School of Humanities and Sciences
Showing 1-50 of 67 Results
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Marisa Galvez
Professor of French and Italian and, by courtesy, of German Studies and of Comparative Literature
BioMarisa Galvez specializes in the literature of the Middle Ages in France and Western Europe, especially the poetry and narrative literature written in Occitan and Old French. Her areas of interest include the troubadours, vernacular poetics, the intersection of performance and literary cultures, and the critical history of medieval studies as a discipline. At Stanford, she currently teaches courses on medieval and Renaissance French literature and love lyric, as well as interdisciplinary upper level courses on the medieval imaginary in modern literature, film, and art.
Her first book, Songbook: How Lyrics Became Poetry in Medieval Europe (University of Chicago Press, 2012, awarded John Nicholas Brown Prize from the Medieval Academy of America), treats what poetry was before the emergence of the modern category, “poetry”: that is, how vernacular songbooks of the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries shaped our modern understanding of poetry by establishing expectations of what is a poem, what is a poet, and what is lyric poetry itself. The first comparative study of songbooks, the book concerns three vernacular traditions—Occitan, Middle High German, and Castilian—and analyzes how the songbook emerged from its original performance context of oral publication, into a medium for preservation, and finally became a literary object that performs the interests of poets and readers.
Her second book, The Subject of Crusade:Lyric, Romance, and Materials, 1150-1500 (University of Chicago Press, 2020) examines how the crusader subject of vernacular literature sought to reconcile secular ideals about love and chivalry with crusade. This study places this literature in dialogue with new ideas about penance and confession that emerged from the second half of the twelfth century to the end of the thirteenth. Subject argues that poetic articulations are crucial for understanding the crusades as a complex cultural and historical phenomenon, and examines another version of speaking crusades, in which lyric, romance and materials such as tapestries, textiles, and tombstones manifest ambivalence about crusade ideals. -
Hester Gelber
Professor of Religious Studies and, by courtesy, of German Studies, Emerita
BioHester Gelber specializes in late medieval religious thought. She has taught courses on philosophy of religion as well as medieval Christianity. She has written extensively on medieval Dominicans, including: Exploring the Boundaries of Reason: Three Questions on the Nature of God by Robert Holcot OP and most recently It Could Have Been Otherwise: Contingency and Necessity in Dominican Theology at Oxford 1300-1350. She has now retired.
Professor Gelber received her Ph.D. in History from the University of Wisconsin in 1974 and has taught at Stanford since 1978, beginning as a part-time lecturer in Philosophy before moving to Religious Studies in 1982. -
Albert Gelpi
Coe Professor of American Literature, Emeritus
BioFULL NAME: Albert Joseph Gelpi
ACADEMIC ADDRESS: Department of English
Stanford University, Stanford CA 94305
HOME ADDRESS: 870 Tolman Drive, Stanford CA 94305
BIRTH: July 19, 1931, New Orleans, Louisiana
FAMILY: Married Barbara Charlesworth, June 14 1965
Children: Christopher, born 1966; Adrienne, born 1970
EDUCATION: A. B. Loyola University (New Orleans, 1951
M. A. Tulane University, 1956
Ph. D. Harvard University, 1962
ACADEMIC POSITIONS:
Assistant Professor, Harvard University, 1962-68
Head Tutor, Department of English, Harvard University, 1965-68
Associate Professor, Stanford University, 1968-74
Director of Graduate Studies, Department of English, Stanford, 1969-72, 1978-80
Professor, Stanford University, 1974-1999
William Robertson Coe Professor of American Literature, 1978-1999
Guggenheim Fellow, 1977-78
Vice Chair, Department of English, Stanford University, 1979-81, 1988-97
Chair, American Studies, Stanford University, 1976-77, 1989-90, 1994-97
Associate Dean of Graduate Studies & Research, Stanford University, 1980-85
Chair, Department of English, 1985-88
William Robertson Coe Professor of American Literature, emeritus, 1999—
PUBLISHED BOOKS:
Emily Dickinson: The Mind of the Poet, Harvard University Press, 1965, paperback W. W. Norton, 1971
The Poet in America, 1650 to the Present, D. C. Heath, 9173
Adrienne Rich’s Poetry (edited with Barbara Charlesworth Gelpi), W. W. Norton, 1973
The Tenth Muse: The Psyche of the American Poet, Harvard University Press, 1975; reissued with new introduction Cambridge University Press, 1991
Wallace Stevens: The Poetics of Modernism, Cambridge University Press, 1986
A Coherent Splendor: The American Poetic Renaissance 1910-1950, Cambridge University Press, 1987
Adrienne Rich’s Poetry and Prose (edited with Barbara Charlesworth Gelpi, W. W. Norton, 1992
Denise Levertov: Selected Criticism, University of Michigan Press, 1993
The Blood of the Poet: Selected Poems of William Everson, Broken Moon Press, 1994
Living in Time: The Poetry of C. Day Lewis, Oxford University Press, 1993
