School of Humanities and Sciences
Showing 301-350 of 1,379 Results
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Rob Dunbar
W.M. Keck Professor in the School of Earth Sciences, Professor of Oceans, Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment and Professor, by courtesy, of Earth System Science
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsOcean processes, biogeochemistry, climatology/paleoclimatology, isotopic chemistry, ocean policy
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Jean-Pierre Dupuy
Professor of French and Italian and, by courtesy, of Political Science
BioProfessor Jean-Pierre Dupuy is a Professor of Social and Political Philosophy at the École Polytechnique, Paris. He is the Director of research at the C.N.R.S. (Philosophy) and the Director of C.R.E.A. (Centre de Recherche en Épistémologie Appliquée), the philosophical research group of the École Polytechnique, which he founded in 1982. At Stanford University, he is a researcher at the Study of Language and Information (C.S.L.I.) Professor Dupuy is by courtesy a Professor of Political Science.
In his book The Mechanization of the Mind, Jean-Pierre Dupuy explains how the founders of cybernetics laid the foundations not only for cognitive science, but also artificial intelligence, and foreshadowed the development of chaos theory, complexity theory, and other scientific and philosophical breakthroughs. -
Carol Dweck
Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor and Professor, by courtesy, of Education
BioMy work bridges developmental psychology, social psychology, and personality psychology, and examines the self-conceptions people use to structure the self and guide their behavior. My research looks at the origins of these self-conceptions, their role in motivation and self-regulation, and their impact on achievement and interpersonal processes.
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David Eagleman
Adjunct Professor, Psych/Public Mental Health & Population Sciences
BioDavid Eagleman is a neuroscientist, bestselling author, and Guggenheim Fellow. Dr. Eagleman’s areas of research include sensory substitution, time perception, vision, and synesthesia. He also studies the intersection of neuroscience with the legal system, and in that capacity he directs the non-profit Center for Science and Law. Eagleman is the writer and presenter of The Brain, an Emmy-nominated television series on PBS and BBC. He is the author of 8 books, including Livewired, The Runaway Species, The Brain, Incognito, and Wednesday is Indigo Blue. He is also the author of a widely adopted textbook on cognitive neuroscience, Brain and Behavior. His internationally bestselling book of literary fiction, SUM, has been translated into 32 languages, turned into two operas, and named a Best Book of the Year by Barnes and Noble. Dr. Eagleman has been a TED speaker, a guest on the Colbert Report, and profiled in the New Yorker magazine. He has launched several neuroscience companies from his research, including Neosensory and BrainCheck.
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Jennifer Eberhardt
Morris M. Doyle Centennial Professor of Public Policy, William R. Kimball Professor at the Graduate School of Business, Professor of Psychology and by courtesy, of Law
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMy research is on race and inequality. I am especially interested in examining race and inequality in the criminal justice context. My most recent research focuses on how the association of African Americans with crime might matter at different points in the criminal justice system and how this association can affect us in surprising ways.
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Paulla Ebron
Associate Professor of Anthropology
BioPaulla Ebron joined the department in 1992. Ebron is the author of Performing Africa, a work based on her research in The Gambia that traces the significance of West African praise-singers in transnational encounters. A second project focuses on tropicality and regionalism as it ties West Africa and the U.S. Georgia Sea Islands in a dialogue about landscape, memory and political uplift. This project is entitled, "Making Tropical Africa in the Georgia Sea Islands."
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Penelope Eckert
Albert Ray Lang Professor, Emerita
BioThe goal of my research is to understand the social meaning of linguistic variation. In order to do this, I pursue my sociolinguistic work in the context of in-depth ethnographic fieldwork, focusing on the relation between variation, linguistic style, social identity and social practice.
Gender has been the big misunderstood in studies of sociolinguistic variation - in spite of the fact that some of the most exciting intellectual developments over the past decades have been in theories of gender and sexuality ... so I have been spending a good deal of time working on language and gender as well.
