Entitled Opinions (about Life and Literature)

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 […]

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). […]

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, […]

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); […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]