literature phd stanford

The Office of Graduate Admissions manages the online application platform and the application fee. Fee waivers are available for some applicants. Please visit Graduate Admissions for information on applying for an  Application Fee Waiver .

An MA is not prerequisite. Although more than half of our incoming students have received prior graduate degrees, an MA does not in itself improve an applicant’s chances for admission. However, applicants who have completed MA programs are often more focused in their interests and have the advantage of recommendations from faculty who can evaluate their graduate-level achievements.

The current funding package requires students to T.A. for at minimum, two quarters, generally in the second and third years of study. Since MTL is solely a graduate program at Stanford, our students T.A. in courses offered by the various affiliated departments. Second-year teaching normally consists of a TAship in English. The third-year TAship should be determined with the individual student’s eventual job goals in mind. Stanford offers pedagogical training, beginning in the student’s first year.

The statement should indicate how you are prepared to do interdisciplinary work. The most common and direct way to do that is to suggest a project or two that would give the Admissions Committee a sense of how you wish to pursue interdisciplinary study, and why MTL is a good fit for you. The statement of purpose can include a brief narrative of your academic journey, if relevant, but the SOP should focus on your proposed doctoral studies. The Statement of Purpose should not exceed 1500 words.

Submit a critical or analytic sample of scholarly writing, 7000 words maximum. Although we encourage applicants to choose writing samples that display their interdisciplinary interests, this is not a requirement. Choose a sample that reflects your best scholarly work. The writing sample should not be a sample of creative writing. Applicants may submit two or more shorter samples to a total of about 7000 words, but keep in mind that shorter samples are usually less well suited to demonstrate your research and argumentation skills.

Letters of recommendation are submitted online. Instructions are posted on the online application platform. Applicants may keep track of which letters have been submitted by checking that site. If for some reason a recommender should be unable to upload a letter, they may contact the Assistant Director of Student Services.

Unfortunately, our application system does not interface with letter services. We are unable to accept letters of recommendation submitted via Interfolio, as recommenders are required to respond to specific evaluation questions in addition to uploading a letter. Please ask your recommenders to submit their letters directly using the online application system. Keep in mind that letters written specifically for your Stanford graduate program tend to be stronger than letters written for general use purposes.

 No. As recommenders are required to respond to specific evaluation questions on the recommendation form, Interfolio is not compatible with the online system. Please ask your recommenders to submit their letters directly using the online application system. Please remember that letters written specifically for your Stanford graduate program tend to be stronger than letters written for general use purposes.

The online application due date is posted on our website (the first Tuesday in December, annually). Faculty begin reading files shortly thereafter.

We realize that some supporting documents (official transcripts, letters of recommendation) may be in transit and arrive later, but  all documents that the applicant is solely responsible for – the application, the unofficial transcripts, the statement of purpose, and the writing sample – must be submitted online by midnight Pacific Standard Time on the posted due day.

We will let all applicants know if there are items missing so that they can track missing documents, but it is important that you have as complete a file as possible.   Supporting documents will be added to your file as they are received, but if the application has already been evaluated, it may be too late.

We are always happy to accommodate prospective applicants who wish to visit. However, visits are for information purposes only; they are not part of the application process and do not increase your chances of admission. You should therefore carefully weigh the benefits of a personal visit against the expense of time and money it requires.

Prospective applicants who wish to visit Stanford to learn more about the program or to meet faculty with whom they might like to study should plan their visits ahead of time. To learn more about the program, applicants should contact the Assistant Director of Student Services to make an appointment regarding application procedures and program requirements. Prospective applicants may also contact relevant Stanford faculty to arrange individual meetings. Since MTL has no dedicated faculty, it falls to the prospective applicant to write to faculty (most departmental websites list faculty email addresses) to try to arrange individual meetings.

Because visits by prospective applicants are informational only and not considered as part of the application process, appointments with the Director will be scheduled only in those cases where the applicant’s interests are focused in the Director’s areas of scholarship.

Although there is no definitive list of appropriate faculty, the list of “affiliated faculty” in “Explore Degrees” is a good starting point for interested applicants. Affiliated faculty will have worked with one or more MTL students in the past, but are unlikely to have detailed knowledge about the Program requirements. Therefore, faculty meetings should focus on questions about scholarship resources at Stanford, and not about the Program itself.

Please click on https://mtl.stanford.edu/phd/phd-requirements and scroll down.

Most of our students receive their degrees at the end of the sixth year.

The typical progress toward degree is something like this:

• Students spend at least the first two years in coursework.
• The first two quarters of the third year are spent taking any remaining courses and preparing for the Oral Exam, which is scheduled in the spring quarter of the third year.
• The fourth year is spent researching and writing; the dissertation proposal is submitted by the end of the fall quarter, and the first chapter completed by the spring quarter of the fourth year. The dissertation colloquium is scheduled for the end of the fourth year.
• The fifth year is devoted to writing; students should have a significant portion of the dissertation written by the end of the fifth year, when guaranteed funding expires.
• If the degree was not conferred at the end of the fifth year, students use a sixth year to complete and polish the dissertation, and to enter the academic job market. Students must apply for external funding or take on additional teaching duties in the sixth year to receive financial support.

