Campus Stories - campus life
“The Tempest” behind the scenes
Stanford Theater & Performance Studies presents William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, a vibrant, out-of-this-world tale of romance, revenge and forgiveness. As Shakespeare’s works go, few are more magical than The Tempest, a fantastical and deeply human play about an exiled sorcerer, his budding daughter, a civilization abandoned and a world reborn. This production is presented in…
Bringing Baby back at Dinkelspiel Auditorium
Sixty years ago, one of the first successful American operas, The Ballad of Baby Doe, made its West Coast premiere at Stanford’s then brand-new Dinkelspiel Auditorium. The opera, based on the true and tragic story of Elizabeth “Baby” Doe Tabor and her romance with the wealthy silver king Horace Tabor, was commissioned by Colorado’s Central…
Commitment to reforms paves way for Stanford Band resumption
Stanford Provost John Etchemendy has accepted proposals from the Stanford Band to address concerns about its organizational conduct. Convinced by the strength of those proposals, the provost is replacing a previously announced Band suspension with a pathway for the Band to resume activities as a student-run organization. In a Thursday letter to Band leadership, the…
Carl Weber, Stanford professor emeritus of drama and a protégé of director Bertolt Brecht, dies at 91
Carl Weber, the eminent director who brought German experimental theater to America, died in his sleep in Los Altos on Dec. 25. The Stanford professor emeritus of drama was 91. During the 1950s, the German director had been a protégé of Bertolt Brecht, one of the leading theatrical innovators of the 20th century. Weber was…
Stanford Symphony Orchestra tours Catalina Island
In an annual tradition, 18 members of the Stanford Symphony Orchestra traveled down the California coast and then 26 miles across the sea to arrive at Catalina Island last month. This is the fourth year that the ensemble has made the trip to perform at the Catalina Island Museum’s Annual Holiday Symphony Concert at the…
The NEA announced that Edgar Kunz, Stegner Fellow in Poetry, is to receive an individual creative writing fellowship
Dec. 13, 2016 — Today, the National Endowment for the Arts announced that Edgar Kunz, a second-year Stegner Fellow in Poetry, is one of 37 writers to receive an FY 2017 individual creative writing fellowship of $25,000. “The NEA has an excellent record of supporting writers who have gone on to have impressive literary careers,”…
60 Years of Abstraction: Frank Stella at the Anderson and the de Young
During his visit to the Anderson Collection at Stanford, the celebrated artist Frank Stella led a small group of students around the galleries while reflecting on his career, his art, and the works on display at the Anderson. In 1959, Stella stunned a New York art world dominated by Abstract Expressionism with his Black Paintings,…
Green Library exhibition highlights 125 years of student life at Stanford
Stanford’s first major student demonstration occurred during the so-called “Liquor Rebellion.” In 1908, 300 students marched to rebel against a new alcohol ban on campus. A suspension letter, addressed to a student who partook in the Liquor Rebellion, is one of thousands of archival treasures on display at a new exhibition at Green Library celebrating…
Gaieties marks its 105th year
As Stanford celebrates the year that it turns 125, Ram’s Head Theatrical Society is celebrating a Stanford tradition almost as old: Big Game Gaieties is turning 105. Gaieties is an original, student-written, student-produced musical parody thatPoster for Gaieties is performed in Memorial Auditorium the week before Stanford’s Big Game against Cal. This year, Gaieties is…
First-year student’s nature photographs earn international prize
First-year student DAVID ROSENZWEIG‘s photograph of two leopards has won the Youth Category of Nature’s Best Photography Windland Smith Rice International Awards Exhibition for Animal Conservation. Rosenzweig will be honored along with other winners of the photography competition at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History on Nov. 17, where his picture will be…
Stanford Philharmonia conductor orchestrates a set of challenges
Each of the four works to be performed in Stanford Philharmonia’s first concert of the academic year presents a challenge of one sort or another, which is all part of Anna Wittstruck’s plan. Wittstruck, the acting assistant professor and interim music director and conductor of orchestral studies in the Department of Music, conducts Stanford Philharmonia,…
Stanford in New York: arts, architecture, design and urban studies; media and finance; the global city
As thousands of Stanford students settle into the rhythm of a new academic year on the Farm, 21 juniors and seniors are establishing their autumn quarter routines – seminars, internships and field trips – in the Big Apple through the Stanford in New York program. Under the program, which the university launched last autumn, students…
Photo book celebrates Center for African Studies’ 50th anniversary
For 50 years, Stanford’s CENTER FOR AFRICAN STUDIES has been a hub for rigorous inquiry and a welcoming home for all Stanford students and scholars with an interest in Africa. On Sept. 29, the center highlighted its 50th anniversary by debuting a book of remarkable photos by ALEX NANA-SINKAM, ’13, MA ’14, spiced with reflections…
Stanford’s renovated Roble Gym welcomes student performers and spectators
Stanford students wasted no time getting into the renovated dance studio and new black box theater at Roble Gym in order to prepare for fall performances. A trio of inaugural public performances includes an evening of dance solos featuring Stanford doctoral candidate Rebecca Chaleff in the dance studio, the upcoming production of Spring Awakening, The…
Islamic Voices: Music of the Arab Spring
Music directly fueled the outbreak of the Arab Spring protests, which began in late 2010 in the streets of Tunisia and then spilled over into Egypt and spread across the Middle East and North Africa. As these protests and demonstrations of dissatisfaction with local governments were met with violent repression, revolutionaries responded with unparalleled forms…
You never know where the Stanford Band will show up
Visitors to campus Saturday may have been a tad surprised to find members of the LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY MARCHING BAND playing various tunes from the White Plaza fountain and pool in front of the bookstore, as well as the fountain and pool in front of the Bing Wing of Green Library. That is, the…

































