News on Campus

UNWRAPPING THE HUMANITIES
High-profile visitors will discuss the future of the arts and sciences

By Diane Manuel

cceptance letters have rolled in from around the world: Authors Isabel Allende, Svetlana Alpers and Umberto Eco, critics Harold Bloom and Henry Louis Gates Jr., artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude, playwrights Hélène Cixous and Wole Soyinka, philosopher Jacques Derrida and architect Peter Eisenman all have agreed to participate in the new Stanford Presidential Lectures and Symposia in the Humanities and Arts.

Invited by President Gerhard Casper and supported by his office’s discretionary funds, the high-profile visitors each will spend two or three days on campus, giving lectures and participating in discussions with faculty and students. The campus conversations will ask ­ and attempt to answer ­ fundamental questions about the state of humanities today and how various disciplines can best be strengthened in a university setting.

Related Information:

• Unwrapping Christo, Jeanne-Claude
• Artist Christo to lead off new symposia in humanities, art
• $12 million fund to add four billets in arts, humanities
• Text of Stanford President Gerhard Casper’s State of the University address
• Christo website

“This is the long-term payoff of a change of culture in the humanities at Stanford,” Hans Gumbrecht, the Albert Guérard Professor of Literature and

Unwrapping the Humanities (Plain text)

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