Seminar titled “The Data That Divides Us: Recalibrating Data Methods for New Knowledge Frameworks Across the Humanities,” as well as hosting a postdoctoral fellow (Nichole Nomura, Stanford PhD in English) and two graduate fellows (Matthew Warner in English and Chloe Brault in Comparative Literature). The nine seminar sessions included Alan Liu and Roopika Risam’s exploration of how data intersects with social divisions; Jessica Otis’s analysis of London mortality statistics during the plague; Marlene Daut on digitizing nineteenth-century Haitian print media to recover marginalized voices and challenge conventional narratives; and Greg O’Malley and Alex Borucki’s project on the Intra-American Slave Trade Database. In the last seminar, Chiara Palladino, Chris Johanson, and Eric Harvey discussed the complexities of interpreting ancient data through modern digital humanities frameworks. A final symposium invited reflections on the full series with presentations from graduate students and faculty from Stanford as well as other colleges in the Bay Area.
Publications online and in open access include the new book by Professor Giovanna Ceserani, the current faculty director of CESTA, A World Made by Travel: The Digital Grand Tour (Stanford University Press digital), as well as a series of interviews with CESTA faculty published in the Interventions section of the SHC’s digital salon, Arcade.
Along with these milestones, CESTA has continued to incubate the next generation of digital scholarship, with pathbreaking new projects from faculty and staff in the Art and Art History (Reimagining Royal Space:
The Qilij Arslan II Kiosk in Konya as a Case Study for the Digital Reconstruction of Islamic Architecture), Religious Studies (Visualizing Ancient Aramaic Manuscripts, Syriac Verb Tutorial Project, and Martin Luther King Jr. Digital Project), Global Studies (Oceanic Imaginaries), Graduate School of Business (Ars Mercatoria), Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (Human Rights–Based Accountability Framework for Halting Government Hacking Abuses), Classics and History (Spatial Narratives in Holocaust Survivor Testimonies; Early Cape Travelers; Women and Mobility in 18th-Century Italy: A Case Study in Scale and Representation; and Ottoman Fiscal Codex), and Center for African Studies (Geo-Mapping African Studies at Stanford).
Digital Public Fellows and Arcade
The Stanford Humanities Center’s digital salon, Arcade, flourished over the past year in its mission to publish open-access scholarship on Humanities in the World. Arcade is run by SHC Digital Manager Rachel Karas and a team of Digital Public Fellows, doctoral students in History, English, Comparative Literature, Anthropology, Modern Thought and Literature, and Theater and Performance Studies. These editors collaborate with faculty curators to select materials for publication, correspond with academic presses and journals to obtain reprint permission, and use the platform’s web interface to upload all content for public access.
All three portions of Arcade saw exciting activity this year. Among our peer-reviewed scholarly journals, Dibur published two new issues—one under its standard Dibur heading and one under its translation-focused Dibur Curated title. Both Occasion and Republics of Letters are set to publish new issues in fall 2024. Interventions, the blog component of Arcade, published eight new pieces, including a dynamic series of interviews conducted by Interventions editor Charlotte Lindemann on the digital humanities. Many of our Colloquies saw new materials added to them, and three entirely new Colloquies were published, including one that highlighted the work of the 2023–24 cohort of SHC Fellows. “Hope: The Future of an Idea,” also the title of the 2024 Spring Celebration, draws together pieces from over a dozen of this past year’s fellows and international visitors on how their research produces hope.
Read the Hope Colloquy on Arcade.
Image from the Colloquy Hope: The Future of an Idea.
Picture from top: CESTA intern Amanda Cheng with professor Joel Cabrita and undergraduate researchers Jordan Rothkowitz and Anu Tsogtbaatar.
2023–24
Digital Public Fellows
Editor, Colloquies
Department of History
“The Digital Public Fellows program connects me with a larger community of humanities scholars, and allows me to be a better writer, researcher, and colleague.”
