The Stanford Humanities Center

06/12/2026

👩‍🎓 Kristine Pashin, '26 reflects on her year as a Hume Honors Fellows at the Humanities Center.

Her work connects biomaterials research, ethical analysis, and visual culture. She conducts her symbolic systems honors research in the Heilshorn Biomaterials Group on neural organoid development and is completing an Honors in the Arts thesis titled “The Shape of Suffering,” a digital exhibition that explores how pain is represented across history, science, and contemporary art. Her work brings together scientific inquiry and humanities scholarship to examine how societies understand the body and the experience of suffering.

06/09/2026

📣 Our 2026–27 Fellows announced: The incoming cohort spans undergraduate students to senior professors, representing humanistic scholarship in a variety of fields.
🗞️ https://stanford.io/4ozWNY5

06/05/2026

It's the last the day of the Fellowship year and we're not ready to say goodbye 😂 Happy summer!
📸 Steve Castillo

06/03/2026

Farah Bazzi, one of our Next Generation Scholars, is an eighth-year PhD candidate in early modern global history. Her work aims to bridge Mediterranean and Atlantic history with a focus on environmental thought, race, indigeneity, cosmology, cartography, and technologies of conquest.

Farah Bazzi is an 8th year Ph.D. candidate in early modern global history. Her work aims to bridge Mediterranean and Atlantic history with a focus on environmental thought, race, indigeneity, cosmology, cartography, and technologies of conquest.

05/29/2026

What is the responsibility of intellectuals in a world on fire? For this year's Spring Celebration, four current fellows at the Stanford Humanities Center (L–R: Timothy Pantoja, Mudit Trivedi, Jesuseyi Osundeko, Amanda Hall) reflected on how research in the humanities meets the present moment. 📸 Don Feria

05/16/2026

Congratulations to Lynn Stephen (SHC Fellow '26), who joins the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. “Critical thinking, writing, reading, expression, experimentation and conversation are essential,” Stephen said. “It is wonderful to be a part of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences community, which is dedicated to these practices now and into the future.”

Psychologist and anthropologist recognized for contributions to research on children’s mental health and human migratory experiences

05/13/2026

Professor Dafna Zur (SHC Fellow '17) highlights the enthusiasm of the Korean pop culture fanbase and the factors driving the genre’s remarkable popularity around the world.

Professor Dafna Zur highlights the enthusiasm of the Korean pop culture fanbase and the factors driving the genre’s remarkable popularity around the world.

05/06/2026

👏 Kudos to Juliana Spahr (SHC Fellow, '21) on her Pulitzer in Poetry.

We are thrilled to announce that Juliana Spahr, Frederick A. Rice Professor, has received the 2026 Pulitzer Prize (Books, Drama & Music; Poetry) for her poetry collection, “Ars Poeticas.” As described by the Pulitzer Board, “Ars Poeticas” is “a collection in which the poet takes stock of her personal disillusionment, which she uses to interrogate her relationship to her art form, community and politics.”
 
Juliana Spahr’s scholarly work focuses on twentieth century and contemporary American literature and its relation to the state and also to social movements. She uses a range of approaches, including data collection, computational and network analysis, archival research, and close reading. She has received fellowships from the Stanford Humanities Center and the American Council of Learned Societies. She has been rewarded the O. B. Hardison Prize from the Folger Shakespeare Library.
 
The Pulitzer Prize is given annually by Columbia University for exceptional achievements in journalism, arts and letters. Congratulations to Professor Spahr on this phenomenal accomplishment!
 
You may read more about “Ars Poeticas” and this year’s Pulitzer Prize winners at the link in our bio.

04/29/2026

Read an interview with Ana C. Núñez, an eighth-year PhD candidate in Medieval European History and a Digital Public Fellow at Stanford Humanities Center.

Ana C. Núñez is an 8th year Ph.D. Candidate in Medieval European History, focusing on medieval women, the Crusades, and rulership in the High Middle Ages. Her dissertation, "Dynasty, Identity, Authority: Female Rule and Political Culture in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1131–1228," traces the reigns...

04/21/2026

Congratulations to Violet Andrews Whittier Internal Fellow Margaret Cohen who was included in Christopher Michal's project National Academies: New Heroes.
🔗 https://explorers.com/margaret-cohen/