Stanford Humanities Center
A gift to endowment from Marta Sutton Weeks in 1987 provides funds to bring visiting distinguished lecturers to Stanford University for stays varying in duration from one week up to one quarter. The visitors join the Stanford community to engage in meaningful discussion on a wide variety of humanities topics.
Pictured: Sara Ahmed, 2023
2022-2023
Sara Ahmed, Philosophy, independent scholar
"Losing Your Hand: Complaint, Common Sense, and Other Institutional Legacies"
April 4, 2023
2018-2019
Yuval Noah Harari, Author and Historian
"The Coming AI Upheaval,"
April 22, 2019
2016-2017
Elaine Pagels, Princeton University
"Satan: How a fictional being still shadows our views of gender, race, and politics,"
February 16, 2017
2014-2015
Dave Eggers, Writer
"In Conversation with Tobias Wolff,"
October 2, 2014
Rachel Donadio, Journalist
"Italy After Berlusconi,"
February 14, 2014
2011-2012
Anthony Bogues, Brown University
"And What About the Human? Freedom, Human Emancipation, and the Radical Imagination,"
February 16, 2012
Helen Whitney, Documentary Film Maker
"A Life in Film,"
November 9, 2011
2009-2010
Frederick Cooper, New York University
"Citizenship Between Empire and Nation: France and French Africa 1945-60,"
February 2, 2010
"Imperial Repertoires and the Myth of Modern Colonialsim,"
February 3, 2010
2007-2008
Elaine Scarry, Harvard University
"Poetry and Deliberation,"
February 11, 2008
February 13, 2008
2005-2006
Linda Williams, University of California, Berkeley
"Screening Sex,"
November 7, 2005
2003-2004
Anne Fausto-Sterling, Brown University
"Thinking Systematically About the Emergence of Gender,"
November 5, 2003
November 3, 2003
2000-2001
Roger Chartier, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris)
"At the Crossroads Between Textual Criticism and Cultural History: The Return to Literature,"
October 16, 2000
1997-1998
Neil Harris, University of Chicago
"Envisioning Authority,"
April 6, 1998
"Building Ceremonies: Beginnings and Ends,"
April 7, 1998
1995-1996
Joy Harjo, University of New Mexico
"Tribal Aesthetics and Contemporary American Indian Literature,"
January 16, 1996
1994-1995
Jurgen Habermas, German Philosopher
"Human Rights and National Sovereignty,"
January 23, 1995
1993-1994
Carlo Ginzburg, University of California, Los Angeles; Instituto de Storia Medioevale, Bologna, Italy
"Alien Voices: The Dialogic Dimension of Early Modern Jesuit Historiography,"
January 25, 1994
"Aristotle and History Once More,"
January 26, 1994
1991-1992
John Cage, Composer, music theorist, philosopher, artist
"Here Comes Everybody: Overpopulation and Art,"
January 27, 1992
1990-1991
Carl Schorske, Princeton University
"Mahler and Ives: Populism and Musical Innovation,"
January 14, 1991
1989-1990
Roy Porter, Wellcome Institute, London
"The Social History of Science and Medicine in the Late Eighteenth Century,"
October 30, 1989
1988-1989
Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris
"Identity and Gender in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance,"
April 10, 1989
1987-1988
Wolf Lepenis, Rector, Wissenschaftskolleg, Berlin
"The Sociology of Knowledge in the Nineteenth Century,"
April 25, 1988
