Creative Writing
Poet, musician, scientist
Rob Jackson turns to music and poetry when he needs a mental recharge from his main research focus, which is the study of how humans are affecting the Earth.Rob Jackson occasionally picks up the guitar that sits in the corner of his office and strums it to help organize his thoughts. It also helps him get through particularly long teleconferences. “There can be 25 people on a telecon and you might speak once in an hour. So occasionally I put my phone on…
Read MoreCampus engagement at the Cantor Arts Center
There’s a lot going on at the Cantor Arts Center this spring, and through it all runs a unifying thread: a profound engagement with the campus community.Two large exhibitions engage faculty, students and campus partners from multiple disciplines. She Who Tells a Story: Women Photographers from Iran and the Arab World (closing May 4) This exhibition features the pioneering work of 12 leading women photographers from Iran and the Arab world. Through partnerships with the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, the…
Read MoreIn her research and in a new online course, Stanford scholar delves into the secrets of medieval texts
Digital tools, including a free, public online manuscript training course, are allowing English professor and medieval manuscript scholar Elaine Treharne to share her expertise well beyond traditional classroom walls.Most people don’t realize that medieval manuscripts carry in them not only the words of people centuries ago, but also a history in blood, sweat and tears – quite literally. Take the 13th-century British tome that did double duty as an impromptu shield for a hapless monk when the Vikings attacked his monastery. Bloodstains that…
Read MoreStanford students illustrate public online ‘Adventures in Writing’ class
Veteran writing instructors and undergraduate student artists teamed up to create a new public online course focused on teaching key strategies for effective writing.After a team of Stanford writing instructors created storyboards for an online class to teach writing skills to high school and college students, they turned to a team of Stanford undergraduates to bring their stories to life as a graphic novel. Adventures in Writing, a non-credit course, will be available to the public starting Jan.…
Read MoreWeston Gaylord, “Paper Chains: Cultivating Creativity”
Stanford+Connects is a 16-city world tour that brings the best of Stanford University to alumni around the world. Designed as a full afternoon of learning and connecting, attendees meet up with new “classmates” then head to the classroom for micro lectures and seminars taught by top Stanford faculty. Each event offers a broad program with…
Read MoreNovember State of the Arts – Imagining the Universe
The universe has always been a platform for life’s big questions. Who are we? Where did we come from? It’s a way to explore and deepen our understanding of the universe while we learn about ourselves.“Imagining the Universe” is a collaborative campus-wide program bringing together a broad array of partners on campus and in the Bay Area.* The cosmos has long inspired our imaginations – fueling research, reflection, and creative response. There’s a lot to be learned from this vast topic. That’s why the series will host exhibitions, performances, public…
Read MoreImagining the Universe: Cosmology in Art and Science series launches with words
Spotlight on the book: Cosmicomics, Life on Mars, A Place Among the StarsOCT. 27 – Out of this world: Italo Calvino’s Cosmicomics Author Italo Calvino’s whimsical view of the universe will be explored at 7:30 p.m. on Oct. 27 at Stanford Humanities Center as part of Stanford’s “Another Look” book club and in conjunction with the series Imagining the Universe. Acclaimed author Robert Pogue Harrison, professor of…
Read MoreStanford exhibit spotlights medieval ‘world of words’
The Circle of the Sun exhibit draws on Stanford's medieval and early modern manuscript holdings, including a number of recent acquisitions, to show how secular learning was shared and spread throughout the Middle Ages.Open a book, and you discover a whole new world – especially if that book is several centuries old. That is the case with The Circle of the Sun, a new Stanford University Libraries exhibit on display through June 14 in the Peterson Gallery and Munger Rotunda of Green Library. It features the secular works…
Read MoreStanford to offer new undergraduate majors integrating humanities, computer science
Faculty Senate approves two "joint majors" on a pilot basis, bringing computer science together with English and music. More joint proposals are expected.In a new experiment aimed at integrating the humanities and computer science while providing students with unique educational experiences, Stanford will offer undergraduates the opportunity to pursue a new “joint major” in computer science and either English or music starting in fall 2014. The Faculty Senate approved the new joint majors on Thursday. English Professor…
Read MoreEmerging Creatives
Last month, Stanford hosted the first ever “Emerging Creatives” conference, organized by the Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities. During this three-day intensive experience, one hundred students from twenty-five universities across the country explored connections among the arts, design, technology, and business while learning from pioneers and leaders in interdisciplinary collaboration. The students participated…
Read MoreAll-star panel to discuss Philip Roth’s The Ghost Writer at Stanford
Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman will join Tobias Wolff to discuss Roth's 1979 classic, The Ghost Writer, on Feb. 25. In an interview with Another Look, Philip Roth discusses the book.
