MLA Faculty

"There is nothing like teaching a group of mature students who come to an evening seminar after a full day of having a life outside of the university. They are among the best, most engaged students I have worked with."

- Paula Findlen, Ubaldo Pierotti Professor of History and, by courtesy, of French and Italian

Stanford's faculty is one of the most distinguished in the nation. It includes 17 Nobel laureates, 4 Pulitzer Prize winners, 18 National Medal of Science winners, 150 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 263 members of the Academy of Arts and Sciences, 94 members of the National Academy of Engineering, and 31 members of the National Academy of Education. 

MLA faculty, who are recruited from among Stanford University’s most distinguished professors, are eager to share their own enthusiasm for their subjects with this group of students. In the small group setting of MLA seminars, students have the opportunity to get to know their professors in a way that many students have never before experienced.

Peter Stansky

Frances and Charles Field Professor of History, Emeritus

Peter Stansky has been at Stanford since 1968. He has written extensively on modern Britain, particularly about William Morris, George Orwell, the Bloomsbury Group as well of other aspects, political, cultural, and social, of modern Britain. He has taught three MLA courses and directed seven MLA theses. Full bio

Edward Steidle

Lecturer in CSP and MLA

Edward Steidle pursued his MA degree in Comparative Literature at the Johns Hopkins University and the University of California, Berkeley.  He completed his PhD in Medieval Literature at UC Berkeley, and joined the Stanford faculty in 1984. He has taught for the English department, the Graduate Program in the Humanities, and the Continuing Studies Program. His area of study is Late Antiquity and the Middle ages, and he has lectured on the arts and literatures of Europe, the Middle East and Asia.  He has also been the faculty leader for Stanford Travel Study groups in Europe and the Mediterranean. He is currently working on the epic traditions of Europe, India and Japan.      

Barton H. "Buzz" Thompson, Jr.

Robert E. Paradise Professor of Natural Resources Law, and Perry L. McCarty Director & Senior Fellow, Woods Institute for the Environment

Professor Thompson is a founding director of the Woods Institute for the Environment, which brings together faculty from around Stanford to solve global environmental challenges.  He is an expert on water law and policy and currently serves as Special Master for the United States Supreme Court in Montana v. Wyoming, an interstate water dispute focusing on the waters of the Yellowstone River System.  He is the author of leading text books on water, the environment, and property, and has published articles on such diverse topics as water markets, land conservation, climate adaptation, fisheries management, and cognitive barriers to effective regulation.  Thompson is chairman of the board of the Resources Legacy Fund and the Resources Legacy Fund Foundation, a California trustee for The Nature Conservancy, and a board members of both the American Farmland Trust and the Sonoran Institute. 

Peter Vitousek

Clifford G. Morrison Professor in Population & Resource Studies, and Senior Fellow, by courtesy, at FSI and the Woods Institute

Peter Vitousek has been on the faculty at Stanford University since 1984. His research interests include: understanding how the interaction of land and culture contributed to the sustainability of Hawaiian agriculture and society before European contact; and working to make fertilizer applications more efficient and less environmentally damaging (especially in rapidly growing economies). He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was awarded the 2010 Japan Prize. He is director of the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources and co-director of the First Nations Futures Institute.

Caroline Winterer

Professor of History and, by courtesy, of Classics

Professor 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 currently working on Stanford’s collaborative Mapping the Republic of Letters project, which is digitally mapping some of the major European and American correspondence networks and libraries of the early modern scholarly world (1500-1800). As part of this project she is mapping the extensive correspondence network of Benjamin Franklin, as well as the holdings of the Library Company of Philadelphia, the leading library of Enlightenment America. Full bio

Yvonne Yarbro-Bejarano

Professor of Iberian and Latin American Cultures

Professor Yarbro-Bejarano is interested in Chicana/o cultural studies with an emphasis on gender and queer theory; race and nation; interrogating critical concepts in Chicana/o literature; and representations of race, sexuality and gender in cultural production by Chicanas/os and Latinas/os. She is the author of Feminism and the Honor Plays of Lope de Vega (1994), The Wounded Heart: Writing on Cherríe Moraga (2001), and co-editor of Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation (1991). She has published numerous articles on Chicana/o literature and culture. Her graduate seminars include topics such as race and nation; interrogating critical concepts in Chicana/o literature; and representations of race, sexuality and gender in cultural production by Chicanas/os and Latinas/os. Since 1994, Professor Yarbro-Bejarano has been developing "Chicana Art," a digital archive of images focusing on women artists. Professor Yarbro-Bejarano is chair of the Chicana/o Studies Program in Stanford's Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity.

Paul Robinson, Chair, MLA Faculty Advisory Committee, Richard W. Lyman Professor in the Humanities, Emeritus

Charles Junkerman, Associate Provost and Dean, Continuing Studies

Linda Paulson, Associate Dean and Director, MLA Program

Russell A. Berman, Walter A. Haas Professor in the Humanities

Jay Bhattacharya, Associate Professor of Medicine and core faculty of the Center for Health Policy

William Chace, Professor of English and President Emeritus, Emory University

Eamonn Callan, Pigott Family School of Education Professor

Gerald Dorfman, Hoover Senior Fellow and Professor, by courtesy emeritus, of Political Science

William Durham, Bing Professor in Human Biology, Dept. of  Anthropology, and Senior Fellow, Woods Institute

Barbara Gelpi, Professor of English, Emerita

David Palumbo-Liu, Professor of Comparative Literature

Jeremy Sabol, Lecturer, Structured Liberal Education program

Peter Stansky, Frances and Charles Field Professor of History, Emeritus