Theory & Practice
All-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 MoreFreshmen immersed in the arts in their Stanford dorm
During fall quarter, Stanford launched "Immersion in the Arts: Living in Culture," a yearlong residential learning program for freshmen. Designed to showcase the arts as an essential part of scholarly and public life, it gives first-year students a place to explore them practically and analytically, regardless of their majors.
During her first quarter at Stanford, Gloria Chua performed in The Show Must Go On and met Jérôme Bel, the celebrated French choreographer and conceptual artist who created the contemporary dance, which is set to vintage pop hits. “I appreciated the entire process, from being part of the performance and understanding it on an experiential…
Read MoreStanford Professor Leland Smith, innovative music creator, dies at 88
Leland Smith blended teaching, performing and computer coding during his distinguished Stanford career.Stanford Professor Emeritus Leland Smith died Dec. 17 at his home in Palo Alto, Calif. He was 88 years old. He was an educator, composer, bassoonist and computer coder who led music publishing into the digital age. A memorial gathering will be held at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) at…
Read MoreFruit bats on the clothesline
A report from the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, AustraliaFrom across the room it catches my eye immediately, hundreds of 16-inch fiberglass figures dangling from a spidery, umbrella-shaped clothesline. As I approach, I realize that they’re flying foxes—big-eyed, pointy-eared fruit bats of the type I’ve seen fluttering overhead in the evening. I happen to love bats, and these particular sculptures are stunning in their…
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 MoreStephen Hinton wins Kurt Weill Book Prize
The 2013 Kurt Weill Book Prize for outstanding scholarship in music theater has been awarded to Stephen Hinton, the Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Music.Hinton won the award for his book Weill’s Musical Theater: Stages of Reform. Published in 2012 by the University of California Press, Hinton’s musicological study offers the most comprehensive overview yet of Weill’s output for the stage, according to a press release by the Kurt Weill Foundation. “In tracing Weill’s extraordinary journey as a theatrical…
Read MoreEat, play, learn at Stanford: You can’t live without music
The St. Lawrence String Quartet's residential summer retreat at Stanford is a pilgrimage for musicians from far and wide to commune, perform and study together.Speeding over the Mojave Desert on his blue BMW motorcycle with a viola strapped to his back, Robert Hauswald isn’t the typical professor of economics. But he is emblematic of the diverse performers who travel across the world each summer to attend the St. Lawrence String Quartet’s annual Chamber Music Seminar at Stanford. Lifelong amateur musicians join…
Read MoreCan’t resist touching the art? These Stanford students scrub the ‘Gates of Hell’
Check out one of the coolest jobs on the Stanford campus: outdoor sculpture conservation technician.Somebody has got to keep the Gates of Hell safe from the elements. Meet the students on Stanford’s outdoor sculpture preservation crew. They conduct preventative maintenance on Rodin’s Gates of Hell and 100 other outdoor sculptures across campus. In other words, they get lots of hands-on-the-art experience because they have permission to touch. Given the nature of their work,…
Read MoreStanford Summer Theater Festival presents works by two great Irish dramatists and funnymen, Wilde and Beckett
"The Importance of Being Earnest" and "Happy Days" represent comedy with a difference.Lynne Soffer knows what she likes when she sees it. Earlier this month, she was tinkering with the blocking of the third act of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest and her directorial instincts were swiftly shaping the action on stage. The actors’ every step, gesture and inflection were quickly weighed and tweaked to her liking…
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 MoreHe’s Funny That Way: Oscar Wilde & Samuel Beckett
Stanford Summer Theater 2013 Festival, July 8-August 25Stanford Summer Theater (SST) celebrates its fifteenth season with an explosion of comedy – comedy with a difference. We meet two great Irish dramatists, Oscar Wilde and Samuel Beckett, in a festival featuring productions of The Importance of Being Earnest and Happy Days. There is also a free Monday night film series on “apocalyptic comedy,”…
Read MoreCantor Arts Center’s French summer
Six exhibitions highlight five centuries of French art from private and permanent collections. Staff members pick their favorite works.Never mind that King Francois I of France pre-dated Bastille Day by more than 200 years. The sophisticated and extravagant School of Fontainebleau style that developed under his royal command is something to celebrate and see during the month of France’s La Fête Nationale. Francois’ 16th-century prints, le quatorze juillet, on view through Sunday, are part of…
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 MoreStanford art history graduate students will take a hands-on approach thanks to Mellon Grant
The Cantor Arts Center and the Department of Art and Art History forge a partnership to rethink the relationship between objects and academic study.For an art lover, there is nothing quite like standing in front of a work of art. There’s the scale of the work, the texture of the paint, and the visceral emotional reaction that can only come through experience. For the museum curator, handling these objects – reading the artist’s scribbles on the back of…
Read MoreRam’s Head Theatrical Society Presents Spring Awakening: A New Musical
Play runs April 12-13 + 18-20, 8pm, at Memorial Auditorium, Stanford UniversityBook + Lyrics by Steven Sater Music by Duncan Sheik Winner of eight Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Spring Awakening is a rock musical adaptation of Frank Wedekind’s 1891 expressionist play about the trials and tribulations, and the exhilaration of the teen years. Spring Awakening takes its inspiration from one of literature’s most controversial masterpieces…
Read MoreStanford Arts Institute funds student works
An exhibit of vinyl prints in the Cummings Art Building lobby, a Toyon performance of a student composition for violin and viola, the Cantor Arts Center’s annual Party on the Edge– all owe their existence to student arts grants given out quarterly through the Stanford Arts Institute. This winter, 76 students submitted applications for grants,…
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