Since adolescents and preadolescents are the movers and shakers in linguistic change, I concentrate on this age group, and much of my research takes place in schools. The institutional research site has made me think a good deal about learning and education, but particularly about the construction of adolescence in American society. -
Dan Edelstein
William H. Bonsall Professor of French, Professor, by courtesy, of History, of Political Science and Senior Fellow, by courtesy, at the Hoover Institution
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMy current research lies in the fields of intellectual history, political thought, and digital humanities (DH). I recently published a book that explores the history of rights from the Wars of Religion to the Age of Revolutions; I'm currently working on a book that explores the intellectual history of revolution; I have a number of papers on Rousseau's political thought underway; and I continue to work on a number of DH projects.
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Paul N. Edwards
BioI retired in January 2026 to escape rising fascism in the USA. Until then, I was Director of the Program on Science, Technology & Society (STS) and a Senior Research Scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford. I also co-directed the Stanford Existential Risks Initiative with Prof. Steve Luby.
I'm also Professor of Information and History (Emeritus) at the University of Michigan, where I worked for 19 years in the School of Information, the Dept. of History, and the STS Program. I taught previously at Stanford from 1992-1998, in the STS Program and the Computer Science Dept.
I study the history, politics, and culture of information infrastructures, especially climate knowledge systems. My books include A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (MIT Press, 2010), The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America (MIT Press, 1996), and Changing the Atmosphere: Expert Knowledge and Environmental Governance (MIT Press, 2001, co-edited with Clark Miller). With Janet Vertesi (Princeton), I'm academic editor of the MIT Press book series Infrastructures.
I served as one of 234 Lead Authors for the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Working Group I (Physical Sciences), released in August 2021. -
Bradley Efron
Max H. Stein Professor and Professor of Statistics and of Biomedical Data Science, Emeritus
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsResearch Interests:
BOOTSTRAP
BIOSTATISTICS
BAYESIAN STATISTICS -
Ronald Egan
Stanford W. Ascherman, M.D. Professor
BioResearch Areas:
- Chinese Poetry
- Song dynasty Poetry and literati Culture
- The social and historical context of Song dynasty aesthetics -
Linda Eggert
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsNormative ethics, practical ethics; theories of justice; ethics of war, defensive harming; human rights; AI ethics
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Karen Eggleston
Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Professor, by courtesy, of Health Policy
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsHealth reform in China; comparative healthcare systems in Asia; government and market roles in the health sector; payment incentives; healthcare productivity; and economic implications of demographic change.
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Paul Ehrlich
Professor, Biology
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsThe role of the social sciences in dealing with global change
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Johannes C. Eichstaedt
Assistant Professor (Research) of Psychology
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsLarge Language Models and AI: use of LLMs for mental healthcare delivery and well-being, safety and bias evaluation; anticipating impacts of AI on society
Methods: Natural Language Processing & LLMs; data science; longitudinal methods, machine learning, and psychological assessment through AI
Mental and physical health: depression and anxiety; health psychology: heart disease and opioid addiction
Well-being: emotion, life satisfaction, and purpose, and their individual and societal causes -
Liran Einav
Charles R. Schwab Professor of Economics and Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research
Biohttps://leinav.people.stanford.edu/bio
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Keith Ekiss
Lecturer, English
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsPoetry, Translation, Speculative Literature.
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Cameron Ellis
Assistant Professor of Psychology
BioDr. Cameron Ellis is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology. He leads the Scaffolding of Cognition Team, which focuses on the question: What is it like to be an infant? His team uses methods from neuroscience and cognitive science to assess the basic building blocks of the developing mind and answer this question. They are particularly interested in questions about how infants perceive, attend, learn, and remember. One prominent approach they use is fMRI with awake behaving infants. This provides unprecedented ways to access the cognitive mechanisms underlying the infant mind.
Dr. Ellis received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 2021. Before that, he received a Masters from Princeton University (2017) and a Bachelor of Science from Auckland University, New Zealand (2013). He was awarded the FLUX Dissertation Prize (2021) and the James Grossman Dissertation Prize (2021), as well as the William Kessen Teaching Award (2019). -
Ameneh Shervin Emami
Advanced Lecturer, Language Ctr
BioShervin Emami is Persian Language and Literature Lecturer in the Stanford Language Center. She is completing her dissertation, titled “Persian Contemporary Magical Realism through the Lens of Allegorical and Mystical Writings in Persian Classical Literature,” at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She received her M.A. in Middle Eastern History from California State University-Fullerton, and her M.A. in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures from UCLA. Before arriving at Stanford, she taught at UCLA, University of California-Irvine, and University of California-Berkeley.