There is no language requirement at the time of application. However, students are expected to have or acquire reading proficiency in two languages other than English as part of their doctoral requirements.  The first language should be certified by the end of the first year; the second language should be certified prior to the Oral Exam (spring of the third year). Proficiency can be certified a number of ways:

Native speakers submit a statement to the office

Satisfactory performance on a Ph.D. Reading Exam

Completing Ph.D. “Reading” courses while at Stanford

Certification by a recognized expert

The Program in Modern Thought and Literature funding package provides a five-year plan that covers tuition and a stipend or salary, plus guaranteed additional support for two summers, with the possibility of a third summer of support. The package consists of a combination of straight fellowship stipends, TAships and research assistantships. The funding package is offered to all admittees (whether or not they are U.S. citizens) unless they have already been awarded comparable outside funding.  MTL will supplement outside funding as needed to assure that all students receive funding equivalent to or better than the MTL funding package.

Funding is also available through  Knight-Hennessy Scholars . Join dozens of Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences students who gain valuable leadership skills in a multidisciplinary, multicultural community as Knight-Hennessy Scholars (KHS).

KHS admits up to 100 applicants each year from across Stanford’s seven graduate schools, and delivers engaging experiences that prepare them to be visionary, courageous, and collaborative leaders ready to address complex global challenges. As a scholar, you join a distinguished cohort, participate in up to three years of KHS's leadership program, and receive full funding for up to three years of your PhD studies at Stanford.

Candidates of any country may apply. KHS applicants must have earned their first undergraduate degree within the last seven years, and must apply to both a Stanford graduate program and to KHS. Stanford PhD students may also apply to KHS during their first year of PhD enrollment.

If you aspire to be a leader in your field, we invite you to apply. The KHS application deadline is October 9, 2024. Learn more about KHS admission.

On average, we are able to make between three and five offers from a pool of approximately 150 applications each year.

The MTL Admissions Committee evaluates applications holistically: no single factor such as a GRE score or individual reference letter causes a candidate to be admitted or rejected. The statement of purpose must be well written and must present an interesting and viable interdisciplinary focus. Projects that could not be carried out in a conventional department are given priority over those that could find a home in a department. Keep in mind that departments readily admit certain kinds of interdisciplinarity (e.g. the use of historical or philosophical materials in the study of literature is accepted by practically all literature departments). Your statement should show how your interests go beyond such departmental frameworks and link disciplines in new ways. Your writing sample is also a crucial part of your application, since it demonstrates your ability for research and writing.

What kind of bachelor’s degree is required? No specific undergraduate degree is required. Successful applicants come to us with degrees in literature, history, philosophy, sociology, etc., as well as from interdisciplinary programs such as feminist studies, media studies, or American studies.

The PhD Minor in Philosophy, Literature, and the Arts (PLA) provides both rigorous training in the student’s minor field and an exciting program of courses at the interdisciplinary boundary of philosophy with literature and the arts. Students in the program work together with faculty and fellow students in a vibrant community of scholars from across Stanford humanities.

The Director of Graduate Studies for the PLA PhD Minor is  Joshua Landy (Comparative Literature).

The PLA PhD minor involves

a proseminar,

two courses in the minor field, and

two courses at the intersection.

See the full requirements.

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Ph.D. in Chinese Literature and Culture

The Ph.D. program is designed to prepare students for a doctoral degree in Chinese literature and culture.

Students should consult the most up-to-date version of the degree plan on the Stanford Bulletin  as well as the EALC Graduate Handbook . Each student should meet with their faculty advisor at least once per quarter to discuss the degree requirements and their progress.

Admission to Candidacy

Candidacy is the most important University milestone on the way to the Ph.D. degree. Admission to candidacy rests both on the fulfillment of department requirements and on an assessment by department faculty that the student has the potential to successfully complete the Ph.D.

Following University policy ( GAP 4.6.1 ), students are expected to complete the candidacy requirements by Spring Quarter of the second year of graduate study.

Pre-Candidacy Requirements

• CHINLANG 103 - Third-Year Modern Chinese, Third Quarter (5 units)
• CHINLANG 103B - Third-Year Modern Chinese for Bilingual Speakers, Third Quarter (3 units)
• CHINA 208 - Advanced Classical Chinese: Philosophical Texts (3-5 units)
• CHINA 209 - Advanced Classical Chinese: Historical Narration (2-5 units)
• CHINA 210 - Advanced Classical Chinese: Literary Essays (2-5 units)
• CHINLANG 225 - Chinese through Modern Fiction (3 units)
• CHINLANG 251 - Chinese for Academic Discussion and Reading (2 units)
• EALC 201 - Proseminar in East Asian Humanities I: Skills and Methodologies (3 units)
• EALC 202 - Proseminar in East Asian Humanities II: Current Scholarship (1 unit)
• Four courses numbered above 200 in the field of China studies, at least two of which must be listed with the CHINA  subject code, and the other two of which may be in different sub-fields such as anthropology, art history, history, philosophy, political science, religious studies, or another relevant field, as approved by the student’s advisor.

All doctoral students must complete an MA qualifying paper. An MA thesis is accepted instead of a qualifying paper for students initially admitted as EALC MA students. Students seeking an MA en route to the PhD must secure approval from the primary advisor and submit an MA thesis.

A graded MA qualifying paper or thesis must be submitted to the DGS and SSO with an accompanying note from the student’s primary advisor by week five of spring quarter of the second year of study for the annual review and candidacy decision.

