School of Humanities and Sciences
Showing 1-100 of 155 Results
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Gabriella Safran
Senior Associate Dean of Humanities and Arts, Eva Chernov Lokey Professor of Jewish Studies, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures and, by courtesy, of German Studies and of Comparative Literature
BioGabriella Safran has written on Russian, Polish, Yiddish, and French literatures and cultures. Her most recent monograph, Wandering Soul: The Dybbuk's Creator, S. An-sky (Harvard, 2010), is a biography of an early-twentieth-century Russian-Yiddish writer who was also an ethnographer, a revolutionary, and a wartime relief worker.
Safran teaches and writes on Russian literature, Yiddish literature, folklore, and folkloristics. She is now working on two monograph projects: one on how people in the Russian Empire listened across social lines, recorded and imitated others’ voices in various media, and reflected on listening and vocal imitation, from the 1830s to the 1880s, and the other on the international pre-history of the Jewish joke.
For more information about her activities and publications, see https://dlcl.stanford.edu/people/gabriella-safran -
Jose Saldivar
Leon Sloss, Jr. Professor and Professor, by courtesy, of Iberian and Latin American Cultures
BioJosé David Saldívar is a scholar of late postcontemporary culture, especially the minoritized literatures of the United States, Latin America, and the transamerican hemisphere, and of border narrative and poetics from the sixteenth century to the present.
He is the author of The Dialectics of Our America: Genealogy, Cultural Critique, and Literary History (Duke University Press, 1991), Border Matters: Remapping American Cultural Studies (University of California Press, 1997), and Trans-Americanity: Subaltern Modernities, Global Coloniality, and the Cultures of Greater Mexico (Duke University Press, 2012),coeditor (with Monica Hanna and Jennifer Harford Vargas) of Junot Díaz and the Decolonial Imagination (Duke University Press, 2016) coeditor (with Héctor Calderón) of Criticism in the Borderlands (Duke University Press, 1991), and editor of The Rolando Hinojosa Reader (Arte Público Press, 1985).
Additionally, he has published numerous articles in journals such as Cultural Studies, American Literary History, The Americas Review, Revista Casa de las Américas, Daedalus, Modern Fiction Studies, and The Global South. He has served on the editorial boards of Duke University Press, the University of California Press, and currently serves on the editorial boards of the journals American Literary History, The Global South, Aztlan, and World Knowledges Otherwise. He has received personal research grants from The Ford Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the University of California President's Research Fellowship in the Humanities, the William Rice Kimball Fellowship, Stanford Humanities Center, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford (invitation for a future visit).
His teaching is divided evenly between graduate seminars and undergraduate courses, and some of his undergraduate courses are cross-listed in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity.
In 2003, he received the Distinguished Achievement Award for Literary and Cultural Criticism from the Western Literature Association; in 2005, he received the Chicano Scholar of the Year Award from the Modern Language Association; in 2007 he received the Sarlo Distinguished Graduate Student Mentoring Award from the University of California, Berkeley; and in 2016, he was the winner of the American Literature Society’s highest honor, the Jay B. Hubbell Medal. The medal is sponsored by the American Literature Society, an allied organization of the Modern Language Association, and is awarded annually to one “scholar whose lifetime of scholarly work has significantly advanced the study of American literature.” . Before coming to Stanford in January 2010, Saldívar was the Class of 1942 Professor of English and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. -
Ramon Saldivar
Hoagland Family Professor of Humanities and Sciences and Professor of English, of Comparative Literature and, by courtesy, of Iberian and Latin American Cultures
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMy current research is concerned with the relationships among race, form, genre, representing what Jeffrey T. Nealon has recently term the “post-postmodern.” In the latest version of this research presented at the John-F.-Kennedy-Institut für Nordamerikastudien, Freie Universität Berlin I use Sesshu Foster's "Atomik Aztex" as an example twenty-first century racial imaginaries. Part fantasy, part hallucinatory sur-realism, part muckraking novel in the grand realist protest tradition of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (1906), part historical novel in the mode of Vassily Grossman’s great Stalinist era masterpiece, Life & Fate (1980) set during the battle of Stalingrad, part ethnographic history about religious, military, and social structure of the pre-Columbian Aztec (Nahua, Mexica) world, part LA noir, and wholly Science Fiction alternative and counterfactual history, it exemplifies many of the criteria of the “post-postmodern.” Moreover, in addition to this range of formal matters, Atomik Aztex is concerned with two other topics:
•a reconceptualization of the way that race affects the formations of history, and
•the reshaping of the form of the novel in order to represent that reconceptualization.
