Explorez tous les épisodes du podcast Entitled Opinions (about Life and Literature)

A conversation about the creative peak of Nietzsche and van Gogh in 1888 with Brian Pines, Adjunct Professor at the University of San Francisco. Song in this episode: “The Ghost” by Fleetwood Mac.

A conversation about bioregionalism and reinhabitation with Mark Gonnerman, author of “A Sense of the Whole: Reading Gary Snyder.” Songs in this episode: “Comin’ Back to Me” by Jefferson Airplane and “Dear Mother Earth” by Canned Heat. PLEASE NOTE: In his introduction, Professor Robert Harrison misattributes the following passage to Gary Snyder: “reinhabitation means learning to […]

A conversation with Garry Nolan, who is the Rachford and Carlota Harris Professor of Immunology in the Department of Pathology at Stanford. He has authored numerous medical research papers, has founded biotechnology companies, two of which are on the NASDAQ, and has been particularly active in ufology, the study of Unidentified Flying Objects, also known as […]

Aishwary Kumar is assistant professor of history at Stanford and works as an intellectual and political historian of modern South Asia.  He works in areas of legal and political thought, political philosophy and democratic culture, religion, caste, and moral psychology, in addition to global histories of empire, constitutionalism, and citizenship.  A parallel set of his […]

Aishwary Kumar is assistant professor of history at Stanford and works as an intellectual and political historian of modern South Asia.    He works in areas of legal and political thought, political philosophy and democratic culture, religion, caste, and moral psychology, in addition to global histories of empire, constitutionalism, and citizenship.    A parallel set […]

Werner Herzog is one of the most important film directors of the past half-century. He has directed nearly twenty feature films, including such masterpieces as Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo. He has also directed dozens of influential documentaries, including many acclaimed recent films such as Grizzly Man, Encounters at the End of the […]

Hans Ulrich (“Sepp”) Gumbrecht is an internationally renowned scholar who is the Albert Guérard Professor of Literature at Stanford University. In his scholarship, he focuses on the histories of the national literatures in Romance language (especially French, Spanish, and Brazilian), but also on German literature while, at the same time teaching and writing on the […]

Dr. Rebecca Pekron recently received her doctorate from the Humanities Center at Johns Hopkins University.   Her dissertation “Que reste-t-il? [What remains?]”  Poetic Approaches to Immortality:  Baudelaire and After explores the concept of immortality in the funerary poetry of the nineteenth century.   Dr. Pekron graduated from Stanford in 2005 with a B.A. in Comparative […]

After receiving his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University in 1980, Eric Roberts taught at Wellesley College from 1980-85, where he chaired the Computer Science Department. From 1985-90, he was a member of the research staff at Digital Equipment Corporation’s Systems Research Center in Palo Alto, California, where his research focused on programming tools […]

Dr. Marilyn Yalom grew up in Washington D.C. and was educated at Wellesley College, the Sorbonne, Harvard and Johns Hopkins. She has been married to the psychiatrist Irvin Yalom for fifty years and is the mother of four children and the grandmother of five. She has been a professor of French and comparative literature, director […]

Niklas Damiris is a natural philosopher, trained in biophysics, who has of late taken a turn toward social theory to investigate money’s role in organizing human existence. He is adjunct professor at the University of Lugano in Switzerland, and a visiting scholar at Stanford, where he recently gave a course on the philosophy of money. […]

Marilynne Robinson and the Perception of the Ordinary Pulitzer Prize-winning author Marilynne Robinson is considered one of the defining writers of our time, a treasure in contemporary American literature, in both her fiction and her non-fiction. Her novels explore mid-20th century Midwestern life and faith; her essays roam the boundaries between faith and science. She […]

Thomas Ryckman is a professor of philosophy at Stanford University. He received his PhD from Columbia in 1986 and taught at Wesleyan University, the University of Illinois at Chicago, Northwestern, and UC-Berkeley, before ultimately coming to Stanford. His main area of research is the philosophy of science, specifically the philosophy of physics. He has published […]

A conversation with Maria Massucco, who earned her PhD in Italian at Stanford in 2023. Her dissertation is titled “Woundedness and Reintegration: The Phenomenology and Transmission of Women’s Trauma in Modern and Contemporary Italy.” Songs in this episode: “Helen” by Glass Wave, and “Ophelia” by Glass Wave.