Editor, Colloquies
Department of English
Managing Editor, Publications
Taube Center for Jewish Studies, Department of Comparative Literature
Editor, Colloquies
Department of History
Lead Editor, Interventions
Department of English
Editor, Colloquies
Program in Modern Thought and Literature
Lead Editor, Colloquies
Department of History
Editor, Colloquies
Department of Anthropology
Editor, Colloquies
Department of History
Managing Editor, Publications
Department of Theater and Performance Studies
Managing Editor, Publications
Department of Anthropology
Lauren Whitney Adams
Charlotte Lindemann Katja Schwaller
Chen Bar Itzhak
Miri Powell Adin Walker
Max FennellChametzky
Poornima Rajeshwar
Sarah Coduto
Ana C. Núñez
Utsavi Singh
Utsavi Singh Department of Anthropology
The Stanford Humanities Center welcomes the public to hear leading scholars, artists, and practitioners who address urgent issues in the humanities. Our fellows find their work enriched by the visiting speakers while the visitors encounter an audience that includes not only Stanford scholars and students but many others who have met for the year at this intellectual crossroads.
71,000+
Countries represented, with viewers logging on from American Samoa, Angola, Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Malaysia, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Korea, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom, and Virgin Islands (British), as well as the United States
“In addition to learning from the work of other fellows, I took away so much from workshops and lectures. For instance, David Sterling Brown’s talk got me on a tangent about Black Shakespearean actors. And Mary Beard’s lecture on restitution will be incredibly helpful as I return to the classroom.”
Adom Getachew Distinguished Junior External Fellow University of Chicago
April 23, 2024
October 19, 2023
Stanford Homecoming Reunion: Classes Without Quizzes
“Queen Elizabeth I’s Claim to California: A Counterfactual History”
Roland Greene, Stanford University
in the Humanities
Presidential Lecture in the Humanities
“Unlocking the Cases: Museums and the Anxiety of History”
Mary Beard, University of Cambridge
May 9, 2024
2024 Spring Celebration
“Hope: The Future of an Idea”
SHC Fellows Samia Errazzouki, Jisha Menon, Joseph Wager, and Ya Zuo
Other Lecture Series
Inside the Center: Book Talks
This online series highlights some of the most provocative, groundbreaking, and unusual work happening under our roof.
“Wild by Design: The Rise of Ecological Restoration”
September 28, 2023
Laura J. Martin, 2020–21 Fellow
“From Literary Criticism to Creative Fiction”
February 6, 2024
Joseph Allen Boone, 2014–15 Fellow
All This Rising: The Humanities in
the
“Humanities Futures”
November 1, 2023
Jo Fox, School of Advanced Study, University of London
This series features ideas and methods that will mark new paths for the humanities in the next decade. Visitors consider the motives and conventions of their work in progress, how it converses with its discipline, and what it portends for the humanities.
“Negotiating Whiteness: Shakespeare Studies, Digital Humanities, and Popular Culture”
March 6, 2024
David Sterling Brown, Trinity College
“The Humanities in Practice”
May 14, 2024
Clare A. Lees, School of Advanced Study, University of London
Watch event recordings.
The 1891 Lectures in the Humanities
“Spaces of Artifice: Interiors and the Environment in Islamic Architecture”
In 1891, thirty-five scholars gathered to form a community in a new university. In that spirit, this series, now in its fifth year, welcomes new humanities senior faculty to the Stanford community to present their work.
Next Ten Years Harry Camp Memorial Lectures
The Harry Camp Memorial Fund was established in 1956 by friends and associates of Harry Camp, a prominent businessman and philanthropist in San Francisco.