With eighty-two characters populating the story, itself a plotted compendium of at least two radically separate yet intertwined universes of action, in a continually shifting movement from past, present, and future times, Atomik Aztex is a radical experiment in novelistic form. Using the tools of quantitative formalism developed for literary use by the Stanford University Literary Lab, I wish to show how the work of the computational humanities, in conjunction with traditional hermeneutic methods of literary analysis can help us understand the radical turn of contemporary American fiction toward speculative realism. -
Stephen Sano
Professor Harold C. Schmidt Director in Choral Studies and Professor (Teaching) of Music
BioStephen M. Sano, Professor at Stanford University’s Department of Music, assumed the position of Director of Choral Studies in 1993. At Stanford, Dr. Sano directs the Stanford Chamber Chorale and Symphonic Chorus, where he has been described in the press as “a gifted conductor,” and his work as “Wonderful music making! ... evident in an intense engagement with his charges: the musicians responded to this attention with wide-eyed musical acuity.” Other reviews have lauded, “It is difficult to believe that any choral group anywhere is capable of performing better than the Stanford chorus under the direction of Stephen M. Sano.”
Dr. Sano has appeared as guest conductor with many of the world’s leading choral organizations, including in collaborative concerts with the Choirs of Trinity College and St John’s College, Cambridge; the Joyful Company of Singers (London); the Choir of Royal Holloway, University of London; the Kammerchor der Universität der Künste Berlin; and the Kammerchor der Universität Wien (Vienna). He often appears as guest conductor of the Peninsula Symphony Orchestra in its collaborative concerts with the Stanford Symphonic Chorus, and has served on the conducting faculty of the Wilkes University Encore Music Festival of Pennsylvania. He has studied at the Tanglewood Music Center and is in frequent demand as a master class teacher, conductor, and adjudicator in choral music. To date, he has taught master classes and conducted festival, honor, municipal, and collegiate choirs from over twenty states, as well as from England, Austria, Germany, Canada, Australia, and Japan.
On Stanford’s campus, Dr. Sano’s accomplishments as a leader and educator have been recognized through his appointments as the inaugural chair holder of the Professor Harold C. Schmidt Directorship of Choral Studies and as the Rachford and Carlota A. Harris University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He was also the recipient of the 2005 Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching. Dr. Sano's recordings with the Stanford Chamber Chorale have appeared three times on the Grammy Awards preliminary ballot in the category "Best Choral Album." His choral recordings can be heard on the ARSIS Audio, Pictoria, and Daniel Ho Creations labels.
Outside of the choral world, Dr. Sano is a scholar and performer of kī hō‘alu (Hawaiian slack key guitar), and an avid supporter of North American taiko (Japanese American drumming). As a slack key artist, his recordings have been nominated as finalists for the prestigious Nā Hōkū Hanohano Award and the Hawaiian Music Award. His recording, "Songs from the Taro Patch," was on the preliminary ballot for the 2008 Grammy Award. Dr. Sano’s slack key recordings can be heard on the Daniel Ho Creations and Ward Records labels.
A native of Palo Alto, California, Dr. Sano holds Master’s and Doctoral degrees in both orchestral and choral conducting from Stanford, and a Bachelor’s degree in piano performance and theory from San José State University. He has studied at Tanglewood Music Center and with Mitchell Sardou Klein, William Ramsey, Aiko Onishi, Alfred Kanwischer, Fernando Valenti, and Ozzie Kotani. -
Cintia Santana
Senior Lecturer of Comparative Literature
BioCintia Santana specializes in 19th and 20th Century Spanish literature, particularly in the cultural relationships between Spain and the United States. Her research interests include transatlantic and translation studies, representations of immigration in contemporary Spanish literature, and the theory and praxis of the Latin American and Spanish short story. Her book, Forth and Back: Translation, Dirty Realism, and the Spanish Novel (1975-1995), was published by Bucknell University Press in 2013. Her short stories, poems, and translations have appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Gulf Coast, Kenyon Review, Harvard Review, The Iowa Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Missouri Review, Narrative, Pleiades, Poetry Northwest, RHINO, The Spoon River Poetry Review, The Threepenny Review, and other journals. Santana's work was selected for the 2023 Best of the Net Anthology, Best New Poets 2020 and 2023, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She is a CantoMundo fellow and a recipient of a Djerassi Resident Artist Program fellowship. Her book of poetry, The Disordered Alphabet, is forthcoming from Four Way Books (Autumn 2023).