During the quarter when students complete the MA qualifying paper or thesis (25-30 pages), they must enroll in EALC 299 .

Teaching Requirement

• DLCL 301 - The Learning and Teaching of Second Languages (3 units)
• Demonstrate pedagogical proficiency by serving as a teaching assistant for at least three quarters, starting no later than autumn quarter of the third year of graduate study. The department may approve exceptions to the timing of the language teaching requirement.

Post-Candidacy Requirements

Demonstrate proficiency in at least one supporting language (beyond the near-native level required in Chinese and English) to be chosen in consultation with the primary advisor according to the candidate’s specific research goals. For this supporting language (typically Japanese, Korean, or a European language), students must be proficient at a second-year level at the minimum; a higher level of proficiency may be required depending on the advisor’s recommendation. Reading proficiency must be certified through a written examination or an appropriate amount of coursework to be determined on a case-by-case basis. This requirement must be fulfilled by the end of the fourth year of graduate study.

Students in Chinese literature must take CHINA 291 - The Structure of Modern Chinese (2-4 units). Literature students must also take at least one EALC course in a field different from the student’s primary specialization (e.g., a modern literature course for students specializing in premodern literature, and vice versa, or a course in Japanese or Korean literature).

Complete two relevant seminars at the 300 level. EALC 200  may be substituted for one of these two seminars.

Pass three comprehensive written examinations, one of which tests the candidate’s methodological competence in the relevant discipline. The remaining two fields are chosen, with the approval of the student’s advisor, from the following: Chinese literature, Japanese literature, Korean literature, archaeology, anthropology, art history, comparative literature, communication, history, linguistics, philosophy, and religious studies. With the advisor’s approval, a PhD minor in a supporting field may be deemed equivalent to completing one of these three examinations.

Students should submit a dissertation prospectus before advancing to Terminal Graduate Registration (TGR) status. The prospectus should comprehensively describe the dissertation project and include sections on the project rationale, key research questions, contributions to the field, a literature review, a chapter-by-chapter outline, a projected timeline, and a bibliography.

Pass the University Oral Examination (dissertation defense). General regulations governing the oral examination are found in Graduate Academic Policies and Procedures ( GAP 4.7.1 ). The candidate is examined on questions related to the dissertation after acceptable parts have been completed in draft form.

Following university policy ( GAP 4.8.1 ), submit a dissertation demonstrating the ability to undertake original research based on primary and secondary materials in Chinese.

All students in the Ph.D. program in modern Chinese literature must pass three comprehensive written examinations (a.k.a. field exams or qualifying exams) by the end of their ninth quarter: Theory, Literature, and X. The theory exam tests the student’s competence in the fundamental methods and issues of literary and cultural studies. The literature exam tests the student’s familiarity with the basic canon of modern Chinese literature, representative texts in his or her own area/period/genre of interest, and the core secondary scholarship of the field. The third field (X) may be chosen, with the approval of the Director of Graduate Studies in consultation with the student’s primary advisor from the following: comparative literature, premodern Chinese literature, linguistics, history, film, art history, philosophy, religious studies, archaeology, anthropology, political science, sociology, Japanese literature, Korean literature, FGSS, environmental humanities, digital humanities, or medical humanities. It is the student’s responsibility to secure a faculty member’s (EALC or non-EALC) consent to supervise the third exam. With the primary advisor's approval, a Ph.D. minor in a supporting field may be deemed equivalent to the completion of the third exam. Comprehensive/field exams must be completed before students can register for TGR; students should take their first field exam at the latest in the spring or summer quarter of their second year to be on track to complete all three exams by or before the end of their third year.

Students should prepare for each exam by taking the following steps:

• Prepare a reading list. Start with the core list and add 10-20 more titles that pertain directly to his/her own area/period/genre of interest; the list should be organized into 4-5 topics and must conform to a standard bibliographical style. Submit the list to both the primary advisor and field supervisor (if different) for approval.
• Set a date for the exam. Two weeks prior to the exam date, submit a list of 4-5 discursive questions each keyed to a topic in the reading list.
• On the day of the exam, the student receives three or four questions from which s/he chooses to answer two. Each exam essay should be 5-6 pages, double-spaced, and proofread. Footnote citations or a works cited list is not necessary. The allotted time for each exam is 4 hours with a half hour break. The exam may be administered by email.

The exam essays are evaluated for breadth, accuracy, and analytical acumen. Students will be graded on a scale from Fail to Pass and Pass with Distinction. A student who receives the "Fail" grade will be placed on probation and must retake the exam within three months. A second "Fail" grade will result in dismissal from the program.

The Dissertation Prospectus Defense constitutes the first step toward faculty approval for the student’s proposed dissertation project and should be completed before or soon after the student applies for external funding to conduct doctoral research - typically by Winter quarter of the fourth year, or no later than Spring quarter of the fourth year. The defense is a two-hour oral exam conducted by the student’s dissertation reading committee (minimum of three faculty members, including the primary advisor). The prospectus, 12-15 pages not including bibliography, must be submitted to the committee members at least two weeks prior to the defense.

ExploreDegrees Archive, 2011-12

Explore courses, alphabetical index.

Bulletin Archive

This archived information is dated to the 2011-12 academic year only and may no longer be current.

For currently applicable policies and information, see the current Stanford Bulletin .

Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature

University requirements for the Ph.D. are described in the " Graduate Degrees " section of this bulletin.

The Ph.D. program is designed for students whose linguistic background, breadth of interest in literature, and curiosity about the problems of literary scholarship and theory (including the relation of literature to other disciplines) make this program more appropriate to their needs than the Ph.D. in one of the individual literatures. Students take courses in at least three literatures (one may be that of the native language), to be studied in the original. The program is designed to encourage familiarity with the major approaches to literary study prevailing today.

Before starting graduate work at Stanford, students should have completed an undergraduate program with a strong background in one literature and some work in a second literature studied in the original language. Since the program demands an advanced knowledge of two non-native languages and a reading knowledge of a third non-native language, students should at the time of application have an advanced enough knowledge of one of the three to take graduate-level courses in that language when they enter the program. They should be making enough progress in the study of a second language to enable them to take graduate courses in that language not later than the beginning of the second year, and earlier if possible. Language courses at the 100- or 200- level may be taken with approval from the Chair of the department or the Chair of Graduate Studies. Applicants are expected to take an intensive course in the third language before entrance.

Students are admitted under a financial plan which attempts to integrate financial support and completion of residence requirements with their training as prospective university teachers. Tenure as a Ph.D. student, assuming satisfactory academic progress, is for a maximum of five years.

APPLICATION PROCEDURES

Competition for entrance into the program is keen. The program is kept small so that students have as much opportunity as possible to work closely with faculty throughout the period of study. Because of the special nature of comparative literature studies, the statement of purpose included in the application for admission should contain the following information besides the general plan for graduate work called for on the application:

• A detailed description of the applicant's present degree of proficiency in each of the languages studied, indicating the languages in which the applicant is prepared to do graduate work at present and outlining plans to meet additional language requirements of the program.
• A description of the applicant's area of interest (for instance, theoretical problems, genres, periods) within literary study and the reasons for finding comparative literature more suitable to his or her needs than the study of a single literature. Applicants should also indicate their most likely prospective primary field, including the literatures on which they intend to concentrate.
• All applicants should arrange to have the results of the general section of the Graduate Record Examination sent to the Department of Comparative Literature.
• A letter of recommendation that focuses on the applicant's language skills, or a current ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) certificate, or a critical paper written in a non-native language.
• Recommendations should, if possible, come from faculty in at least two of the literatures in which the student proposes to work.
• Applicants must submit a copy of an undergraduate term paper which they consider representative of their best work.

For further information see the Graduate Admissions web site.

DEGREE REQUIREMENTS

Residence— A candidate for the Ph.D. degree must complete three years (nine quarters) of full-time work, or the equivalent, in graduate study beyond the B.A. degree. The student must take 135 units of graduate work, in addition to the doctoral dissertation. At least three consecutive quarters of course work must be taken at Stanford.

Languages —Students must know three non-native languages, two of them sufficiently to qualify for graduate courses in these languages and the third sufficiently to demonstrate the ability to read a major author in this language. Only the third language may be certified by examination. The other two are certified by graduate-level course work specified below. Language preparation must be sufficient to support graduate-level course work in at least one language during the first year and in the second language during the second year. Students must demonstrate a reading knowledge of the third non-native language no later than the beginning of the third year.

Literatures made up of works written in the same language (such as Spanish and Latin American) are counted as one. One of the student's three literatures usually is designated as the primary field, the other two as secondary fields, although some students may offer two literatures at the primary level (six or more graduate courses).

Teaching— Students, whatever their sources of financial support, are ordinarily required to undertake a total of five quarters of supervised apprenticeships and teaching at half time. Students must complete whatever pedagogy courses are required by the departments in which they teach. The department's minimum teaching requirement is a total of three quarters.

Minimum Course Requirements— Students are advised that the range and depth of preparation necessary to support quality work on the dissertation, as well as demands in the present professional marketplace for coverage of both traditional and interdisciplinary areas of knowledge, render these requirements as bare minimums. The following are required:

• COMPLIT 369
• COMPLIT 396L
• A sufficient number of courses (six or more) in the student's primary field to assure knowledge of the basic works in one national literature from its beginnings until the present.
• At least two additional complementary courses, with most of the reading in the original, in each of two different national literatures. Students whose primary field is a non-native language are required to take two courses in one additional literature not their own.

Minimum course requirements must be completed before the student is scheduled to take the University oral examination. These requirements are kept to a minimum so that students have sufficient opportunity to seek out new areas of interest. A course is an offering of 3-5 units. Independent study may take the place of up to two of the required courses, but no more; classroom work with faculty and other students is central to the program. The principal conditions for continued registration of a graduate student are the timely and satisfactory completion of the university, department, and program requirements for the degree, and fulfillment of minimum progress requirements. Failure to meet these requirements results in corrective measures which may include a written warning, academic probation, and/or the possible release from the program.

Examinations— Three examinations are required. The first two are one-hour exams, taken at the end of the first and second year of study. The first of these is on literary genre, designed to demonstrate the student's knowledge of a substantial number of literary works in a single genre, ranged over several centuries and over at least three national literatures. This exam is also designed to demonstrate the student's grasp of the theoretical problems involved in his or her choice of genre and in the matter of genre in general. The second of these examinations is on literary theory and criticism, designed to demonstrate the student's knowledge of a particular problem in the history of literary theory and criticism, or the student's ability to develop a particular theoretical position. In either case, this exam should demonstrate wide reading in theoretical and critical texts from a variety of periods. The third and last is the University oral examination, which covers a literary period, to consist of in-depth knowledge of a period of approximately a century in three or more literatures with primary emphasis on a single national literature or, in occasional cases, two national literatures.

