Entitled Opinions (about Life and Literature)

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 and […]

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 […]

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 […]