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Debra Satz
Vernon R. and Lysbeth Warren Anderson Dean of the School of H&S, The Marta Sutton Weeks Professor of Ethics in Society and Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science
Current Research and Scholarly Interestspolitical philosophy,ethics and economics, equality
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Walter Scheidel
Dickason Professor of the Humanities and Professor of History
BioPersonal website: http://www.walterscheidel.com
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Londa Schiebinger
John L. Hinds Professor of the History of Science
BioLonda Schiebinger is the John L. Hinds Professor of History of Science in the History Department at Stanford University and Director of the EU/US Gendered Innovations in Science, Health & Medicine, Engineering, and Environment Project. From 2004-2010, Schiebinger served as the Director of Stanford's Clayman Institute for Gender Research. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Professor Schiebinger received her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1984 and is a leading international authority on gender in science and technology. Over the past thirty years, Schiebinger's work has been devoted to teasing apart three analytically distinct but interlocking pieces of the gender and science puzzle: the history of women's participation in science; gender in the structure of scientific institutions; and the gendering of human knowledge.
Londa Schiebinger presented the keynote address and wrote the conceptual background paper for the United Nations' Expert Group Meeting on Gender, Science, and Technology, September 2010 in Paris. She presented the findings at the United Nations in New York, February 2011 with an update spring 2014. In 2022, she prepared the background paper for the United Nations 67th session of the Commission on the Status of Women’s priority theme, Innovation and Technological Change, and Education in the Digital Age for Achieving Gender Equality and The Empowerment of all Women and Girls. Since 2023, Gendered Innovations has been a member of the UNFPA Equity 2030 Alliance.
In 2011-2014, Schiebinger entered into major collaborations with the European Commission and the U.S. National Science Foundation to promote Gendered Innovations in Science, Health & Medicine, Engineering, and Environment. This project draws experts from across the U.S., Europe, Canada, and Asia, and was presented at the European Parliament, July 2013 as Gendered Innovations: How Gender Analysis Contributes to Research. In 2018-2020, Schiebinger directed the European Commission Expert Group to produce Gendered Innovations 2: How Inclusive Analysis Contributes to Research and Innovation. Institutes for Gendered Innovations research opened in Soeul, South Korea, in 2015 and in Tokyo, Japan, in 2022.
Schiebinger’s work has been featured in Science: A Framework for Sex, Gender, and Diversity Analysis in Research: Funding Agencies Have Ample Room to Improve Their Policies (2022); Nature: Sex and Gender Analysis Improves Science and Engineering (2019); Nature: Design AI so that it's Fair (2018); Nature: Accounting for Sex and Gender Makes for Better Science (2020).
Her work in the eighteenth century investigates the circulation of knowledge in the Atlantic World. Her Secret Cures of Slaves: People, Plants, and Medicine in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World reconceptualizes research in four areas: first and foremost knowledge of African contributions to early modern science; the historiography of race in science; the history of human experimentation; and the role of science in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world. Her prize-winning Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World investigates women's indigenous knowledge of abortifacients and why this knowledge did not travel.
Londa Schiebinger has been the recipient of numerous prizes and awards, including the prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Research Prize and John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. She was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium (2013), the Faculty of Science, Lund University, Sweden (2017), and the University of Valencia, Spain (2018); the Berlin Falling Walls Breakthrough Winner in Science & Innovation Management (2022). Her work has been translated into numerous languages. In 2022/23, she served as an advisor to the Berlin University Alliance. -
Elizabeth Schumann
Billie Bennett Achilles Director of Keyboard Programs and Assistant Professor (Teaching) of Music
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsAs a concert pianist, I deeply value the rich traditions of classical music. My passion lies in blending this artistry with scientific insights from neuroscience to biomechanics. This isn't solely about music; it's about applying lessons about optimal practice and peak performance to life's broader canvas. Through my research, I strive to evolve musical training, paving the way for the next generation of dedicated and resilient performers.