• First One-Hour Examination : The genre exam is generally administered the second week of April of the student's first year. All first-year students take the exam during the same period, with an examination committee established by the department. Exam lists should be approved by the Chair of Graduate Studies well in advance of the exam. Students are urged to focus on poetry, drama, or the novel or narrative, combining core recommendations from the department with selections from their individual areas of concentration. Any student who does not pass the exam has the opportunity to retake the exam the second week of May of the same quarter. Students who do not pass this exam a second time may be dismissed from the program.
• Second One-Hour Examination : The theory exam is administered the Autumn Quarter of the student's second year. All second-year students take the exam during the same period, with an examination committee established by the department. Exam lists should be approved by the Chair of Graduate Studies well in advance of the exam. Any student who does not pass the exam has the opportunity to retake the exam the second week of the Winter Quarter. Students who do not pass this exam a second time may be dismissed from the program.
• University Oral Examination : Students are required to take this exam during the Autumn Quarter of their third year. The oral exam is individually scheduled, with a committee established by the student in consultation with the Chair of Graduate Studies. The reading list covers chiefly the major literary texts of a period of approximately one hundred years but may also include some studies of intellectual backgrounds and modern critical discussions of the period. Students must demonstrate a grasp of how to discuss and define this period as well as the concept of periods in general. This examination is not to be on the dissertation topic, on a single genre, or on current criticism, but rather on a multiplicity of texts from the period. Students whose course work combines an ancient with a modern literature have the option of dividing the period sections into two wholly separate periods.

Qualifying Procedures —The department meets at the end of each year to review all graduate student progress. Students may be admitted to candidacy for the Ph.D. upon successful completion of the first year examination and a thorough review of the student's academic record, after which the faculty will vote on whether or not to advance the student to candidacy. A student will only advance to candidacy if, in addition to the student's fulfilling departmental prerequisites, the faculty makes the judgement that the student has the potential to successfully complete all the requirements of the degree program in a timely fashion. Should a student not be admitted to candidacy, s/he will be dismissed from the doctoral program. In unusual cases, the faculty may decide to extend the pre-candidacy period and require the student to complete specific steps in a predetermined time period prior to evaluating the student for advancement to candidacy.

Prospectus Colloquium— The prospectus colloquium normally takes place during the spring of the third year. The student should furnish the committee with a five-page prospectus, 20-page draft of a chapter, and working bibliography well before the colloquium. The colloquium lasts one hour, begins with a brief introduction to the dissertation prospectus by the student lasting no more than five minutes, and consists of a discussion of the prospectus by the student and the three readers of the dissertation. At the end of the hour, the faculty readers vote on the outcome of the colloquium. If the outcome is favorable (by majority vote), the student is free to proceed with work on the dissertation. If the proposal is found to be unsatisfactory (by majority vote), the dissertation readers may ask the student to revise and resubmit the dissertation prospectus and to schedule a second colloquium.

The prospectus must be prepared in close consultation with the dissertation adviser during the months preceding the colloquium. It must be submitted in its final form to the readers no later than one week before the colloquium. A prospectus should not exceed ten double spaced pages, in addition to which it should include a working bibliography of primary and secondary sources. It should offer a synthetic overview of the dissertation, describe its methodology and the project's relation to prior scholarship on the topic, and lay out a complete chapter by chapter plan.

It is the student's responsibility to schedule the colloquium no later than the first half of the quarter after that quarter in which the student passed the University Oral Examination. The student should arrange the date and time in consultation with the department administrator and with the three examiners. The department administrator schedules an appropriate room for the colloquium.

Members of the dissertation reading committee are ordinarily drawn from the University oral examination committee.

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Ph.D. Admissions FAQs

What graduate degrees does Stanford offer in English?

The English department offers both the Ph.D. and MA degree, but the graduate program is primarily oriented towards the Ph.D. degree.  MA degrees are awarded to Stanford coterminal BA students or en route to the Ph.D.   We do not accept external applicants directly to the MA program.

How long does it take to take to earn a Ph.D. in English at Stanford?

The typical time to degree is 6 years, although it is quite possible to complete all the requirements in 5 years. Most of the first two years are spent in coursework and the qualifying examination. The end of the second year and the beginning of the third year are spent preparing for the oral exam which is usually taken by the end of autumn quarter of the third year. By the beginning of the fourth year students have defined a research project and present this proposal to their committee. The remaining time is spent researching and writing the dissertation

What financial support is available? Are international students eligible for financial support?

All students admitted to the English Ph.D. program receive five years of 12-month funding. Financial support is provided through a combination of fellowship stipend and tuition, and assistantship salaray and tuition allowance. Students in good academic standing also receive funding in the sixth year of the program. Additional funding is provided to support academic and research expenses such as conference attendance and travel.

Stanford's  Knight-Hennessy Scholars program  also awards up to 100 graduate students every year with full funding. Please refer to the Knight-Hennessy Scholars program page for important information.

What are the language requirements for the program?

