School of Humanities and Sciences
Showing 1,101-1,120 of 1,552 Results
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Steven Press
Associate Professor of History
BioSteven Press is an Associate Professor of History and an affiliated member of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the Center for African Studies, and the Stanford Center for Law and History.
Press' first book, Rogue Empires: Contracts and Conmen in Europe's Scramble for Africa (published Spring 2017 with Harvard University Press), received the American Historical Association's Pacific Coast Branch Book Award.
Press' second book, Blood and Diamonds: Germany's Imperial Ambitions in Africa, appeared in 2021 with Harvard University Press. It received the German Studies Association's Barclay Book Prize and was named a CHOICE Outstanding Title.
In an article in the Journal of Modern History, Press explored the exchanges between Germany, China, and Cuba that led to the USA's lease for Guantanamo Bay in 1903. His article on post-Napoleonic European nationalism appeared in Central European History, as did a more recent article about Wilhelmine Germany's Weltpolitik.
Press graduated with a B.A. from Vanderbilt University and an A.M. and Ph.D. from Harvard University. He taught at Harvard and Vanderbilt before coming to Stanford. His research interests include European sovereignty, international relations, and commodity networks. -
Robert N. Proctor
Professor of History and, by courtesy, of Medicine (Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine)
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsTobacco and cigarette design; human origins and evolution; changing concepts of health and disease; medical history and medical politics
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Sarah Prodan
Assistant Professor of French and Italian
BioI am an Italianist, an early modernist and a Michelangelo scholar. My primary research and teaching contributions center on Italian literature and cultural history of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, with a special focus on lyric poetry and on the relationship between literature and spirituality.
My first monograph, Michelangelo’s Christian Mysticism: Spirituality, Poetry and Art in Sixteenth-Century Italy (Cambridge University Press, 2014), was awarded the Jeanne and Aldo Scaglione Publication Award for a Manuscript in Italian Literary Studies by the Modern Language Association in 2013. Literary, cultural and historical in scope, this study considers the Florentine artist’s poetics and aesthetics in light of medieval and Renaissance Augustinianism, lay religious culture, and the Italian Reformation, respectively, to provide a more nuanced understanding of Michelangelo’s spirituality and how it functioned.
My current book project, Poetics of Piety in Early Modern Italy, builds on this earlier work to consider the ways in which male and female poets of devotional verse engaged the Word in text, image, and imagination in the sixteenth century. Combining diachronic and synchronic approaches to the study of early modern Italian verse, this project examines relations among religious practice and poetic form in the pre-Tridentine and post-Tridentine periods.
Other book-length projects include Friendship and Sociability in Premodern Europe: Contexts, Concepts and Expressions (Toronto: CRRS, 2014), a co-edited volume that explores ideas and instances of friendship in premodern Europe through a well-ordered series of investigations into amity in discrete social and cultural contexts related to some of the most salient moments and expressions of European history and civilization: the courtly love tradition, Renaissance humanism; the Reformation, the Counter-Reformation and the attendant confessionalization and wars of religion; Jesuit missions; the colonization of America; and lastly, expanding trade patterns in the Age of Discovery.
Prior to joining Stanford, I was a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of History at Harvard University and at the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies at Victoria University in the University of Toronto, where I designed and taught early modern cultural history courses and lectured on Italian language and literature.
In parallel to my scholarly pursuits, I am completing a work of historical fiction inspired by my academic research. Taking the dramatic events of the French invasion of Italy in the fall of 1494 as its context, Imminence: Florence, 1494 recounts the riveting and tumultuous history of the dangerously divided Florentine city-state through the experiences of a lay female visionary temporarily resident in an elite nunnery tied to the highest echelons of political power. An imagined female story seamlessly inserted into a famously documented male history, Imminence weaves strands of verisimilitude with threads of reality, to offer a tapestry of fiction and non-fiction that touches on persistent human challenges – personal, social, and political. An exercise in empathic historical imagination, this novel explores women’s political, social, cultural, and religious history during the exciting and pivotal moment of the Italian Renaissance.
You can learn more about my academic and creative pursuits at www.sarahprodan.com. -
Ato Quayson
Jean G. and Morris M. Doyle Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, Professor of English and of African and African American Studies and, by courtesy, of Comparative Literature
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsIn addition to an interest in comparative cultural traditions of tragedy, I also have a strong interest in comparative urban studies, diaspora and transnational studies, and interdisciplinarity, among others.