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Michael Senko
Ph.D. Student in Linguistics, admitted Autumn 2025
BioStarting in Fall 2025, I am a first year PhD student in the Stanford Department of Linguistics. My research is supported by an EDGE Doctoral Fellowship from the Stanford Office of the Vice Provost for Graduate Education.
I received a B.S./M.A. in Linguistics & Communication Studies from Northwestern University in 2022, where I worked with Rob Voigt and Annette D’Onofrio. Prior to starting my PhD, I worked as a teacher first in Taiwan through the Fulbright program and later in New York City. I have taught everything from TEFL and math to computer science and religion.
I’m broadly interested in how social and linguistic information is integrated. I use sociophonetic and computational methods in my research to shed light on the cognitive dynamics underlying language users’ utilization and perception of variation. My previous work has focused on variation in the uptake of new (pro)nominal forms on Twitter and in the stressed vowel of "Chicago." -
Serena Shah
Ph.D. Student in History, admitted Autumn 2021
Research Assistant, History DepartmentBioSerena is a PhD candidate in History in the United States field. She is in her fifth year and she works on the history of ideas in the nineteenth century, especially Americans' ideas about antiquity. Her dissertation investigates the history of oriental scholarship in the United States. It examines Americans' post-Civil War investment in pre-classical antiquity, and the 3,000-4,000 year-old history of the Bronze Age Orient (the site of the most ancient "Eastern" civilizations, or the modern Middle East). She is also currently writing a research article on Greek and Roman slave-naming practices and the classicism of American slavery.
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Cory Shain
Assistant Professor of Linguistics and, by courtesy, of Psychology
BioI lead the Laboratory for Computation & Language in Minds & Brains (CLiMB Lab). We try to figure out how our brains let us go so efficiently from sensation (e.g., speech, reading) to meaning, and we do this using a combination of neuroimaging, computer modeling, and behavioral experiments. See the lab website for details.
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Michael Shanks
Professor of Classics
BioProfessor at Stanford University, Michael Shanks is one of the most original and influential of contemporary archaeologists. He has been at the forefront of archaeological thought and practice since the 1980s, pioneering new ways of understanding and explaining, engaging with Graeco-Roman antiquity and European prehistory, mobilizing remains of the past all around us — instigating changes in archaeology and how we all work with remains of the past. A specialist in long-term perspectives on design and creativity, innovation and social change, he explores connections across the sciences, humanities, and arts in research collaborations and outreach through and beyond the academy, tapping more than $32m of funding over the last 25 years.
Current projects
MS is currently completing four long-running and interrelated projects.
Archaeological history — building scenarios.
Greece and Rome: a new model of antiquity. With Gary Devore. A project concerned with how one might conceive of antiquity as a kind of archaeological prehistory, retold through speculative fabulation. Against conventional narrative is offered a model of ancient lifeworlds conveyed through 45 personae and scenarios. Estimated delivery end of 2026.
Archaeological sites — encountering location.
Against place: a border archaeology. Based on archaeological itineraries in the northern borders of England/Scotland, including prehistoric and Roman field research, this project explores border crossings, trespass and transgression in questioning the character of space and place, site and region. Estimated delivery 2027.
Archaeological praxis — performance design.
Theatre/Archaeology: performing remains. With Mike Pearson. This book sums up 30 years of collaboration with performance artist Mike Pearson. In five portfolios of case studies in performance design they set out a pragmatics and methodology of deep mapping contemporary antiquity and prehistory. Estimated delivery end of 2025.
Archaeological actuality — for the future.
Archaeologies of Nature in Art: from Landscape to Climate Breakdown. With Gabriella Giannachi. This project mobilizes an archaeology of arts practices, from prehistory to contemporary art, to offer action-oriented responses to climate change in a reframing of the concept of nature. Estimated delivery autumn 2025.
The following is part of his continuing exploration of Applied Archaeology — design foresight.