A Whole New Poetry Beginning Here: Adrienne Rich in the Eighties and Nineties (edited with Jacqueline Brogan), Women’s Studies, 1998
The Wild God of the World: An Anthology of Robinson Jeffers, Stanford University Press, 2003
Dark God of Eros: A William Everson Reader, Heyday Books, 2003
The Letters of Robert Duncan and Denise Levertov (edited with Robert J. Bertholf), Stanford University Press, 2004
Robert Duncan and Denise Levertov:The Poetry of Politics, the Politics of Poetry (edited with Robert J. Bertholf), Stanford University Press, 2006
American Poetry after Modernism: The Power of the Word, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015
C. Day-Lewis, The Golden Bridle: Selected Prose (edited with Bernard O’Donoghue) Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017
Adrienne Rich: Poetry and Prose (edited with Barbara Charlesworth Gelpi &Brett Millier) New York: W. W. Norton, 2018
Adrienne Rich, Selectred Poems (edited with barbara Charlesworth Gelpi & Brett Millier) New York:W> W> Worton, 2018 -
Vera Geranpayeh
Ph.D. Student in German Studies, admitted Autumn 2024
Ph.D. Minor, Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality StudiesCurrent Research and Scholarly InterestsVera Geranpayeh is a PhD candidate in German Studies. Her dissertation investigates how Vera Geranpayeh is a PhD Student in German Studies and PhD Minor in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Stanford University. Her dissertation investigates how gender structures narrative movement in medieval German romance, focusing on minor female figures who remain structurally marginal yet narratively indispensable. She develops a framework for understanding how these figures catalyze plot progression through epistemic authority, mediation, and mobility, while remaining excluded from patriarchal mechanisms of narrative closure, such as minne and marriage.
In addition to her dissertation, she is developing a critical edition and English translation of a vernacular 1593 Franconian aristocratic household cookbook Ein koch büchlein vonn allerley speiß wie man sie kochen soll (1593). This project examines domestic authorship, women’s custodianship of culinary and medical knowledge, and the transmission of embodied expertise across generations.
Her research is further informed by training in Yiddish and a focused interest in early modern Yiddish texts, particularly domestic and practical writing, charms and magical materials, and the Yiddish Epic tradition.
She is also the student initiator of SCRIPTA, an interdisciplinary research group on gender, knowledge, and agency in premodern manuscript cultures, which combines theoretical discussion with hands-on archival work in Stanford’s Special Collections and hosts workshops with invited scholars.
She is the recipient of the Clayman Institute’s 2025 Marilyn Yalom Research Prize.
Her broader research spans queer survival, female bonds, and desire in nineteenth-century and fin-de-siècle German literature. She is the recipient of the Clayman Institute’s 2025 Marilyn Yalom Research Prize. -
Jonathan Gienapp
Professor of History and of Law
BioJonathan Gienapp is Professor of History and Professor of Law. He specializes in the constitutional, political, legal, and intellectual history of the early United States. His primary focus to date has been the origins and development of the U.S. Constitution, in particular the ways in which Founding-era Americans understood and debated constitutionalism across the nation's early decades. His historical interests intersect with modern legal debates over constitutional interpretation and theory, especially those centered on the theory of constitutional originalism.
His first book, *The Second Creation: Fixing the American Constitution in the Founding Era* (Harvard University Press, Belknap, 2018), rethinks the conventional story of American constitutional creation by exploring how and why founding-era Americans’ understanding of their Constitution transformed in the earliest years of the document’s existence. It won the 2017 Thomas J. Wilson Memorial Prize from Harvard University Press and the 2019 Best Book in American Political Thought Award from the American Political Science Association and was a finalist for the 2019 Frederick Jackson Turner Award from the Organization of American Historians. In addition, it was named a Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2019 and a Spectator USA Book of the Year for 2018.
His second book, *Against Constitutional Originalism: A Historical Critique* (Yale University Press, 2024), critiques originalism's engagement with history. It argues that recovering Founding-era constitutionalism on its own terms fundamentally challenges originalists' unspoken assumptions about the U.S. Constitution and its original meaning and thereby the foundation of the theory itself. He wrote about the book's themes in connection with the current Supreme Court. The book won the 2025 Order of the Coif Book Award from the Association of American Law Schools, was longlisted for the 2025 Cundill History Prize, and was named a History Today Book of the Year for 2024. It has been reviewed in several high-profile venues, including The Washington Post and The Nation.