February 29, 2024
Patricia Blessing, Associate Professor of Art and Art History
“Saints by Half: Retelling Saints’ Lives”
March 14, 2024
Kirstin Valdez Quade, Associate Professor of English
“Biopolitical Anthropology: An Introduction”
May 21, 2024
Davide Tarizzo, University of Salerno
Donors Named Gifts/Grants
The Stanford Humanities Center gratefully acknowledges the following individuals and organizations who made gifts in support of the Humanities Center between September 1, 2023, and August 31, 2024.
We give special thanks to those who were able to arrange for matching gifts through their employer or another matching organization as well as those who were able to give during Stanford’s Giving Tuesday matching campaign.
Director’s Circle ($10,000+)
Diana Bowes
Grace Hoagland
Leslie and George Hume
Patricia and David Nelson
William Riley
Juliet and Peter Seymour
Sara and Jeff Small
Benefactor ($5,000+)
Mary Anne Rothberg and Andrew Rowen
Patron ($1,000+)
Kimberly Oden and Donald Brewster
Cynthia Gordon and John Bunnell
In memory of Mrs. Gale Bunnell
Victory Van Dyck Chase and Theodore Chase Jr.
In memory of Bliss Carnochan
Audrey and David Egger Charitable Fund at the Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Mercer
In memory of Ellen M. Egger
Marisa Galvez and Roland Greene
Aly Kassam-Remtulla
Roberta and Charles Katz
Mauri Okamoto-Kearney and Terry Kearney
Carla Kerr Stearns
Vickie and Steven Mavromihalis
Betsy Morgenthaler
Kathleen Heenan and Clarence Olmstead
William Reller
Katherine and Dhiren Shah
Andrea and Lubert Stryer
Sponsor ($500+)
Andrew Aguilar
Ann and Thomas Pfister
Arnold Rampersad
Associate ($100+)
Anonymous In honor of Dr. Helen Brooks
Yizhuo and Marcello Bastéa-Forte
In memory of Eleni Bastéa
Cheryl Parnell and Sam Dickerman
Mark Forte
In memory of Mrs. Eleni Bastéa
Anil Gangolli
Gretchen and Richard Grant
Loring Guessous
Laurie Koloski
Friend (<$100)
Cristina Cervone
Steven Macias
Juhn Maing
Gonzalo Munevar
Matching Gifts
Benevity Social Ventures Inc.
The Henry Luce Foundation
The Walt Disney Company
Former Fellow
Matching gift donor Giving Tuesday donor
Gifts to endowment have made it possible to carry out the Center’s mission and to secure its core activities in perpetuity. The dates in parentheses indicate the year the endowment was established.
Humanities Center Directorship
Anthony P. Meier Family Professorship in the Humanities (1987)
Linda and Tony Meier; Anthony Meier Jr., Eric Meier, and Laura Meier Fisher
Claire and John Radway Research Workshop (2006)
Claire and John Radway
Blokker Research Workshop (2005)
The Mericos Foundation, Joanne Blokker, President
University Support
Fellowships
Distinguished Junior External Fellowships (2022)
Anonymous
Next Generation Scholar Fellowships (2020)
Anonymous
Hume Honors Fellowships (2013)
Leslie P. and George H. Hume
Donald Andrews Whittier, Violet Andrews Whittier, Ellen Andrews Wright Fellowships (1988)
The Mericos Foundation, Joanne Blokker, President
Stanford Humanities Center Dissertation Prize Fellowships (1987, 1998)
Research Workshop in Honor of John Bender (2005)
Anonymous
Linda Randall Meier Research Workshop (2004)
Linda and Tony Meier
Marta Sutton Weeks Research Workshop (2004, 2007)
Marta Sutton Weeks
Visitorship
The Marta Sutton Weeks Distinguished Visitorship (1987)
Marta Sutton Weeks
Expendable Named Gifts
With the support of the Office of the President, the Humanities Center stages the Presidential and Endowed Lectures in the Humanities and the Arts, which include and derive additional funds from the Harry Camp Memorial and Raymond F. West Memorial Lectures. Each year these ongoing series present a variety of lectures by distinguished scholars, writers, and artists from around the world.