Project Athena: Innovation in and through Learning. With Aisin Corporation led by Kenji Suzuki and in collaboration with Kimihiko Iwamura. Developing learning community and competencies in creative pragmatics — designing and implementing a strategy of corporate culture change. Ongoing 2025 – 2026. -
Vered Karti Shemtov
Eva Chernov Lokey Senior Lecturer in Hebrew Language and Literature
BioSee bio at: https://dlcl.stanford.edu/people/vered-karti-shemtov
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Jie Shen 沈劼
Ph.D. Student in East Asian Languages and Cultures, admitted Autumn 2021
BioJie Shen 沈劼 is a Ph.D. student in Chinese Archaeology, in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Stanford University. She mainly focuses on the crafting technology of bone artifacts in ancient China. Using the use-wear analysis, residue analysis, and experimental archaeology, Jie explores the variation and development of bone crafting techniques, and how the crafting industry was involved in social progress such as the formation of the early state. Also, she is interested in the religious and political meaning of animal-related artifacts, which are significant for understanding the human-animal relationship.
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Sandra Wright Shen
Lecturer
BioSteinway Artist Sandra Wright Shen has been described as “a classical pianist of the first order.” With her passion, musicality and inspiration, she aims to move hearts and uplift spirits through music.
Sandra has performed across 16 countries in over 600 concerts. Her appearances include prestigious venues such as the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., the Chicago Cultural Center, Monte Carlo Opera House, Palau de la Música Catalana in Barcelona, Frankfurt Cultural Center, the Forbidden City Concert Hall in Beijing, Taiwan National Concert Hall, Seoul Arts Center, Hong Kong City Hall, and festivals including the Granada International Music Festival, Recontres Musicales de Chaon in France, Brevard Music Festival, Tanglewood BUTI, Chelsea Music Festival, MasterWorks Festival and Steinway Society Concert Series.
She has been featured as guest artist with orchestras appearances around the world displaying a broad repertoire of 26 concertos. She served as Artist-in-Residence with the Charleston Symphony during the 2017–18 season. As a chamber musician, Sandra has performed with renowned artists including Vesselin Paraschkevov (former concertmaster of the Vienna Philharmonic), Brinton Smith (Houston Symphony), bassoonist Sergio Azzolini, and toured Asia with cellist Nina Kotova.
Sandra received first prize from several major international piano competitions, including First Prize at the 2012 France International Piano Competition, the 1997 Hilton Head International Piano Competition, the 1996 Mieczysław Munz Piano Competition, and the 1990 Taiwan National Piano Competition.
Her recordings include a debut CD featuring Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 and Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals, both released by Taiwan’s Rolling Stone Music. Her latest album, Momentum, with cellist Miriam Smith, was released on Azica Records in 2022.
Sandra is a piano lecturer at the Stanford University and the piano chair at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Pre-College Division. She has served on the faculty of the Brevard Music Festival, Tanglewood BUTI Young Artists Piano Program, Masterworks Music Festival, Music@Tetauchi, and American Fine Arts Festival in Europe and others. Previous academic appointments include Southern Illinois University and frequent invitations as Distinguished Guest Faculty at Furman University. Her students have won top prizes in competitions such as the International Piano Competition of Orléans (France), Stockholm International Piano Competition, the Chopin Foundation, Young Arts and the MTAC competitions.
Sandra performed live for WCQS Radio in Asheville, filmed a four-part television series “The Movements of the Master Composers” for Hong Kong TV and "Inspiration From Above" for US Creation TV, and hosted a classical music program for Taiwan’s IC Broadcast Radio FM97.5. Mixing music and philanthropy, Sandra has given benefit concerts for disaster victims, foster children, firefighters, music education for underprivileged children and San Jose Chamber Series.