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Donald Emmerson
Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Emeritus
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsSoutheast Asia; ASEAN; Indonesia; China; regionalism; Islamism; democracy; governance; U.S. foreign policy; and the sociology of scholarly knowledge
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Barbara Elizabeth Engelhardt
Professor (Research) of Biomedical Data Science and, by courtesy, of Statistics and of Computer Science
BioBarbara E Engelhardt is a Senior Investigator at Gladstone Institutes and Professor at Stanford University in the Department of Biomedical Data Science. She received her B.S. (Symbolic Systems) and M.S. (Computer Science) from Stanford University and her PhD from UC Berkeley (EECS) advised my Prof. Michael I Jordan. She was a postdoctoral fellow with Prof. Matthew Stephens at the University of Chicago. She was an Assistant Professor at Duke University from 2011-2014, and an Assistant, Associate, and then Full Professor at Princeton University in Computer Science from 2014-2022. She has worked at Jet Propulsion Labs, Google Research, 23andMe, and Genomics plc. In her career, she received an NSF GRFP, the Google Anita Borg Scholarship, the SMBE Walter M. Fitch Prize (2004), a Sloan Faculty Fellowship, an NSF CAREER, and the ISCB Overton Prize (2021). Her research is focused on developing and applying models for structured biomedical data that capture patterns in the data, predict results of interventions to the system, assist with decision-making support, and prioritize experiments for design and engineering of biological systems.
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David Epel
Jane and Marshall Steel Jr. Professor of Marine Sciences, Emeritus
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsEcological Developmental Biology
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Saadet Ebru Ergul
Lecturer, Language Ctr
BioSaadet Ebru Ergul serves as the Special Language Program Coordinator at the Stanford University Language Center, where she teaches both graduate and undergraduate Turkish courses. She earned a B.A. from Bilkent University, an M.B.A. from Başkent University, and an M.A. in Applied Linguistics (with an additional focus on French) from Texas Tech University. Ebru is a writing proficiency rater (WPT) and oral proficiency tester (OPI) for the Turkish Language and takes part in various academic, non-academic projects as a Turkish language expert. Her research interests include oral proficiency assessment, teaching Turkish through interculturality and social justice, curriculum development, and national language standards for Turkish. She is also the co-author of a Turkish language textbook 'Konuşan Paragraflar'. She is the past president of the American Association of Teachers of Turkic Languages (AATT) and currently serving as a boad member at National Council of Less Commonly Taught Languages (NCOLCTL). She loves figure skating and psychedelic Anatolian rock music.
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Amir Eshel
Edward Clark Crossett Professor of Humanistic Studies and Professor of Comparative Literature
BioAmir Eshel is Edward Clark Crossett Professor of Humanistic Studies. He is Professor of German Studies and Comparative Literature and as of 2019 Director of Comparative Literature and its graduate program. His Stanford affiliations include The Taube Center for Jewish Studies, Modern Thought & Literature, and The Europe Center at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He is also the faculty director of Stanford’s research group on The Contemporary and of the Poetic Media Lab at Stanford’s Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA). His research focuses on contemporary literature and the arts as they touch on philosophy, specifically on memory, history, political thought, and ethics.
Amir Eshel is the author of Poetic Thinking Today (Stanford University Press, 2019); German translation at Suhrkamp Verlag, 2020). Previous books include Futurity: Contemporary Literature and the Quest for the Past (The University of Chicago Press in 2013). The German version of the book, Zukünftigkeit: Die zeitgenössische Literatur und die Vergangenheit, appeared in 2012 with Suhrkamp Verlag. Together with Rachel Seelig, he co-edited The German-Hebrew Dialogue: Studies of Encounter and Exchange (2018). In 2014, he co-edited with Ulrich Baer a book of essays on Hannah Arendt, Hannah Arendt: zwischen den Disziplinen; and also co-edited a book of essays on Barbara Honigmann with Yfaat Weiss, Kurz hinter der Wahrheit und dicht neben der Lüge (2013).