Ph.D. candidates must prove reading knowledge of two foreign languages. Ideally, applicants will have language proficiency before admission, as it is not practical to acquire two languages from scratch given the rigors of the program.

Will I have opportunities to teach during the program?

Pedagogy is an integral part of our program and we require students to participate in a pedagogical seminar in the first year.  Typically a student will teach three times as a teaching assistant in a literature course. For the fourth course, students will have the option of applying to design and teach a tutorial for undergraduate English majors or teaching a fourth quarter as a T.A.. 

How can I find faculty in my field of interest?  Is it important that I contact a specific professor prior to applying?

The faculty profiles are categorized by field of interest. Applicants are encouraged to contact faculty directly regarding research interests. However, faculty members do not admit students directly as “their own”.  Students are not admitted to work with particular faculty members; rather, we admit the set of students who we feel are the strongest and would benefit the most from the kind of graduate education that we provide.  That is, admissions decisions are not made by individual faculty members, but rather are made by the English Graduate Admissions Committee which includes a subset of the faculty and graduate students.

Is an online program of study or are online courses in English available?

The department does not offer online or distance learning instruction in English.  Students in an English degree program are expected to be in residence.

Can I attend the Ph.D. or MA program part-time?

No, these programs are designed with the expectation that students will be devoting all their time to their graduate study.

Can I start the graduate program in the winter or spring quarter?

No, the department admits applicants to the autumn quarter only.

Can I be a visiting student in the Stanford English department?

Students enrolled as Ph.D. students at other Universities may apply to visit the English department for periods ranging from one quarter to an academic year.  For information, deadlines and fees involved see Research Policy Handbook .

Is it possible to transfer into the Stanford graduate program from another graduate program?

We do not accept transfer students per se.  Students currently enrolled in a Ph.D. program elsewhere must apply through the regular admissions process.  Up to 45 quarter units of graduate coursework previously taken towards a graduate degree may be transferred towards the Ph.D. degree at the discretion of the Director of Graduate Studies after the first year of study. Typically this does not lessen the time to degree since students are expected to complete all Ph.D. requirements (qualifying exam, language requirements, dissertation proposal, dissertation, etc.), though some slight adjustments might be made to how they fulfill some of the course requirements.  

May I request information about your program?

The most up-to-date information about English at Stanford can be found on our web site:  individual faculty and graduate student interests, courses currently offered and degree requirements.  If you have specific questions after perusing our pages, please email us at  englishadmissions [at] lists.stanford.edu ( englishadmissions[at]lists[dot]stanford[dot]edu )  .

Will you mail me application materials?

Stanford’s graduate admissions application is found on-line at:  https://gradadmissions.stanford.edu/apply/apply-now

Can I arrange a visit to the English department?

Prior to visiting, prospective applicants are encouraged to contact the department’s student services manager and specific faculty to arrange individual appointments.  It is helpful to include a little about your background and interests in English in your email.  We do not recommend visiting the department without an appointment as faculty may be busy with prior commitments.  We ask that you do not visit while applications are under review in January and February.

When is the application deadline?

The deadline for admission for the 2025-26 academic year is December 1, 2024.

Am I eligible to apply for the Ph.D. program in English?

You are eligible for admission to graduate programs at Stanford as long as you have either completed a bachelor’s degree from a U.S. college or university accredited by a regional accrediting association; or completed an international degree that is equivalent to a U.S. bachelor’s degree from a college or university of recognized standing.

How selective is the admissions process for the Ph.D. program?

We are able to matriculate about 4-6 students with funding from an applicant pool of 200+.

What does the admissions committee look for when reviewing applications?

In reviewing applications for our Ph.D. program, we look for evidence that the applicant not only will thrive in our graduate program, but will go on to put the training we offer to fruitful use in an academic or a non-academic career.  We look for evidence of:

• academic potential as evidenced in past academic achievement
• an understanding of, and passion for, research
• a good fit between the applicant’s interests and the interests and capabilities of our faculty

What kind of writing sample should I submit with my application?

A sample of critical or scholarly writing, 12-25 pages in length (not including references). This may be an excerpt from a longer work, such as a senior thesis. It should, however, be clear of grading comments and should preferably be in your expressed field of interest.

What kind of information should I include in my statement of purpose?

The statement of purpose should be designed as a narrative presentation of yourself.  We want to know what you’ve done in English or in related fields, why you want to study English and particularly why you think Stanford is an appropriate place for you to do it.  We want to know what your literary interests are.  If you aren’t sure yet what you plan to do in English, that’s fine, but we want to know that you have some idea of the possibilities.  Don’t repeat things that we will learn from other parts of your application, such as your transcript, but do highlight things you think are particularly important, and do feel free to explain any things in your other materials that you are less proud of.  Caution:  avoid telling us too much about your childhood and your fascination with literature.  The statement of purpose should be ideally 500-600 words, maximum 1000, double spaced.

Do I need to take the GRE?

No, the GRE General and Subject Tests are not required for the Autumn 2023 admissions cycle.

I am an International applicant who speaks and reads English. Do I need to take the TOEFL?

Possibly. If you have a degree from an English-speaking institution, you may not have to take the TOEFL.   Please refer to the  Graduate Admissions web page  for queries regarding the TOEFL.

Do I need to have an MA before I apply to the Ph.D. program?

No. Only about 25% of our graduate students had earned an MA before being admitted to the Ph.D. program.

