School of Humanities and Sciences
Showing 11-20 of 43 Results
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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. -
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. -
Cynthia Laura Vialle-Giancotti
Affiliate, French and Italian
BioCynthia is a Lecturer for the Civic, Liberal, and Global Education Program in Undergraduate Education.
Her research encompasses 17th and 18th century French literary forms, with a focus on novels, literary portraits, gendered and ageist representations.
Her dissertation titled: "Framing Portraits in 18th-Century French Novels" focuses on the portrayal of the body in French fiction of the 17th and 18th centuries. Its principal aim is to show the import of 17th century female authors in shaping 18th century descriptive practices. It also reveals the functions that descriptions of the body serve in the 18th century: instructing and guiding the reader, as well as entertaining her. Lastly, it underlines how descriptive practices offered a medium for female authors to assert their cultural primacy, against male narrative traditions.
Teaching is my greatest passion. At Stanford I have taught and TA'd classes on various subjects (French language, European History, Italian literature, German Culture, English Gothic Novels, Autobiographies and History of Revolutions) using innovative methods and assignments. My whole teaching approach is oriented toward one goal: to make students perceive the real-life impact of literary studies in particular and the humanities more in general. I am committed to rendering the study of the humanities and the apprenticeship of languages accessible to our diverse community. Having been a FLI (First Generation College) student I understand the difficulties that students from this community encounter and I am happy to support them in their learning needs.
Research Interests: the novel and novel theory, gender studies, life-writing genres, the body and issues of corporality (death, sickness, aging), supernatural genres, violence against women, history and art history.