Born in Taiwan, Sandra earned her Bachelor and Master of Music degrees in Piano Performance from the Peabody Conservatory of Music, where she studied with legendary pianist Ann Schein. Her teachers also include Zalina Gurevich and Jörg Demus.
www.sandrashen.com -
stephanie sherriff
Lecturer
BioStephanie Sherriff is an interdisciplinary artist, composer, and performer currently based in San Francisco, California. Their work with sound, video, and physical phenomena is ephemeral in nature and culminates as time-based installations and performances that deconstruct fragments of daily life through experimental processes. They received a BA from San Francisco State University in 2014 and an MFA in Art Practice from Stanford University in 2019. Their work has been featured both nationally and internationally at creative centers such as the Institute for Research Coordination in Acoustics/Music (IRCAM), the Sfendoni Theater, the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), O. Festival, Gray Area, The Lab, Artists Television Access (ATA), and the Center for New Music (C4NM).
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Ory Shihor
Lecturer
BioOry Shihor is an internationally acclaimed pianist and educator. His students have won major competitions, including the Walter W. Naumburg International Piano Competition, Montreal International Piano Competition, Hilton Head International Piano Competition, Bosendorfer and Yamaha USASU International Piano Competition, and gained admission to top music conservatories and universities, such as Juilliard, Yale and Curtis.
A graduate of Juilliard and Curtis, Mr. Shihor is a frequent speaker and master class teacher at major conservatories and universities around the globe such as the Beijing and Shanghai Conservatories, Seoul National University, Taiwan National Normal University, Northwestern University, San Francisco Conservatory, Boston Conservatory, Oberlin Conservatory and the Royal Northern College of Music.
For over a decade, he served as piano professor at the Colburn Conservatory and as founding dean of its pre-college academy for highly gifted young musicians. In 2015, he founded the Ory Shihor Institute (OSI) with his wife, Maria Liu, where he continues to teach young gifted pianists and train a new generation of piano teachers using his proven teaching approach.
Mr. Shihor is a winner of the Young Concert Artists International Auditions, Washington International Piano Competition, a prize winner at the Rubinstein International Master Piano Competition, and recipient of the Gina Bachauer Prize at Juilliard. Based in San Jose, California, Ory Shihor is a Bösendorfer and Yamaha artist.
HONORS & COMPETITIVE AWARDS
Washington International Piano Competition, First Prize
Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition, Prize Winner
Gina Bachauer Juilliard Piano Competition, First Prize
Young Concert Artists International Auditions, Winner
Maurice M. Clairmont Piano Competition, Winner
America-Israel Cultural Foundation Scholarship, Piano
America-Israel Cultural Foundation Scholarship, Composition
POSITIONS HELD
Lecturer, Piano Pedagogy, Ory Shihor Institute
Instructor, Piano Performance, Ory Shihor Institute
Professor, Piano Performance, Colburn Conservatory
Dean, Colburn Music Academy
Director, Colburn Music Academy Piano Festival and Competition
Co-chair, Piano Department, Colburn School of Performing Arts Community School
Faculty, Keyboard Studies, Colburn Conservatory
Faculty, Piano Performance, Colburn School of Performing Arts Community School
Faculty, Piano Performance, Idyllwild Arts Academy
Faculty, Keyboard Studies, Idyllwild Arts Academy
Teaching Assistant, Piano Performance, University of Southern California -
Partha Pratim Shil
Assistant Professor of History
BioI am an historian of modern South Asia, specializing in nineteenth and early twentieth century eastern India, with a developing research interest in the late eighteenth century. My work is located at the intersection of the fields of histories of state formation and labour history. I am particularly interested in the histories of government workers and how this labour history intrinsic to the state apparatus recasts our understanding of state formation.
I am currently working on the manuscript of my first book, provisionally entitled 'Sovereign Labour: Constables and Watchmen in the Making of the Modern State in India, c. 1860-1950'. This monograph is a study of police constables and village watchmen in Bengal from the promulgation of the Police Act in 1861 until the upheavals of decolonisation in the mid-twentieth century. It reframes the history of constables and village watchmen, usually represented as government functionaries, as the history of a distinctive form of labour.
The most important methodological innovation of this study is to bring methods from the historiography of labour in South Asia in conversation with the vast archive of the colonial police and to demonstrate how we can rewrite police history as labour history. Sovereign Labour charts the contours of the market of security labour in eastern India and locates the emergence of colonial police workforces within the rhythms of this labour market. It reveals the patterns in the history of constabulary recruitment; examines the implications of the conditions of police work for the nature of police power; delineates the internal segmentation within the world of police labour, and the defining role of caste in shaping modern policing apparatuses in colonial India; and brings out fresh evidence about the myriad modes of politics devised by police workers in this region. More broadly, my aim is to clear a conceptual ground for the study of forms of labour within the apparatuses of the modern state as well as demonstrate how the history of the labouring lives of government workers can provide a fresh entry point into the nature of the modern state in South Asia.