Dr. Ruth Starkman has been teaching writing and ethics since 1986. She is the writing specialist for Stanford's Dept of Computer Science and teaches courses like “The Rhetoric of Biomedical Ethics” and “Science, Democracy and Social Media.” In addition to teaching and tutoring students, she writes on ethics, political theory, medicine, science, and higher education. […]

Hans Sluga is the William and Trudy Ausfahl Professor of Philosophy at UC-Berkeley, where he has taught since 1970. In addition to numerous essays, Professor Sluga has published various important books including “Gottlob Frege” (Routledge, 1980, later reprinted and translated into Chinese and Greek), “Heidegger's Crisis: Philosophy and Politics in Nazi Germany” (Harvard University Press, […]

Hans Sluga is the William and Trudy Ausfahl Professor of Philosophy at UC-Berkeley, where he has taught since 1970. In addition to numerous essays, Professor Sluga has published various important books including “Gottlob Frege” (Routledge, 1980, later reprinted and translated into Chinese and Greek), “Heidegger's Crisis: Philosophy and Politics in Nazi Germany” (Harvard University Press, […]

Edward Feigenbaum is Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at Stanford University, where he was also co-director of the Knowledge Systems Laboratory. He received his PhD from Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) in 1960, working under the supervision of Herbert Simon and developing EPAM, “Elementary Perceiver and Memorizer.” He is considered one of […]

Paul Rabinow is Professor of Anthropology at UC-Berkeley, Director of the Anthropology of the Contemporary Research Collaboratory (ARC) and former Director of Human Practices for the Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center (SynBERC). He is the author of many important books on Michel Foucault and on a variety of topics of anthropological and philosophical interest. A […]

Jessica Merrill holds a Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literatures from the University of California-Berkeley. She is currently Mellon Fellow (2013–2015) in Slavic Languages and Literatures at Stanford. Her book project focuses on the intellectual history of modern literary theory and the emergence of the Russian Formalist and Czech Structuralist movements.  In addition to literary […]

Monika Greenleaf is a comparative literature scholar who teaches in the Department of Slavic and the Department of Comparative Literature here at Stanford. She is of Polish extraction herself and specializes in Polish and Russian literature. She is the author of Pushkin and Romantic Fashion as well as editor of Russian Subjects: Nation, Empire, and […]

Karol Berger is the Osgood Hooker Professor of Fine Arts in the Department of Music at Stanford University and is also Affiliated Faculty with the Department of German and the Europe Center at Stanford. He received his PhD at Yale and taught at Boston University before coming to Stanford in 1982. He has received fellowships […]

A conversation with Corey Dansereau, a PhD Candidate in Modern Thought and Literature at Stanford, about the impact of Giambattista Vico on James Joyce’s writing. Songs in this episode: “Echo” by Glass Wave, and “I Might Be Wrong” by Radiohead.

Karol Berger is the Osgood Hooker Professor of Fine Arts in the Department of Music at Stanford University and is also Affiliated Faculty with the Department of German and the Europe Center at Stanford.   He received his PhD at Yale and taught at Boston University before coming to Stanford in 1982.   He has […]

Mark McGurl is a professor in the Department of English at Stanford, where he teaches postwar and contemporary American literature. He has taught at Stanford since 2011, having previously taught at UCLA. He received his BA from Harvard and his PhD from Johns Hopkins in 1998. He has held fellowships from the Office of the […]

David Lummus is currently Assistant Professor of Italian Literature at Stanford University. Prof. Lummus specializes in late medieval and early modern Italian literature and intellectual history. His research and teaching interests include fourteenth-century literature in Latin and the vernacular, Renaissance Humanism, medieval and early modern mythography, and the pastoral tradition. He explores critical approaches such […]

Richard Kearney holds the Charles B. Seelig Chair of Philosophy at Boston College and has served as a Visiting Professor at University College Dublin, the University of Paris (Sorbonne), the Australian Catholic University and the University of Nice. He is the author of over 20 books on European philosophy and literature (including two novels and […]

Gregory “Grisha” Freidin is professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Stanford University. He received his PhD from UC-Berkeley in 1979, writing a dissertation on Osip Mandelstam. He has taught at Stanford since then, and has, in that time, distinguished himself as scholar, teacher, and administrator. He has edited and translated many important volumes, including […]

Sarah Churchwell is Professor of American Literature and Public Understanding of the Humanities at the University of East Anglia. She received her BA from Vassar College and her MA and PhD from Princeton University. She has taught at East Anglia since 1999. She is the author of widely discussed books including The Many Lives of […]

Professor Andrei Linde, a native of Moscow, is one of the authors of inflationary cosmology and of the theory of the cosmological phase transitions. His current research involves the theory of dark energy, investigation of the global structure and the fate of the universe, and quantum cosmology. He is the author of more than 200 […]

A monologue in which our host, Professor Robert Harrison, discusses the originality and continued relevance of Giambattista Vico’s New Science (1748). Songs in this episode: “Riders on the Storm” by The Doors, “Nausicaa” by Glass Wave, and “Cycle of Eternity” by Tangerine Dream.