Earlier scholarship includes the books Zeit der Zäsur: Jüdische Lyriker im Angesicht der Shoah (1999), and Das Ungesagte Schreiben: Israelische Prosa und das Problem der Palästinensischen Flucht und Vertreibung (2006). Amir Eshel has also published essays on Franz Kafka, Hannah Arendt, Paul Celan, Dani Karavan, Gerhard Richter, W.G. Sebald, Günter Grass, Alexander Kluge, Barbara Honigmann, Durs Grünbein, Dan Pagis, S. Yizhar, and Yoram Kaniyuk.
Amir Eshel’s poetry includes a 2018 book with the artist Gerhard Richter, Zeichnungen/רישומים, a work which brings together 25 drawings by Richter from the clycle 40 Tage and Eshel’s bi-lingual poetry in Hebrew and German. In 2020, Mossad Bialik brings his Hebrew poetry collection בין מדבר למדבר, Between Deserts.
Amir Eshel is a recipient of fellowships from the Alexander von Humboldt and the Friedrich Ebert foundations and received the Award for Distinguished Teaching from the School of Humanities and Sciences. -
John Evans
Lecturer, English
BioJohn W. Evans is the author of The Fight Journal (Rattle, 2023), Should I Still Wish: A Memoir (University of Nebraska Press, 2017), Young Widower: A Memoir (University of Nebraska Press, 2014), and The Consolations: Poems (Trio House Press, 2014).
His books have won prizes including the Rattle Chapbook Prize, the River Teeth Book Prize, the Peace Corps Writers Book Prize, a ForeWord Reviews Book Prize, the Sawtooth Poetry Prize, and the Trio Award. Should I Still Wish was selected by Poets and Writers magazine as a “new and noteworthy” title of January/February 2017, and is published in the American Lives Series.
His work appears or is forthcoming in The Missouri Review (2016 Editor’s Prize Finalist), Poets & Writers, Slate, Boston Review, The Southern Review, New Letters, ZYZZYVA, The Rumpus, The Flyfish Journal, Pangyrus, and Best American Essays 2011 (Honorable Mention), as well as the chapbooks, No Season (FWQ, 2011) and Zugzwang (RockSaw, 2009).
John was previously the Phyllis Draper Lecturer in Nonfiction at Stanford University, where he is also the Lecturer of DCI Memoir. He was previously a Jones Lecturer and a Wallace Stegner Fellow. At Stanford, John has been recognized as a “favorite professor” by the women’s basketball, water polo, field hockey, and volleyball teams, as well as the Knight Fellows and the DCI Fellows. He lives with his three young sons in East Palo Alto, where he serves on the board of the local YMCA. -
Judith Ellen Fan
Assistant Professor of Psychology, by courtesy, of Education and of Computer Science
BioI direct the Cognitive Tools Lab (https://cogtoolslab.github.io/) at Stanford University. Our lab aims to reverse engineer the human cognitive toolkit—in particular, how people use physical representations of thought to learn, communicate, and solve problems. Toward this end, we use a combination of approaches from cognitive science, computational neuroscience, and artificial intelligence to achieve deeper understanding of quintessentially human ways of thinking and imagining. Our broader goal is to leverage such scientific understanding of human cognition to guide the development of technologies that augment human agency and creativity.
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Shanhui Fan
Joseph and Hon Mai Goodman Professor of the School of Engineering, Senior Fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy and Professor, by courtesy, of Applied Physics
BioFan's research interests are in fundamental studies of nanophotonic structures, especially photonic crystals and meta-materials, and applications of these structures in energy and information technology applications
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Michael Fayer
David Mulvane Ehrsam and Edward Curtis Franklin Professor of Chemistry
BioMy research group studies complex molecular systems by using ultrafast multi-dimensional infrared and non-linear UV/Vis methods. A basic theme is to understand the role of mesoscopic structure on the properties of molecular systems. Many systems have structure on length scales large compare to molecules but small compared to macroscopic dimensions. The mesoscopic structures occur on distance scales of a few nanometers to a few tens of nanometers. The properties of systems, such as water in nanoscopic environments, room temperature ionic liquids, functionalized surfaces, liquid crystals, metal organic frameworks, water and other liquids in nanoporous silica, polyelectrolyte fuel cell membranes, vesicles, and micelles depend on molecular level dynamics and intermolecular interactions. Our ultrafast measurements provide direct observables for understanding the relationships among dynamics, structure, and intermolecular interactions.