Before joining Stanford, I was a Junior Research Fellow in History at Trinity College, Cambridge. -
Gi-Wook Shin
William J. Perry Professor, Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Professor, by courtesy, of East Asian Languages and Cultures
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsKorean democratization; Korean nationalism; U.S.-Korea relations; North Korean politics; reconciliation and cooperation in Northeast Asia; global talent; multiculturalism; inter-Korean relations
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Aatika Singh
Ph.D. Student in Art History, admitted Autumn 2023
Ph.D. Minor, Comparative Studies in Race and EthnicityCurrent Research and Scholarly InterestsCaste Studies, Art History & Cultural Studies, Race Studies and Modernism
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Leeth Singhage
Ida Fellow, Institute for Diversity in the Arts
Undergraduate, Management Science and Engineering
Student Wardrobe Supervisor, Theater and Performance Studies
Undergraduate, Theater and Performance StudiesBioLeeth Singhage is an actor, writer, and producer from Sri Lanka, pursuing dual degrees in Management Science & Engineering (B.S.) and Theater & Performance Studies (B.A.) at Stanford. His creative work often investigates pressing current events and explores themes of identity, resilience, and cross-cultural storytelling. His writing credits include QUARANteen (2021), a verbatim-theater production on the teen experience of the COVID19 lockdowns, GROWTHesque (2022-23), a meta exploration of Sri Lanka's political and economic crisis hosted at the Edinburgh Fringe and NYC's United Solo festivals and filmed by Kehelmala Studios, Lab-Grown Meat (2023) a solo play on the incipient alt-meat industry produced at Stanford, and Yakada Yaka (2026), a full-length play on suicide currently in development in Sri Lanka and in the U.S.
Beyond appearances in his original work produced under SarongHoodie, Leeth has played lead roles across theater and screen internationally for over 10-years. Select acting credits include: "Shaan Murthy" in British TV series The Good Karma Hospital - Season 4 (2022) by Tiger Aspects Productions, "Friedrich" in the Broadway touring production of The Sound of Music (2018) by Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Really Useful Group, "Kalana" in multiple award-winning Grease Yaka Returns (2019-20) by AnandaDrama, "Ariel" in The Workshop Players' Shakespeare in the Park production of The Tempest (2017) by AnandaDrama, and "Peter Pan" in Peter Pan the Musical (2016) by COLD Theatre 7.
Leeth has worked in development for Academy® Award-winning filmmakers Jimmy Chin and Chai Vasarhelyi at Little Monster Films, for the multiple Emmy® Award-winning team at Baboon Animation, and for Sri Lankan production company, Kehelmala. Through his cross-cultural storytelling company, SarongHoodie, he aims to increase international representation of underprivileged communities in film and television. -
Genevieve Smith
Postdoctoral Scholar, Comparative Literature
BioI am a Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University in the Clayman Institute for Gender Research. I completed my doctoral degree at the University of Oxford, where I studied societal impacts of artificial intelligence in low- and middle-income countries, focusing on gender. As a social scientist with a disciplinary background of science and technology studies (STS) and devleopment studies, I examine the impacts of AI on inequality and society, as well as explore more equitable and responsible paradigms for AI technologies globally. I founded the Responsible AI Initiative at the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research Lab and teach on responsible AI. I am a research affiliate at the Minderoo Centre for Technology & Democracy at Cambridge University and at the Technology & Management Centre for Development at University of Oxford. Prior, I served as the Responsible AI Fellow at the United States Agency for International Development and as Interim Co-Director of the UC Berkeley AI Policy Hub.
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Julius Smith
Professor of Music, Emeritus
BioSmith is a professor emeritus of music and (by courtesy) electrical engineering (Information Systems Lab) based at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA). Teaching and research pertain to music and audio applications of signal processing. Former software engineer at NeXT Computer, Inc., responsible for signal processing software pertaining to music and audio. For more, see https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/.