Karen Feldman is a professor in the Department of German Studies at UC-Berkeley. Her areas of specialization include hermeneutics and phenomenology, the Frankfurt School, German Idealism, literary theory and aesthetics. She received her B.A. from the University of Chicago (1989) and her Ph.D. from DePaul University (1998). Her current research concerns aesthetics and historiography from […]

Dr. Pierson received her Ph.D. in Italian Studies from New York University in 2009. She has been a Post-doctoral Fellow in the Humanities at Stanford University where her teaching responsibilities cover interdisciplinary introductory seminars such as “Humans and Machines” and “Epic Journeys, Modern Quests,” and is currently a Lecturer in the Thinking Matters program (formerly […]

Michael Leigh Hoyer received her PhD in Comparative Literature from Stanford University in 2012. She specializes in 19th- and 20th century French literature, the history of the novel, and narrative theory. Her dissertation, “Project Fiction, A User's Manual: Readings in a Subgenre,” offers a new historically-informed philosophical aesthetics for analyzing novels that exhibit a projective […]

Marisa Galvez is Associate Professor of French at Stanford University. She specializes in medieval literature and culture, especially the lyric and romance of Continental Europe during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Her scholarship focuses on such topics as crusade, performance, and the European lyric tradition from the Middle Ages to the present day. In addition […]

Ray Manzarek (born Raymond Daniel Manczarek, Jr.; February 12, 1939– May 20, 2013) was an American musician, singer, producer, film director, and author, best known as a founding member and keyboardist of The Doors from 1965 to 1973. He was a co-founding member of Nite City from 1977 to 1978, and of Manzarek–Krieger from 2001 […]

Thomas Sheehan is Professor of Religious Studies at Stanford and specializes in contemporary European philosophy and its relation to religious questions, with particular interests in Heidegger and Roman Catholicism. Before coming to Stanford he taught at Loyola University of Chicago since 1972. He received his B.A. from St. Patrick's College and his Ph.D. from Fordham […]

Amir Eshel is Edward Clark Crossett Professor of Humanistic Studies; Professor of German Studies and Comparative Literature; Chair of Graduate Studies, German Studies; and, since 2005 the Director of The Europe Center at Stanford University’s Freeman Sopgli Institute for International Studies. His research focuses on the contemporary novel, twentieth century German culture, German-Jewish history and […]

Tamara Kayali completed her PhD at Cambridge University in 2011. Her PhD dissertation focused on issues of control, responsibility and the self in depression and used qualitative interviews with women to explore this topic. She completed a Bachelor's in Biotechnology from the Australian National University before studying Bioethics in her Honours year at the Unit […]

Lena Herzog is a visual artist and photographer who develops thoughts and ideas as well as images. In his introduction to the conversation, Entitled Opinions host Robert Harrison suggests that her camera follows Joseph Conrad's aesthetic creed to “render the highest kind of justice to the visible world.”   Harrison and Herzog discuss the cultural transition to […]

A conversation with gardener, social entrepreneur, and venture investor William Rosenzweig about the ethics of care in the private and public spheres. Songs in this episode: “Bourée” by Jethro Tull and “A Lotus On Irish Streams” by Mahavishnu Orchestra.

Paul Robinson has been teaching at Stanford since 1967 and is the Richard W. Lyman Professor in the Humanities (Emeritus) in the Department of History. Before coming to Stanford, he studied at Yale and Harvard, where he got his PhD. He works on the history of European (and sometimes American) thought in the 19th and […]

Martin Lewis is a Senior Lecturer in International History in the Department of History at Stanford University. He studied at UC-Santa Cruz and UC-Berkeley, receiving his PhD in Geography in 1987.  His dissertation, and first book, examined the interplay among economic development, environmental degradation, and cultural change in the highlands of northern Luzon in the […]