Philip Roth is one of the nation’s undisputed literary giants. He’s received the Pulitzer Prize, the Man Booker International Prize, the National Medal of Arts, the National Humanities Medal, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal in Fiction and two National Book Awards. Every year he appears on the Ladbroke’s list of Nobel…
Read MoreIntroducing the Interdisciplinary Honors in the Arts Program
Twelve inaugural students add a creative dimension to their Stanford education.The Stanford Arts Institute is bringing to Stanford’s campus a program unlike any other. Meet the Interdisciplinary Honors Program, Honors in the Arts, which provides an opportunity for students of any major to complete a capstone project that brings a student’s experience in another discipline together with artistic endeavor. Conceived by Executive Director of Arts…
Read MoreStanford Arts Institute to pilot new interdisciplinary honors program
The Stanford Arts Institute will pilot a new interdisciplinary honors program in the arts during the 2013-14 academic year, an initiative intended to appeal to arts and non-arts majors alike. Students admitted to the program will participate in small workshops throughout their senior year while working towards the completion of a capstone project that reflects…
Read MoreThrough photos and memorabilia, Stanford’s Allen Ginsberg collection captures a generation
Bill Morgan, the personal archivist to the acclaimed Beat Generation poet Allen Ginsberg, says that Ginsberg's legacy is as much about what he left behind as it is about his life and work. Everything from childhood diaries and personal correspondence to first editions of Ginsberg's works and all manner of printed ephemera make up the nearly 1,300 linear feet of material in Stanford's Allen Ginsberg Papers collection.Allen Ginsberg, the iconic figurehead of the Beat Generation, saved just about everything. Ginsberg’s vast array of memorabilia housed in the Stanford University Libraries’ Department of Special Collections proves that he was not just an observer of culture, but also a collector of culture. Bill Morgan, Ginsberg’s personal archivist, bibliographer and biographer, told a Stanford…
Read MoreStanford poetry competition aims to revive a performance tradition
At the second annual Poetry Out Loud competition, students practice the timeless art of performing poetry, for cash prizes.Poetry is often thought of as silent text confined to the page, but the words of some of the most famous poets in the English language were given new life at Stanford’s second annual Poetry Out Loud (POL) competition. In a room packed with spectators, the works of Walt Whitman, Lewis Carroll and Edgar Allan…
Read MoreThe Golden Gate is returning to Stanford May 30
Stanford celebrates a remarkable collaboration: Vikram Seth's sonnets become sound in Conrad Cummings' opera, which has been called one of the best of the new century. Seth's novel-in-verse was born at Stanford in the 1980s.(Additional but limited seating just added. Line up for admission by 7:30 on Thursday, May 30. People with tickets held at 'will call' in Bing Box Office must pick them up by 7:45, when unfilled seats will be released.)
The homecoming is long overdue: The Golden Gate, Vikram Seth’s 1986 novel-in-verse, was born among Stanford’s sandstone buildings and palm trees. Now the Bay Area will have a chance to hear highlights of composer Conrad Cummings’ opera of the novel. A multimedia presentation at the new Bing Concert Hall Studio at 8 p.m. Thursday, May 30, will include readings of…
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