Faculty & Lecturers
Faculty
renaissance, poetry, gender, National Identity
Medieval Germanic and Scandinavian Literature, sagas, especially Icelandic
French classical literature (the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) and drama, avant-garde artistic movements such as dada, surrealism, and situationist international, the theory of image, literary theory, and Francophone literature.
intellectual history and the history of political culture, the French Revolution, history of science
Portuguese literature and culture of the medieval and early modern periods within a comparative framework, with an emphasis on poetry, early European imperial expansion into Africa and Asia, and Renaissance Humanism
Shahzad Bashir
Lysbeth Warren Anderson Professor in Islamic Studies, Director of Graduate Studies
Religious Studies
Islamic studies, with primary interests in Sufism, Shi'ism, and the intellectual and social history of Persianate Islamic Societies (Iran and Southern Asia)
Literature and society in the 18th-century; comparative study of literature and the visual arts: sociology of literature; literary theory; science and literature
History of music aesthetics and theory, Austro-German Music from 1700 to 1900, vocal polyphony from 1400 to 1600
The English novel; Richardson; Defoe; Fielding; 18th-century women authors; 20th-century British women's writing; the First World War; feminist theory; Freud; gay and lesbian literature
the classical tradition with an emphasis on the intellectual history of classical scholarship, historiography and archaeology from the eighteenth century onward, the role that Hellenism and Classics played in the shaping of modernity, how the questions we ask of the classical past originate in specific modern cultural, social and political contexts
xHuguenot emigration at the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, autobiography, education of girls in early modern France
early modern British history, puritanism, politics, English Revolution, history of print
Historical Topics in Epistemology, especially Hume and Kant; also Frege, Wittgenstein, and Quine; skepticism and naturalism
The Encyclopédie, antiquarianism, Orientalism, natural right, the French Revolution, the Idéologues, political mythology, and structuralism
linguistic anthropology, historical linguistics, language and culture, the biology and evolution of language, Maya writing and culture, linguistic fieldwork
Kant, Philosophy of Science, History of Twentieth Century Philosophy, including the interaction between philosophy and the exact sciences from Kant through the logical empiricists, prospects for post-Kuhnian philosophy of science in light of these developments, and the relationship between analytic and continental traditions in the early twentieth century
the troubadours, vernacular poetics, the intersection of performance and literary cultures, and the critical history of medieval studies as a discipline
Late Medieval religious thought, philosophy of religion, the Dominican
aesthetics, Poetic Form, Life Writing, the English Essay Tradition, Taste, Gastronomy, Life Science
Renaissance culture, especially the literatures of England, Latin Europe, and the transatlantic world, and of poetry and poetics from the sixteenth century to the present
European economic history, the historical development of economic institutions, their interrelations with political, social and cultural factors and their impact on economic growth, institutional development and economic growth in pre-modern Europe, coercion and markets
Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht
Professor, Chair of Graduate Studies, Comparative Literature
Comparative Literature
medieval, French, German, and (to a lesser extent) Italian literatures since the Renaissance; Argentinian and Brazilian literatures in the 19th and 20th centuries; Aesthetics; History of Ideas, history of scholarship, the aesthetics of sport
XVIIIth and XIXth century French and Italian opera, music and literature, feminist criticism and gender studies, French Romanticism
European art 15th-17th century with a focus on Italy, Mannerism, the reception of Michelangelo, image theology, the production of identities, religious minorities, eschatology and politics, word/image relationships, connoisseurship
Buddhist literature and history, especially that of the Mahayana, and the study of Buddhist manuscripts in Sanskrit, Chinese and Tibetan. Currently working on editions and translations of a number of Mahayana and Mainstream Buddhist sutras, including the Vajracchedika (Diamond Sutra), as well as a general study of issues of authority, textual transmission and innovation in Mahayana Buddhism.
