Campus Stories - Interdisciplinary Approach
Comics like Hellboy produce a heightened adventure of reading, Stanford scholar says
The Hellboy comics – about a demon who tries to resist his predestined role to destroy our world – provide a powerful vantage point from which to view the extraordinary and unique powers of the comic book medium, a Stanford scholar suggests. That is the viewpoint of Scott Bukatman, a Stanford professor of film and…
The Live Context of War
Imagine a world in which the barriers between art and society, university and community, and mind and heart are erased, and creative synthesis becomes the norm. Such is the vision from which Stanford Live’s Live Context: Art + Ideas was born. This season’s two extraordinary Live Context: Art + Ideas series, War: Return & Recovery and Arts & Social Change,…
Warrior’s view of the Battle of the Little Bighorn on display at Stanford’s Cantor Arts Center
A rare exhibition of 12 drawings by acclaimed artist Red Horse, a Sioux warrior who fought against George Armstrong Custer and the U.S. Cavalry at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876, is on display at Stanford’s Cantor Arts Center through May 9. Exhibition of 12 drawings by Red Horse, a Minneconjou Lakota Sioux…
Stanford Library Blog: Opern-Typen: opera meets the comics
Opern-Tÿpen consists of six volumes of chromolithographic plates depicting scenes from 54 operas popular in 19th century Germany. Each opera plot has been distilled into a mere six frames, with liberally adapted accompanying text. The visual charms of Opern-Typen are evident. The plates reveal a sophisticated understanding of the effective use of line, gesture, and composition…
Stanford students take listeners on a voyage of discovery
While studying “sky burials” in Mongolia, Reade Levinson amassed 20 hours of recordings, including interviews with Tibetan Buddhist lamas, conservation biologists and vulture experts, and the sound of dogs barking, monks praying and cars honking. Levinson, a senior majoring in Earth systems, spent last summer researching the funeral practice, in which monks place corpses –…
Film director Werner Herzog visits Stanford to talk about literary classic on peregrine falcons
J.A. Baker wrote The Peregrine at a precarious moment in environmental history: By the 1960s, the falcons had almost vanished entirely from the English countryside, thanks to aggressive use of pesticides. Baker’s response, an ecstatic panegyric to peregrines, stunned critics with its originality, power and beauty. The little-known 1967 masterpiece will be the subject of…
Stanford performances and symposium highlight architecture
It has been weeks since the last hard-hat spotting in the arts district, but buildings remain in the spotlight at the corner of Roth Way and Lomita Drive. This weekend, architecture will be considered and celebrated through the medium of performance. Building Scene: Space Launch, performed by the Chocolate Heads Movement Band, is a dance…
Artistic works influence our minds and nervous systems, Stanford scholar reveals
No two disciplines could seem further apart than theater and science, but, as it turns out, they’re intimate bedfellows. As Stanford professor Matthew W. Smith has discovered, modern theater – and, by extension, film and television – basically owe their life to the scientific study of the nervous system. An associate professor of German studies…
In the Conservation Lab of Stanford University Libraries, every story has a happy ending
Each story begins with the arrival of a university treasure – a rare book, map, serial or manuscript that needs repair, or a one-of-a-kind object that needs a custom-made box. Like all artisans, Stanford’s conservators have a deep appreciation and respect for precious objects rare to modern, from a first edition On the Origin of…
Stanford scholars spy history of capitalist culture in Bond film songs
In the lead-up to Spectre, the latest film in the decades-long James Bond spy thriller franchise opening this week, much of the recent buzz has centered on another long-running 007 tradition – the title song. Amidst all the speculation about who would sing the new Bond song, Stanford scholars Adrian Daub and Charles Kronengold wrote…
Sounds of the sea
Every fall Chris Chafe, professor of music and director of the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), takes students from Music 220A out on the high seas to record sound. In October 2015, 30 students chewed a bit of ginger and headed out for the day to dangle their self-built hydrophones over…
Dry-5: Stories from the California Drought
Two Stanford alums and an undergraduate walk into a bar… Actually, they aren’t in a bar; they are on stage putting on a show about the California drought. So no drinks, but there is plenty of talk of being parched. The alumnae are MARI AMEND and DORIA CHARLSON, both of the Class of ’13, who…
Stanford conservators work to preserve Rodin Sculpture Garden
With dust, UV light radiation and acid rain to contend with, it’s difficult to keep outdoor works of art in their original, intended condition. To help fend off corrosion, the Rodin Sculpture Garden, next to the Cantor Arts Center, is in the middle of its annual conservation work. Conservators first wash the sculptures, then apply…
Imagining the Universe – Photo Gallery
In 2014-2015 we let our imaginations soar to the cosmos. An interdisciplinary consortium drawing on departments and programs from across the university presented a program that sought to deepen our understanding of the universe, and to appreciate what we can learn about ourselves from the way we depict our cosmos. Through exhibitions, performances, public conversations, and courses,…
Award-winning authors discuss writing about war at Stanford Live event
This year marks both the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War and the 14th year that U.S. troops have been engaged in conflict since 9/11. How have American writers portrayed the face of battle? What lessons have they learned from their writings about how humans remember or forget the past, and how…
Unexpected intersections
Far-flung collaborations flourish at Stanford: Physicists create dance performances, biologists and musicians expand our understanding of epilepsy, and engineers speed environmental research. This interdisciplinary environment springs from having strong science and humanities departments adjacent to a thriving arts district and is aided by research institutes that cross school and department lines. These collaborations blur traditional…
