General Director of Seattle Opera, Emeritus, Speight Jenkins discusses the successful paths of several African American opera singers.

Stanford graduate and author Carol Edgarian discusses her writing process and shares her personal insights of contemporary trends in literary magazines and publishing.

UC Berkeley professor Paul Pierson discusses the impact of economic inequality on American governance and how politics may become a major channel for the self-perpetuation of economic elites.

Stanford Peace Innovation Lab Co-Directors Mark Nelson and Margarita Quihuis offer an overview of peace technologies and a glimpse into the future.

Adam Hochschild gives an illustrated talk about some of the men and women who people the pages of his latest book, "Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939", which the New Republic called “the best introduction to the conflict written in English. A humane and moving book.” (Winter 2017)

Keith Devlin shares excerpts from his latest book, Finding Fibonacci, which features stories from three other contemporary scholars as well as Devlin’s firsthand account of his experiences in uncovering the story of the long-forgotten medieval mathematician who did so much to create the world we live in. (Fall 2017)

Bertrand Patenaude discusses the social forces that propelled the revolution forward despite the efforts of the Provisional Government in Petrograd to hold back the tide. (Fall 2017)

Fred Rosenbaum explores how Jews have been a prominent part of San Francisco since the days of the Gold Rush. (Winter 2017)

Jeff Hancock discusses how today's human interaction is mediated so regularly by technology and how there are more opportunities for people to deceive one another. (Winter 2017)

Lynn Stegner will discuss the essential tools of the writer’s craft—voice, plot, structure, point of view—and share her personal insights into the process of writing about nature and place. Avid readers and aspiring writers alike will gain fresh insights into the art of fiction during this engaging discussion with one of this generation’s finest literary voices and most esteemed teachers. (Winter 2017)

In this program in our ongoing series, “Earth Matters,” Rob Jackson will discuss the urgent tasks that confront us in this “mundane middle,” especially how important it is to achieve some kind of control over the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane whose emissions have increased alarmingly in recent years. (Winter 2017)

This program marks the 20th anniversary of Denise Levertov’s death in December 1997, and will follow the luminous trajectory of her pilgrimage. (Fall 2017)

Robert Gregg discusses the competing narratives concerning the death of Jesus and the argument that contributed to the divergence and independent existences of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam as religions. (Fall 2017)

Barbara Voss explores the archaeological remains at the Presidio to investigate social changes among the colonists in Spanish California as they re-conceived their notions of themselves and their relationship to the California Indians around them. (Spring 2017)

Tom Kealey discusses the essential tools of the writer’s craft—dialogue, plot, point of view—as well as share his personal insights into the process of adapting fiction into film and writing in a range of genres from graphic novels to sci-fi. (Spring 2017)

Michael Wood looks at one of the most exciting and formative periods in British history, the Viking Age, when three generations of the family of Alfred the Great created the early English state. (Spring 2017)

Tomás Summers Sandoval will trace the history of "latinidad," or pan-Latin American identity, that emerged in San Francisco and explore it as a way to illuminate larger histories of empire, migration, and changing categories of race and ethnicity.

In his fascinating talk about this unique, intelligent bird, acclaimed naturalist Hans Peeters will introduce us to some of the secrets behind the surprising abilities of the owl.

Without denying the strangeness of the presidential race, Doug McAdam will argue that 2016 represents only the most extreme embodiment of a process of political polarization and racial division that has been going on since the early- to mid-1960s.

"The House of Twenty Thousand Books" is Sasha Abramsky’s memoir of his remarkable grandparents, their political and cultural milieu, and the house, at 5 Hillway, in North London, in which his grandfather, Chimen Abramsky, collected twenty thousand books.

In this lecture, David Wallace presents Chaucer as a poet for our time, a brilliant original who reminds us that English, from day to day, from place to place, never ceases to change.

In this presentation, David Dunaway will reveal the “secrets” the FBI collected and how American folk singer and social activist Pete Seeger led the way in triumphing over their efforts.

2014 marks the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War, a bloodbath on such a scale as to change the world forever. Part of a campus-wide reflection of this calamitous event, Words to End All Wars brings together reactions from poets and playwrights who grappled with the horror, bravery, sacrifice, and idiocy of the “war to end all wars.” Co-sponsored by Stanford Continuing Studies, Stanford Repertory Theater, Stanford TAPS, and the Peace + Justice Studies Initiative.

Harriet Scott Chessman is the author most recently of the acclaimed novel The Beauty of Ordinary Things, the story of the unexpected love between a young Vietnam veteran and a Benedictine nun. Her other books include the novels Someone Not Really Her Mother, Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper, and Ohio Angels as well as The Public Is Invited to Dance, a book about Gertrude Stein. Her fiction has been translated into ten languages. She has taught literature and writing at Yale, the Bread...

Medieval Matters is a series of public lectures co-sponsored by the Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, the Office for Religious Life, the Sarum Seminar, and Stanford Continuing Studies. It explores the relevance of medieval history and culture to understanding the modern world. Historians read documents that were written in the past, and interpret them in order to come to grips with what happened, why it happened, and why what happened is important. But some historians,...