Italian lyric, Dante Alighieri, Vico, Phenomenology, literary theory
relationship between Spain and Spanish America, communal formation, nationalism, networks, immigration and problems of race
Milton, the English Civil Wars, the Restoration, Renaissance and Enlightenment theater, tragedy and tragic theory, early opera, and performance theory
Medieval literature; philosophy; theology; William Langland; Chaucer; mysticism; education; the Bible
The evolution of commercial law and civil procedure, the roots of modern market culture and presnt-day process norms, origins of American adversarial legal culture, history of equity procedure
Ragib al-Isfahani, Arabic philosophy of language, literary and intellectual history of the Arabic and Persian-speaking worlds from the seventh century
Intersection of political practice and social values in early modern Russia (XVth-XVIIIth centuries), legal culture in Muscovy and XVIIIth century Russia, the Petrine Revolution, concepts and practices of honor, mechanisms of social integration and stability in early modern Russia
China in the late pre-imperial, early imperial and middle periods, the problem of empire as a political and social form
Italian and Latin Literature of the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance, Medieval and Renaissance Exegesis, Renaissance Humanism, Poetry and Politics, Defenses of Poetry, classical reception, Mythography, Giovanni Boccaccio, Francesco Petrarca, Dante Alighieri
British Literature, shakespeare, Milton, literary criticism/theory, literature and philosophy, gay and lesbian studies
theory and performance of Medieval and Renaissance music, Medieval studies, troubadours, Machaut, Dufay, Lasso, Dante, English Cathedrals, Gregorian chant, Renaissance polyphony
European art from XVIIth to XIXth century, vision and visuality, limits of narration, construction of cultural power through visual media
The history of pre-modern mathematics, the history of cognitive practices, e.g. visual culture, the history of the book, and literacy and numeracy.
shakespeare, Renaissance theater, history of the book, mythology and iconology
David Palumbo-Liu
Professor, Director of Comparative Literature, Director of Asian American Studies
Comparative Literature
social and cultural criticism, literary theory and criticism, East Asian and Asia Pacific American studies, and classical Chinese literature, and has subsequently worked in the areas of ethnic studies, Pacific Rim studies, and social theory
Latin, the exotic and geographic elements of Roman imperial culture, classical reception
phenomenology and aesthetics, architectural psychoacoustics, performance and ritual, medieval image theory, Iconoclasm, cult of the Mother of God
origins of the American Revolution, creation of a national polity and government between the early 1770s and 1800, origins of the Constitution and the early history of its interpretation, political ideas and career of James Madison
Enlightenment science, politics and culture and the history of scientific explanation
Mesoamerica, Teotihuacan, complex/urban societies, statistical methods, ceramic and lithic analysis, the archaeology of complex and urban societies in Mesoamerica and has strong methodological interests in statistical and GIS-based approaches to archaeological analysis, as well as ceramic and lithic technology
Germanic linguistics, theoretical phonology, the history and dialectology of various of the Germanic languages, and Old High German syntax, linguistic aspects of the Grimms' fairy tales
Josquin des Prez and his contemporaries; Franco-Flemish polyphony of the 15th century; music in Renaissance Rome; performance of medieval and Renaissance music; musical notation; Jewish music
The early centuries of Islamic religion and teaches courses on pre-modern intellectual history, the early history of the Qur'an, the hadith literature, the early legal debates about women in the public space
the gender and science puzzle: the history of women's participation in science; the structure of scientific institutions; and the gendering of human knowledge
Archaeology of colonialism and colonisation; medieval crusading in Northern Europe; Venetian Republican expansion in the Adriatic; post-medieval globalisation in the IOW; zooarchaeology, food culture
music (especially opera and instrumental music) from 1585 to 1825, Venetian history and culture, computer theories of music and music representation, musical data as intellectual property
sexuality, gender relations, and law during the Qing dynasty (1644-1912), legal cases from central and local archives in China
Renaissance and nineteenth-century literature and cultural history