Bulk properties are frequently a very poor guide to understanding the molecular level details that determine the nature of a chemical process and its dynamics. Because molecules are small, molecular motions are inherently very fast. Recent advances in methodology developed in our labs make it possible for us to observe important processes as they occur. These measurements act like stop-action photography. To focus on a particular aspect of a time evolving system, we employ sequences of ultrashort pulses of light as the basis for non-linear methods such as ultrafast infrared two dimensional vibrational echoes, optical Kerr effect methods, and ultrafast IR transient absorption experiments.
We are using ultrafast 2D IR vibrational echo spectroscopy and other multi-dimensional IR methods, which we have pioneered, to study dynamics of molecular complexes, water confined on nm lengths scales with a variety of topographies, molecules bound to surfaces, ionic liquids, and materials such as metal organic frameworks and porous silica. We can probe the dynamic structures these systems. The methods are somewhat akin to multidimensional NMR, but they probe molecular structural evolution in real time on the relevant fast time scales, eight to ten orders of magnitude faster than NMR. We are obtaining direct information on how nanoscopic confinement of water changes its properties, a topic of great importance in chemistry, biology, geology, and materials. For the first time, we are observing the motions of molecular bound to surfaces. In biological membranes, we are using the vibrational echo methods to study dynamics and the relationship among dynamics, structure, and function. We are also developing and applying theory to these problems frequently in collaboration with top theoreticians.
We are studying dynamics in complex liquids, in particular room temperature ionic liquids, liquid crystals, supercooled liquids, as well as in influence of small quantities of water on liquid dynamics. Using ultrafast optical heterodyne detected optical Kerr effect methods, we can follow processes from tens of femtoseconds to ten microseconds. Our ability to look over such a wide range of time scales is unprecedented. The change in molecular dynamics when a system undergoes a phase change is of fundamental and practical importance. We are developing detailed theory as the companion to the experiments.
We are studying photo-induced proton transfer in nanoscopic water environments such as polyelectrolyte fuel cell membranes, using ultrafast UV/Vis fluorescence and multidimensional IR measurements to understand the proton transfer and other processes and how they are influenced by nanoscopic confinement. We want to understand the role of the solvent and the systems topology on proton transfer dynamics. -
James Fearon
Theodore and Frances Geballe Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Current Research and Scholarly Interestspolitical violence
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Ben Feldman
Associate Professor of Physics
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsHow do material properties change as a result of interactions among electrons, and what is the nature of the new phases that result? What novel physical phenomena and functionality (e.g., symmetry breaking or topological excitations) can be realized by combining materials and device elements to produce emergent behavior? How can we leverage nontraditional measurement techniques to gain new insight into quantum materials? These are some of the overarching questions we seek to address in our research.
We are interested in a variety of quantum systems, especially those composed of two-dimensional flakes and heterostructures. This class of materials has been shown to exhibit an incredible variability in their properties, with the further benefit that they are highly tunable through gating and applied fields. -
Jessica Feldman
Associate Professor of Biology
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsCell differentiation requires cells to polarize, translating developmental information into cell-type specific arrangements of intracellular structures. The major goal of the research in my laboratory is to understand how cells build these functional intracellular patterns during development, specifically focusing on the molecules and mechanisms that build microtubules at cell-type specific locations and the polarity cues that guide this patterning in epithelial cells.
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Marcus Feldman
Burnet C. and Mildred Finley Wohlford Professor
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsHuman genetic and cultural evolution, mathematical biology, demography of China
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Anne Fernald
Josephine Knotts Knowles Professor of Human Biology, Emerita
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsWorking with English- and Spanish-learning children from diverse socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds, our research examines the importance of early language experience in supporting language development. We are deeply involved in community-based research in San Jose, designing an innovative parent-engagement program for low-resource Latino families with young children. We are also conducting field studies of beliefs about child development and caregiver-child interaction in rural villages in Senegal. A central goal of this translational research is to help parents understand their vital role in facilitating children’s language and cognitive growth.
