Working Group in Literary & Visual Culture

Research Workshop in Honor of John Bender


Sponsored by the Stanford Humanities Center and made possible by support from an anonymous donor honoring the work of Former SHC Director John Bender, the Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities


How do ways of seeing and reading inform our sense of time and space? What is the relationship between close reading, an essential tool for

How do ways of seeing and reading inform our sense of time and space? What is the relationship between close reading, an essential tool for literary critics, and close looking, central to art history? Indeed, what are the connections between word and image? These are some of the animating questions for the Working Group in Literary & Visual Culture. We consider projects that transcend disciplinary boundaries in terms of both content and form, considering materials often overlooked in more conventional scholarship. We engage with a wide range of urgent and emerging research agendas, such as the representation of gender and sexuality, race and class, colonial and postcolonial studies, the histories of science and technology, and environmental humanities. These transformative interdisciplinary perspectives encourage collaboration and introduce questions, secondary texts, and material objects a single researcher would not likely encounter alone or within the confines of their respective discipline.

Cover image: Pieter Bruegel's Netherlandish Proverbs

Co-Chairs

Faculty Workshop Co-Chairs
Graduate Student Co-Chairs