School of Humanities and Sciences


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  • Robert Harrison

    Robert Harrison

    Rosina Pierotti Professor of Italian Literature, Emeritus

    BioProfessor Harrison received his doctorate in Romance Studies from Cornell University in 1984, with a dissertation on Dante's Vita Nuova. In 1985 he accepted a visiting assistant professorship in the Department of French and Italian at Stanford. In 1986 he joined the faculty as an assistant professor. He was granted tenure in 1992 and was promoted to full professor in 1995. In 1997 Stanford offered him the Rosina Pierotti Chair of Italian Literature. In 2002, he was named chair of the Department of French and Italian. In 2006 he became a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. In 2014 he was knighted "Chevalier" by the French Republic. He is also lead guitarist for the cerebral rock band Glass Wave.

    Professor Harrison's first book, The Body of Beatrice, was published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 1988. The Body of Beatrice was translated into Japanese in 1994. Over the next few years Professor Harrison worked on his next book, Forests: The Shadow of Civilization, which appeared in 1992 with University of Chicago Press. This book deals with the multiple and complex ways in which the Western imagination has symbolized, represented, and conceived of forests, primarily in literature, religion, and mythology. It offers a select history that begins in antiquity and ends in our own time. Forests appeared simultaneously in English, French, Italian, and German. It subsequently appeared in Japanese and Korean as well. In 1994 his book Rome, la Pluie: A Quoi Bon Littérature? appeared in France, Italy, and Germany. This book is written in the form of dialogues between two characters and deals with various topics such as art restoration, the vocation of literature, and the place of the dead in contemporary society. Professor Harrison's next book, The Dominion of the Dead, published in 2003 by University of Chicago Press, deals with the relations the living maintain with the dead in diverse secular realms. This book was translated into German, French and Italian. Professor Harrison's book Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition appeared in 2008 with the University of Chicago Press, and in French with Le Pommier (subsequently appeared in German and Chinese translations). His most recent book Juvenescence: A Cultural History of Our Age came out in 2014 with Chicago University Press. In 2005 Harrison started a literary talk show on KZSU radio called "Entitled Opinions." The show features hour long conversations with a variety of scholars, writers, and scientists.

  • David Hills

    David Hills

    Associate Professor (Teaching) of Philosophy

    BioI did my undergraduate work at Amherst and went on to graduate school at Princeton. Since then I've taught at Harvard, UCLA, The University of Pennsylvania, The University of Michigan, Berkeley, and Stanford. I resumed my graduate career a little while back -- from a distance, as it were -- receiving the PhD in 2005.

    I'm married to another philosopher, Krista Lawlor.

    My interests continue to center in aesthetics, but they have spilled over into pretty much every branch of philosophy at one time or another.

    Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, 34: Im Rennen der Philosophie gewinnt, wer am langsamsten laufen kann. Oder: der, der das Ziel zuletzt erreicht. (In philosophy the race is to the one who can run slowest — the one who crosses the finish line last.) I'm not sure I believe this, but it's a comforting thing to read.

  • Hector Hoyos

    Hector Hoyos

    Professor of Iberian and Latin American Cultures and, by courtesy, of Comparative Literature

    BioHéctor Hoyos is a scholar of modern Latin American and comparative literature. He writes about ideological critiques of globalization in the post-1989 Latin American novel, the articulation of critical theory and new materialism in the region’s cultural production, and related topics. His current monograph in progress examines the works of Gabriel García Márquez from a law and humanities perspective.