My undergraduate degree is not in English? Does that matter?

While the majority of our degree candidates have an undergraduate degree in English, we have admitted students from other disciplines, such as Art History, Philosophy and even Astrophysics! However, these students had taken an exceptional number of undergraduate courses in English and were extremely well-prepared for a doctoral program in English.

Will you accept recommendation letters from private credentialing services, such as Interfolio?

Unfortunately, our application system does not work directly with the letter service (such as Interfolio) process. Letters of recommendation must be submitted via the Stanford application system. 

Can letters of recommendation be uploaded before I submit my on-line application?

Your recommenders may upload their letters as soon as you name them in the application process and they receive the instruction email and password.  The letters will then be electronically stored until you submit your application.

My test scores, letters of recommendation, transcripts, or writing sample will be late. What do I do?

All materials for admission to the doctoral program, including letter of recommendation, must be submitted electronically by December 1, 2023. Applicants will be notified of the status of their application materials by mid January.

I have been out of school for several years and there is no one left who can write an academic recommendation for me. May my employer write one?

The purpose of submitting letters of recommendation is to give program faculty an indication of your ability to do scholarly research. It is recommended that current or former professors in your major-field courses be asked by you to submit letters, as they would have the best idea of your research potential. If, however, such persons are no longer available to ask, anyone who you think can best assess your potential for graduate study can be asked to write the letter.

I want to send more than the required number of letters of recommendation because I feel this will enhance my chances of being offered admission. Is this true?

It is not the quantity of letters, rather the quality. You should submit no more than three letters.

Can I apply to more than one department?

Stanford policy allows applicants to apply for only (1) one graduate program per year. However, if the department reviewing your application feels you are better suited to another program, they can opt to transfer your file to another department if you authorize this action on your application.

How much does it cost to apply?

Stanford uses an online application and the fee is $125. This method allows applicants to save data and work on their application from any computer on multiple occasions.

Are there any fee waivers for the $125 fee?

For information on eligibility for fee waivers please refer to  Graduate Application Fee Waiver .

What is the status of my application?

Please check the Graduate Application Status Page in the application portal for updates to your application. 

How are applications reviewed?

Applications are reviewed holistically to assess their promise for teaching and research careers. Heavier emphasis is placed on the writing sample and letters of recommendation.

When do you make decisions?

We make every effort to make offers of admission by the last week in February. Notices of admissions status are delivered at that time via the online application system.  Once decisions have been made, you will receive an email alerting you to check your status.

If I am not accepted, can I receive feedback?

We recognize that a great deal of time and effort is devoted to the application and that applicants may wish to receive feedback on how it could have been improved. Unfortunately, due to many constraints, the Department of English does not provide feedback to applicants denied admission. We wish you every success in your future academic endeavors. 

If I am not accepted, can I reapply?

You are required to complete the online application again, which incurs an application fee. Your application should include a revised Statement of Purpose. We can reuse your transcripts, and Letters of Recommendation if you wish; however, if any changes to these documents attest to your improved suitability to the program, they should be resubmitted. We are unable to access documents from other Stanford departments you have applied to previously.

Slavic Languages and Literatures

Statement from the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures:

"In this dark hour when Russian military troops threaten to occupy Kyiv, the cradle of Eastern Slavic civilization, we, the professors and lecturers of the Stanford Slavic Department, cannot be silent. Putin’s regime has been using military power unlawfully to force Ukraine to divert from its course towards a democratic, inclusive, educated society in which everybody can realize their full potential. We are committed to use the soft power of Slavic languages, literatures, and cultures to educate future world leaders about the differences between the Slavs, the rich history of Ukrainian culture in the Russian Empire, the atrocities committed against the Ukrainian people under the Soviet regime, and the profound role of the national cultures of Eastern Europe in the modern world. Our students and faculty represent many ethnicities and diverse political views, but we all are deeply troubled by Vladimir Putin’s professed goal to destroy Ukraine’s statehood, based on an ignorance of history, in flagrant violation of international law and codes of human rights. The attack on Ukraine is an attack on democracy. We appeal to all political leaders and civilians to support Ukrainians in this war and to restore peace in Ukraine."  

The Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures supports coordinated study of Russian language, literature, literary and cultural history, as well as literary theory and criticism. Its programs may also be combined with the programs in Russian, East European and Eurasian history , Jewish Studies , Film Studies (Russian and East-European film), modern Russian theater, International Relations , Stanford’s Overseas Studies , the Special Languages Program , and the Honors Program in Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities .

A full undergraduate program provides a choice of several tracks leading to a B.A. (with a Major or a Minor), or a B.A. Honors. The department offers a full graduate program leading to an M.A. in Russian and Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literatures. Stanford undergraduates are eligible to apply to the department for a co-terminal B.A./M.A. degree. Students in the department’s Ph.D. program are required to choose among Minor programs in other national literatures, linguistics, Russian, East European, and Eurasian history, Jewish Studies, art and music history, theater, or film studies; they may design their own Minor, choose the "related field" option, or participate in the Graduate Program in Humanities leading to the degree of Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literatures and Humanities.

The Department runs a colloquium series, which brings to Stanford distinguished speakers, and organizes international conferences and symposia; and since 1987 maintains, a continuing publication series, Stanford Slavic Studies. Along with the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, the department offers qualified undergraduates summer grants (on a competitive basis) for intensive Russian language instruction in accredited programs in Russia and the US.