The Humanities Center also gratefully acknowledges support from the Dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences, the Dean of Research, and the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education.
Grants to Endowment
Foundation grants to endowment support the Humanities Center’s fellowships and workshops in perpetuity.
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (2003)
The Mericos Foundation (1988)
Theodore and Frances Geballe
Theodore and Frances Geballe
Marta Sutton Weeks Fellowships (1982)
Marta Sutton Weeks
Marta Sutton Weeks
Expendable gifts in support of specific activities help to sustain programs not funded by endowment.
Next Generation Scholar Fellowship
The National Endowment for the Humanities (1978, 1986, 1995, 2004)
Research Workshop Program
Research Workshop Program (2007)
Anonymous
Jeff and Sara Small
$40,000 annually to support one Next Generation Scholar (2021–present)
Individual Research Workshops
Humanities Center Fellows Research Workshop (2008)
Peter S. Bing and Humanities Center Fellows
Giving Opportunities
Your gift supports the rigorous exchange of ideas. Our world has never needed them more.
A Vision for Our Next Era
Along with support for core programs, the Humanities Center continues to focus on three initiatives.
A multiyear pledge of three to five years is especially meaningful as we seek to expand our programs and share the work of humanities scholars with our community and the world.
Our Digital Platform: An Outlet for the Public Humanities
Our website has undergone an ambitious transformation that now links into a single platform four related sites: Stanford Humanities Today, the SHC, CESTA, and Arcade. Each of these sites provides a highly visible, interactive home for public-oriented events and projects connected to humanities research at Stanford and invites a public audience to experience this cutting-edge research. The project seeks expendable funds as it reaches ever-growing audiences and includes naming opportunities for the Digital Public Fellows. Unique among Humanities Centers, our platform positions the SHC ahead of its peers in the sharing of knowledge within and beyond our community.
For a list of gift opportunities, please visit our website at shc.stanford.edu/support. Unrestricted, expendable gifts are particularly helpful in enabling the work of the Center to continue to thrive. You may make such gifts to the following funds.
Annual Fund
Gifts
of Any Amount
Unrestricted Annual Fund gifts help sustain programs not funded by endowment and facilitate strategic campus partnerships and new, original programming that benefit the wider community.
Next Generation Scholar Fellowships: The Future of the Academy
Now entering their fourth year, these late-stage fellowships provide PhDs with the necessary funding to bridge their transition to a position within the academy after Stanford’s substantial investment in them. The success rate has been remarkable during this pilot phase. However, the demand is great, and as we move forward to solidify this program for the future, additional support is needed to expand the number of fellowships we can offer from the current four to our goal of ten per year. There is a naming opportunity for multiyear pledges.
Director’s Fund
Gifts of $10,000 and Above
Director’s Fund gifts enable SHC leadership to advance the most-urgent needs and priorities of the Center and include membership in the Director’s Circle.
Ways to Give
Every Gift Supports the Humanities
Original Programming: Expanding Horizons
• Make an online gift—onetime or recurring (shc.stanford.edu/support)
• Write a check (payable to Stanford University)
• Make a multiyear pledge by sending an email to Susan Sebbard at sebbard@stanford.edu
• Transfer stock sales
Our building and our digital platform reverberate with the sights and sounds of intellectual activity: compelling lecture series and other special events, reinvigorated core activities such as the Research Workshops, and hundreds of visitors—the largest and most diverse audiences in our forty-plus years. Everything we do has the aim of bringing research and perspectives from across the humanities to interpret our world. Expendable gifts to support our outreach programming will help to sustain this goal to promote the understanding of the rich nature and deep significance of humanities research.
All gifts are tax deductible. For more details on ways to give, visit our website at shc.stanford.edu/support or contact Assistant Director Susan Sebbard at sebbard@stanford.edu or 650.723.3053.