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Prof. Ilaria L.E. RAMELLI FRHistS
Affiliate, Philosophy
BioProfessor Ilaria L.E. Ramelli, FRHistS, holds two MAs, a PhD, a Doctorate h.c., a Postdoc, and various Habilitations to Ordinarius. She has been Professor of Roman History, Senior Visiting Professor (Harvard; Boston University; Columbia; Erfurt University), Full Professor of Theology and Endowed Chair (Angelicum), Humboldt Research Award Senior Fellow (Erfurt U. MWK), Professor of Theology (Durham University, Hon.), and Senior Fellow in Classics / Ancient Philosophy / Hellenic Studies / Theology and Religion (Durham U., twice; Princeton; Sacred Heart University; CEU Institute for Advanced Studies; Corpus Christi, Oxford U.; Christ Church, Oxford U.). She is also Professor of Patristics and Church History (KUL) and Senior Fellow at Bonn University, then Humboldt Research Award Return Senior Fellow, and Member, Center for the Study of Platonism, University of Cambridge (https://www.platonism.divinity.cam.ac.uk/directory).
She investigates ancient philosophy, especially Platonism and Stoicism, ancient theology (esp. Patristic Philosophy and Christian Platonism, besides Judaism and ancient 'pagan' religions), the interrelations between philosophy, theology, and science; ancient Christianity, Classics, and Late Antiquity, and has authored numerous books, articles, and reviews in leading scholarly journals and series, in these areas. Examples at https://orcid.org/ 0000-0003-1479-4182
Recent books include: Allegoria (Sacred Heart University 2004), Basileus Nomos Empsykhos (Bibliopolis 2006), Gregory of Nyssa on the Soul and the Resurrection (Bompiani-Sacred Heart University 2007), The Roman Stoics (Bompiani 2008), Hierocles the Stoic (Brill-SBL 2009), Pre-Existence of Souls? (Peeters 2013), The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis: A Critical Assessment from the New Testament to Eriugena (Brill 2013), Evagrius' Kephalaia Gnostica (Brill-SBL 2015), The Role of Religion in Shaping Narrative Forms (Mohr Siebeck 2015), Social Justice and the Legitimacy of Slavery: The Role of Philosophical Asceticism from Ancient Judaism to Late Antiquity (OUP 2016), Evagrius between Origen, the Cappadocians, and Neoplatonism (Peeters 2017), Bardaisan of Edessa: A Reassessment (Gorgias 2009; De Gruyter 2019), A Larger Hope? Universal Salvation in Christianity from the Origins to Julian of Norwich, pref. Richard Bauckham (Cascade, Wipf & Stock 2019), The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to World Literature, 1: To 600 CE (co-ed., Oxford 2020), Terms for Eternity: Aiōnios and Aïdios in Classical and Christian Authors (Gorgias 2007; De Gruyter 2021), Patterns of Women’s Leadership in Early Christianity (OUP 2021), Eriugena’s Christian Neoplatonism and its Sources in Ancient and Patristic Philosophy (Peeters 2021), Lovers of the Soul, Lovers of the Body: Philosophical and Religious Perspectives from Late Antiquity (Harvard 2022), T&T Clark Handbook of the Early Church (co-ed., T&T Clark-Bloomsbury Academic 2021, 2024), The Construction of Professional Identities in Late Antiquity (co-ed.), Origen, the Philosophical Theologian: Kleine Schriften with unpublished essays (DeGruyter 2025), The Seneca–Paul Correspondence: New Research (forthc.) and Human and Divine Nous from Ancient to Renaissance Philosophy and Religion: Key Themes, Intersections, and Developments.
Her current work includes ethical intellectualism in ancient to late antique philosophy; Ammonius, Origen, and Plotinus and the negotiation of Plato's legacy; the category and the protagonists and philosophical issues of Patristic Philosophy and Christian Platonism; John 13-17 and its Patristic reception (including major themes in Patristic philosophy); the role of the rejection of philosophical enquiry (along with other factors) in the dismissal of the doctrine of apokatastasis by the "Church of the Empire" in late antiquity; and the theories of epistrophē and apokatastasis in ancient and patristic philosophy and their interrelation.