Gienapp's next book is on the forgotten history of the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution, currently entitled "We the People of the United States: The Struggle over Popular Sovereignty and Nationhood." It tells the story of the Preamble's early vitality and eventual descent into political and legal irrelevance as a way of exploring how constitutional thinking changed across American history.
Gienapp has also published a range of articles, book chapters, and essays on early American constitutionalism, politics, and intellectual history, modern constitutional interpretation, and the study of the history of ideas.
He is a member of the Historians Council on the Constitution at the Brennan Center for Justice and has contributed to a number of amicus briefs to the Supreme Court of the United States. He is one of the founding editors of the Journal of American Constitutional History where he serves as a senior editorial advisor. He is also a member of the Stanford Civics Initiative and a charter member of the Alliance for Civics in the Academy.
In addition to his scholarship, Gienapp has been widely recognized for his teaching. At Stanford, he has been awarded the Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching (the university's highest teaching award), the Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Prize, and the Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching in the School of Humanities and Sciences in the area of First Years of Teaching. Beyond Stanford, he has been awarded the Excellence in Teaching Award from the Phi Beta Kappa Northern California Association. -
Ellaheh Gohari
Undergraduate, English
Stanford Student Employee, Haas Center for Public Service
Undergraduate, Science, Technology and SocietyBioMy name is Ellaheh Gohari, a Science, Technology, and Society major on the Data Science track. I minor in Screenwriting. I work for the Haas Center as a Cardinal Careers Student Assistant and ultimately hope to be a lawyer.
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Mario Alberto Gomez Zamora
Lecturer, Theater and Performance Studies
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMario A. Gómez Zamora’s first book project explores the cultural tensions that queer Indigenous P’urhépechas face when participating in their communities’ traditions. Through the lens of queer theory, dance studies, and performance studies, Mario analyzes how Indigenous communities reproduce colonial violence against queer individuals in the present, and how queer P’urhépechas work toward new futures through danzas and performances in P’urhépecha fiestas and ceremonies while they claim their indigeneity as part of the collective in Michoacán and among those P’urhépechas who migrated to the Pacific Coast and Midwest of the United States. To trace the stories of marginalized Indigenous people in both their homelands and in sites of migration, Mario combines Indigenous methodologies, such as talking-while-walking through the landscape, with oral histories, semi-structured interviews, participant observations, and archival research. His scholarship reshapes queer studies, migration studies, and performance studies by examining how queer P’urhépechas are embraced by the collective via their participation in danzas as female characters but are still subjects of anti-gay violence and death beyond the performance space. This is a project of hope, life, and resistance to the hegemonic normativity in the P’urhépecha landscape.
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Roland Greene
Director, Stanford Humanities Center, Mark Pigott KBE Professor, Anthony P. Meier Family Professor of the Humanities and Professor of Comparative Literature and, by courtesy, of Iberian and Latin American Cultures
BioRoland Greene's research and teaching are concerned with the early modern literatures of England, Latin Europe, and the transatlantic world, and with poetry and poetics from the Renaissance to the present.
His most recent book is Five Words: Critical Semantics in the Age of Shakespeare and Cervantes (Chicago, 2013). Five Words proposes an understanding of early modern culture through the changes embodied in five words or concepts over the sixteenth century: in English, blood, invention, language, resistance, and world, and their counterparts in French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese.
Other books include Unrequited Conquests: Love and Empire in the Colonial Americas (Chicago, 1999), which follows the love poetry of the Renaissance into fresh political and colonial contexts in the New World; and Post-Petrarchism: Origins and Innovations of the Western Lyric Sequence (Princeton, 1991), a transhistorical and comparative study of lyric poetics through the fortunes of the lyric sequence from Petrarch to Neruda. Greene is the editor with Elizabeth Fowler of The Project of Prose in Early Modern Europe and the New World (Cambridge, 1997). His essays address topics such as the colonial baroque, Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene and Amoretti, Sir Thomas Wyatt's poetry, and Shakespeare's The Tempest.
Greene is editor in chief of the fourth edition of the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, which was published in 2012. Prepared in collaboration with the general editor Stephen Cushman and the associate editors Clare Cavanagh, Jahan Ramazani, and Paul Rouzer, this edition represents a complete revision of the most authoritative reference book on poetry and poetics.
In 2015-16 he served as President of the Modern Language Association.
At Stanford Greene has been co-chair and founder of two research workshops in which most of his Ph.D. students participate. Renaissances brings together early modernists from the Bay Area to discuss work in progress, while the Poetics Workshop provides a venue for innovative scholarship in the broad field of international and historical poetics.
Greene has taught at Harvard and Oregon, where for six years he was chair of the Department of Comparative Literature. He has held fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Danforth Foundation, among others. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
