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.

Dan Edelstein

Associate Professor of French and, by courtesy, of History

Dan Edelstein focuses on eighteenth-century France, with research interests at the crossroads of literature, history, and political theory. He teaches courses on the literature, philosophy, culture and politics of the Enlightenment; on nineteenth-century novels; the French Revolution; and early-modern political thought. In 2006 he was awarded the Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching, and received the Dean’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 2011. His published works include The Terror of Natural Right: Republicanism, the Cult of Nature, and the French Revolution, and The Enlightenment: A Genealogy. Full bio

Paula Findlen

Ubaldo Pierotti Professor of History and Professor, by courtesy, of French and Italian

Paula Findlen's main interests are in Italian history, 1300-1800 and the early history of science and medicine, including the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution. Findlen specializes in the rise of modern science, medicine, and technology during the European Renaissance, especially in Italy, by looking at the intersection of science, art, and technology, the history of museums and collecting, and at the relations between knowledge and faith in the age of Galileo. Findlen received her Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley and taught at the University of California at Davis and as a visitor at Harvard before coming to Stanford in 1996. Full bio

Larry Friedlander

Professor of English (teaching), Emeritus

Larry Friedlander has been at Stanford since 1965, where his specialty has been Shakespeare and performance. In addition to his academic and critical activities, Friedlander worked in the professional theater as an actor and director for many years. He has participated in major research laboratories on a wide variety of projects connected to the arts, technology, and education, including work at the Apple Multimedia Lab and has created innovative interactive designs for many museums internationally. Full bio

Al Gelpi

Coe Professor of American Literature, Emeritus

From 1968 through 2002 Albert Gelpi taught Stanford undergraduate and graduate courses in American literature that ranged from its Puritan beginnings to the present day. He has written and edited books on Emily Dickinson, Wallace Stevens, Robinson Jeffers, C. Day-Lewis, Adrienne Rich, William Everson, Denise Levertov, and Robert Duncan. As a student of Perry Miller at Harvard, he became interested in the intellectual backgrounds of literary expression, and he has become increasingly interested in the connections between American letters and American painting. He has served as Associate Dean of Graduate Studies, Chairman of the American Studies Program, and Chairman of the English Department. He received the Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching in 1996. Full bio

Barbara Gelpi

Professor of English, Emerita

Barbara Charlesworth Gelpi is a Victorianist by training. Her first area of interest was the 1890's, and her first book was Dark Passages: The Decadent Consciousness in Victorian Literature (1965). Her growing interest in feminist theory and feminist literary criticism led to the editing, with Albert Gelpi, of Adrienne Rich's Poetry, which was expanded and revised as Adrienne Rich's Poetry and Prose in 1993. She has also worked with the group of editors at the Center for Research on Women at Stanford who published Victorian Women: A Documentary Account of Women's Lives in Nineteenth-Century England, France, and the United States. Full bio

Denise Gigante

Professor of English

Denise Gigante teaches British Romanticism, as well as the longer historical tradition of poetry and poetics, the English periodical essay, taste, gastronomy, aesthetic theory, antiquarianism, and the history of the book.  She is currently working on The Book Madness: A Story of Book Collectors in America and is the author of The Keats Brothers: The Life of John and George,  Life: Organic Form and Romanticism, Taste: A Literary History, The Great Age of the English Essay, and Gusto: Essential Writings in Nineteenth-Century Gastronomy. She received her BA from Yale University and her Ph.D. from Princeton.

 

Clarence Jones

Scholar in Residence, The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute

Clarence B. Jones was a speechwriter and counsel for Martin Luther King, Jr. His work in the civil rights movement dramatically impacted the course of American history, and he has received numerous state and national awards recognizing his significant contributions to American society. Jones was the first African-American partner in a Wall Street investment banking member firm of the New York Stock Exchange, was selected twice by Fortune Magazine as "A Business Man of the Month," and founded several corporate and media-related ventures. Full bio.

Charles Junkerman

Associate Provost and Dean, Continuing Studies

Charles Junkerman received his PhD in comparative literature from UC Berkeley, and has been at Stanford since 1983. He has served as Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Studies, Associate Director of the Humanities Center, and has been Dean of Continuing Studies since 1999.  He teaches courses on American literature (especially Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman) as well as cultural studies and cultural history from the Enlightenment to the present.

Nancy Kollmann

William H. Bonsall Professor of History

Nancy Kollmann focuses on how politics worked in early modern Russian autocracy. She received her Masters and Ph.D. from Harvard University, and has been at Stanford since 1982. From 1995-2007 she served as the Director of the Center for Russian, Eastern European and Eurasian Studies. She has taught classes in early modern Russia and Eastern Europe, covering topics such as governance, identity and national consciousness, and social values. She has taught Enlightenment in Russia for the MLA Program. Full bio

Herbert Lindenberger

Avalon Foundation Professor of Humanities, Emeritus

Professor Lindenberger taught at the University of California, Riverside, at Washington University, St. Louis, before coming to Stanford in 1969 to found and be the first chair of Stanford's program in Comparative Literature.  His books have been on a wide variety of topics: Wordsworth, Georg Büchner, Georg Trakl, historical drama, critical theory, and opera.  His current project centers around his own family's history during the Holocaust. Full bio

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