medieval and early modern German literature and culture with an emphasis on visuality, material culture, language, performativity, and the history of the book
witchcraft, judicial torture, social history of greed, social control
Early Modern Japanese painting, Warrior culture, Ukiyoe (especially actors and shini-e), Horses in Japanese art
Old and Middle English Literature; Saints' Lives; Manuscript Studies; History of the Book, especially handmade books and the study of palaeography
18th-century British literature; Romanticism; critical theory; cognitive approaches to literature; the history of the novel
Chinese portraiture, landscape painting and cultural formations, painting aesthetics and theory, urban cultural spaces
Historical geography of East Asia, early modernity in Japan, regional economies and rhetorics, geographies of the imagination
America and its transatlantic contexts, history of scholarship, books, reading, libraries, and education, history of art and material culture
art of the United States, art and literature, history of, race and ethnicity, American Studies
History of modern philosophy, especially Kant and German idealism, and chiefly in the areas of ethics and social and political philosophy
The Ottoman Empire; Empires, Elites, and Communities in the Early Modern World; History of Economic and Legal institutions in the Islamic World; The Enlightenment and Orientalism
Comparative religious ethics, virtue theory, selected Christian thinkers, classical Chinese thought
Chinese and comparative women’s history, Early Chinese literature and history, Chinese and English fiction (1600-1900, China-Greece comparative studies
Lecturer
The relation of Metaphysics to natural science up to the Early Modern Period
Hinduism, the poetry of North India's great XVth and XVIth century, their ongoing popularity and influence, and modes of performing their works; poetry and religious experience, gender, performance, and reception of religious tets and practices by people in different social and historical circumstances.
The history of Christian thought, with a particular emphasis on the religious developments in late medieval and early modern Europe, sixteenth-century reformations, the history of biblical interpretation, women and religion.
Affiliate
Beatrice Kitzinger
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow
manuscript illumination, medieval art, medieval theater, aesthetics, theology
Stephen Spiess
Thinking Matters Postdoctoral Fellow
Early Modern English Language, Literature, & Culture; Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama, including Shakespeare; Theories of Embodiment; Cultural Materialism; Feminist Literary Criticism & Theory; History of Sexuality (including Queer Theory); English Lexical Culture (Philology, Lexicography, Keywords)
Researcher
art and architecture of the Muslim World, focusing on trans-cultural interactions in the Middle Ages, the appropriation of Byzantine elements into Islamic architecture, the transfer and authentication of relics in East and West, historical photographs of architecture and urban spaces
Patrick Hunt
Lecturer in Stanford Continuing Studies, Associate, UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies
archaeometry, Art History, medieval, renaissance
Library Staff
medieval history; sanctity; lay religion; devotional images and shrines; the relationship gender and religious authority; contact between Africa and medieval Europe
Sarah Sussman
Curator, French and Italian, Head, International and Area Studies Resource Group
Libraries
Emeriti
Carl Bielefeldt
Professor
East Asian Buddhism, with particular emphasis on the intellectual history of the Zen tradition; co-editor of the Soto Zen Text Project
Helen Brooks
Senior Lecturer
John Donne, interdisciplinarity, new historicism; literature and the advent of mathematical perspective and the modern scientific method of inquiry; reception theory (including cognitive studies and the neurosciences), gender studies, evolutionary theory and literature, modern poetry and drama
George Brown
Professor
Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Latin literature, history, theology, and manuscripts, resulting in articles and essays on Beowulf, Old English verse, Bede, and Alcuin
Larry Friedlander
Professor
Shakespeare; Drama, Performance Practice and Theory; Ethics and Tragedy;Literature of fantasy and science fiction; technology and education
George Houle
Professor
performance of Renaissance and Baroque music, seventeenth century notation, meter, and tempo
Mark Mancall
Professor
history, religions, cultures of central and southeast Asia, Buddhist social and political theory