Staff, Councils, Honorary Fellows Financial Highlights
Staff
Rebecca Agin
Building Manager (as of July 2024)
Robert Cable Communications Manager
Carol Guthrie Finance Manager
Kelda Jamison Fellowship Program Manager
Rachel Karas
Digital Manager/Web Editor
Andres Le Roux Computing Consultant
Nicole Daniela Lopez-Hagan Mellon Program Manager
Helen Malko Associate Director
Dean Messinger-Arns Research Workshops Program Manager
Maria Moore Office Coordinator
Eric Ortiz Events Manager
Madison Priest
Research Development Specialist, Office of the Vice Provost and Dean of Research
Susan Sebbard Assistant Director
Patricia Terrazas Building and Reservations Administrator (through February 2024)
Svetlana Turetskaya International and Academic Programs Manager
Advisory Council
Kristin Kennedy Clark
Nonprofit Consultant, Education and the Arts
Mark Greif
English, Stanford University
Niloofar Haeri Anthropology, Johns Hopkins University
Roberta Katz
Charles and Roberta Katz Family Foundation
Linda R. Meier
Western Region Advisory Board, Institute of International Education Inc.
Peter Seymour
Douglas Emmett Inc.
Jeff Small Amblin Partners
Christen A. Smith
African and African Diaspora Studies and Anthropology, University of Texas at Austin
Dafna Zur
East Asian Languages and Cultures, Stanford University
Ex Officio Members
Giovanna Ceserani
Director, Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis
Roland Greene
Director, Stanford Humanities Center
Helen Malko
Associate Director, Stanford Humanities Center
Gabriella Safran
Senior Associate Dean for Humanities and Arts, School of Humanities and Sciences
Debra Satz
Dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences
Director’s Alumni Cabinet
Kendra Allenby Cartoonist
Amy Aniobi
Writer, Director, Producer, Actor
Sara Auld
Assistant Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology, Emory University
Martha (Mattie) Bekink
China Director, Economist Corporate Network, The Economist Group
Mark Dominik
Partner, Euston Ventures
Marianne LeVine
Reporter, Washington Post
Jessica Mendoza
Broadcaster and Major League Baseball Analyst
Ari Ratner
Founder and CEO, Inside Revolution
Lisa Wallace Co-Founder, Assemble
Honorary Fellows
Ann Arvin
Pediatrics-Infectious Diseases, Stanford
Keith Michael Baker History, Stanford*
John Bender English, Stanford*
Arthur Bienenstock
Materials Science, Stanford*
Wanda M. Corn
Art and Art History, Stanford*
Kathryn Moler
Applied Physics, Stanford
Aron Rodrigue History, Stanford
Peter Stansky History, Stanford*
Caroline Winterer History, Stanford
* Emeritus/emerita
Below is a functional expense breakdown based on total program expenditures of $XX.
FISCAL YEAR SEPTEMBER 1, 2023, TO AUGUST 31, 2024
Associate Director’s Message
I am pleased to report on another successful year for the Humanities Center.
Our ongoing partnership with the School of Humanities and Sciences has significantly improved our operational processes and technological capabilities, enabling us to advance the Center’s programs and events through more streamlined systems and workflows.
Our commitment to interdisciplinary engagement has been evident in our programming, particularly through the Research Workshops program that connects various fields beyond the humanities, including medicine, environmental sciences, and law. In addition, we broadened our digital initiatives with the Stanford Humanities Today and Arcade sites and have forged new global collaborations.
This year, the Humanities Center expanded its international partnerships, notably establishing connections with organizations such as the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences at National Taiwan University.
Supporting these and other initiatives is a dedicated staff that works diligently to fulfill the Center’s mission and objectives. We welcomed two new team members while bidding farewell to retiring staff, whose invaluable contributions continue to resonate. I eagerly anticipate another productive year focused on advancing humanities research at the local, national, and global levels.
Helen Malko, PhD Associate Director