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Russell D. Fernald
Benjamin Scott Crocker Professor of Human Biology, Emeritus
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsIn the course of evolution,two of the strongest selective forces in nature,light and sex, have left their mark on living organisms. I am interested in how the development and function of the nervous system reflects these events. We use the reproductive system to understand how social behavior influences the main system of reproductive action controlled by a collection of cells in the brain containing gonodotropin releasing hormone(GnRH)
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Brian Ferneyhough
The William H. Bonsall Professor in Music, Emeritus
BioStudies with Ton de Leeuw, Amsterdam Conservatory, and Klaus Huber, Basel Conservatory.
Awards: Mendelssohn Scholarship, 1968; Lady Holland Composition Award, Royal Academy of Music, 1967; Grand Prix du Disque, 1978 and 1982; Gaudeamus Music Week Prizes 1969 and 1970; Composition Stipend, City of Basle, 1969-71; Koussevitsky Prize 1978; Composition Stipend of Southwest German Radio, 1974-5; Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Artes et des Lettres, Paris 1984; Associate Royal Academy of Music, 1990; Royal Philharmonic Award for Chamber Music Composition, 1996; Fellow, Birmingham Conservatoire, 1995; Elected Member of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, 1996; Fellow, Royal Academy of Music, 1998; Elected Corresponding Member of the Bayrische Akademie der Schönen Künste 2005.
Activities: member of International Jury ISCM, 1980 (Finland) and 1988 (Hong Kong); member jury Gaudeamus Composition Competition 1983; member of International Reading Panel, IRCAM, 1993 & 1999; member of Kranichsteiner Preis Jury, Darmstadt, 1978-96; member of board, Perspectives of New Music 1995-present.
Compositions featured throughout the world and at all the major European festivals of contemporary music. Compositions include: Fourth String Quartet, Bone Alphabet, Terrain, Allgebrah, Incipits, Unsichtbare Farben, String Trio. His opera Shadowtime was premiered as part of the Munich Biennale 2004, and has been taken to Paris, New York, Bochum and London 2004-5. In 2006, it was staged in Stockholm, Sweden. In October 2006, his orchestral piece Plötzlichkeit was premiered at the Donaueschingen Festival, Germany. His Fifth String Quartet was premiered in Witten and later played in the Aldeburgh and Salzburg Festivals.
Publications: Collected Writings, Harwood Academic Publishers, 1998; POETIK, and various articles and interviews. -
Chris Field
Melvin and Joan Lane Professor of Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies, Director, Woods Institute for the Environment & Professor of Earth System Science, of Biology and Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute and at the Precourt Institute
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsResearch
My field is climate-change science, and my research emphasizes human-ecological interactions across many disciplines. Most studies include aspects of ecology, but also aspects of law, sociology, medicine, or engineering. -
Paula Findlen
Ubaldo Pierotti Professor of Italian History and Professor, by courtesy, of French and Italian
BioI have taught the early history of science and medicine for many years on the premise that one of the most important ways to understand how science, medicine and technology have become so central to contemporary society comes from examining the process by which scientific knowledge emerged. I also take enormous pleasure in examining a kind of scientific knowledge that did not have an autonomous existence from other kinds of creative endeavors, but emerged in the context of humanistic approaches to the world (in defiance of C.P. Snow's claim that the modern world is one of "two cultures" that share very little in common). More generally, I am profoundly attracted to individuals in the past who aspired to know everything. It still seems like a worthy goal.
My other principal interest lies in understanding the world of the Renaissance, with a particular focus on Italy. I continue to be fascinated by a society that made politics, economics and culture so important to its self-definition, and that obviously succeeded in all these endeavors for some time, as the legacy of such figures as Machiavelli and Leonardo suggests. Renaissance Italy, in short, is a historical laboratory for understanding the possibilities and the problems of an innovative society. As such, it provides an interesting point of comparison to Gilded Age America, where magnates such as J.P. Morgan often described themselves as the "new Medici," and to other historical moments when politics, art and society combined fruitfully.
Finally, I have a certain interest in the relations between gender, culture and knowledge. Virginia Woolf rightfully observed at the beginning of the twentieth century that one could go to a library and find a great deal about women but very little that celebrated or supported their accomplishments. This is no longer true a century later, in large part thanks to the efforts of many scholars, male and female, who have made the work of historical women available to modern readers and who have begun to look at relations between the sexes in more sophisticated ways. Our own debates and disagreements on such issues make this subject all the more important to understand.