Improving cultural understanding is a critical part of the department's mission, and we offer a full range of courses at all levels, from Freshman and Sophomore Seminars devoted to Russian literature, music and visual arts that do not require specialized knowledge to advanced research seminars for graduate students. The Slavic theme house, Slavianskii Dom, serves as an undergraduate residence for many students in the program and often hosts program-related activities. Undergraduates also choose to study in Moscow through the Stanford Overseas Studies Program .

Our undergraduate program has attracted students seeking careers in journalism, business, international relations, law, and human rights, as well as academia. Russian is still the lingua franca over the vast territory of the former Soviet Union, and a good command of this language offers a gateway to Eurasia’s diverse cultures, ethnicities, economies, and religions, including Buddhism, Judaism, and Islam.

Stanford students are in a privileged position in relation to Russian and, more broadly, East European and Eurasian Studies, because of Stanford's tremendous faculty resources that are without peer in the US. Green Library and the Hoover Institution libraries and archives possess the premiere Russian and East European collections, which our undergraduates and graduate students use in their research. Our students master a difficult language and a rich and challenging literature, and are rewarded by gaining entry into a unique, powerful, and diverse civilization that defined major trends in the past century and plays an increasingly significant role in the world today.

Upcoming Events

Slavic Colloquium: Amelia Glaser

Please join the Slavic Colloquium talk by Amelia Glaser (Professor of Slavic and Comparative Literature at the University of California, San Diego).

Slavic Colloquium: Kevin Platt

Please join the Slavic Colloquium talk by Kevin Platt (Associate Professor, Russian & East European Studies, University of Pennsylvania).

DLCL 2024 Commencement Address

Undergraduate essay prizes: submissions due may 2024.

Congratulations to Prof. Yuliya Ilchuk

• Recognition & Awards

Stanford University

The Europe Center is jointly housed in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Stanford Global Studies Division .

Gregory Freidin

Gregory Freidin, PhD

• Professor of Slavic Languages and Literature, Emeritus
• Affiliated faculty at The Europe Center

Building 40, Room 41E Stanford University Stanford, CA 94305

• Ph.D., Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of California at Berkeley, June,1979. Dissertation: "Time, Identity and Myth in Osip Mandelstam: 1908-1921"
• M.A., Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of California at Berkeley, June 1974
• Special Student, Brandeis University, 1972
• The First State Institute of Foreign Languages, Moscow, USSR, 1969-1971
• Secondary School, Moscow, USSR, 1964

Current courses

• Tolstoy's War and Peace
• Paradigms of Society and Culture in Literature and Film

Previous courses

• The Age of Revolution
• Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and the Social Thought of its Time
• Proseminar in Literary Theory and Study of Russian Literature
• Russia and the Other: A Cultural Approach
• Russian Literature and the Literary Milieu of the NEP Period
• Osip Mandelstam and the Modernist Paradigm

Selected publications

• Russia at the End of the Twentieth Century: Culture and Its Horizons in Politics and Society . (Papers delivered at the Stanford University Conference, November 1998). Stanford, 2000. Ed. G. Freidin.
• Russia at the Barricades: Eyewitness Accounts of the Moscow Coup (August 1991), ed. by Victoria Bonnell, Ann Copper and Gregory Freidin. Introduction by Victoria E. Bonnell and Gregory Freidin (M.E. Sharpe, 1994).
• Russian Culture in Transition (Selected Papers of the International Working Group for the Study of Russian Culture , 1990-1991). Compiled, edited, and with an Introduction by Gregory Freidin. Stanford Slavic Studies 7 (1993)
• American Federalists: Hamilton, Madison, Jay. Selections. With an Addendum of The Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution of the United States . Translated into Russian, annotated and with an Introduction by Gregory Freidin. Leon Lipson, Consultant. Edited by V. & L. Chalidze. Benson, Vt.: Chalidze Publications, 1990.
• A Coat of Many Colors: Osip Mandelstam and His Mythologies of Self, Presentation . Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1987.
• Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament . Trans. and ed. by Strobe Talbott and Gregory Freidin (anonymously). With a foreword by Edward Crankshaw and an Intro. by Jerrold Schecter. Boston: Little, Brown, 1974. (For acknowledgement of Freidin's translation see Strobe Talbott's Introduction to Khrushchev: The Glasnost Tapes [Little, Brown &Co., 1990], p. viii).

Current projects

After a long detour into Russian contemporary culture, politics and society, Gregory Freidin, has returned to his old flame, the Isaac Babel project, a critical biography - as much of Isaac Babel as of the magnetic and elusive voice animating his compact and fragmented oeuvre. He hopes to finish the manuscript, A Jew on Horseback, in a few months. As a follow-up, he is planning, along with Gabriella Safran and Stephen Zipperstein (History and Jewish Studies), an international conference on Babel for the fall of 2003. Together with the Berkeley sociologist, Victoria E. Bonnell, he has begun research on a book-lingth study, tentatively entitled Conjuring up a New Russia: Symbols, Rituals, and Mythologies of national Identit, 1991-2002.

Professional activities

• The Humanities Institute; Modern Languages Association; American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies
• Contributing Editor, Znamia, Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie (Moscow), 1991-6
• Editor, Stanford Slavic Studies, 1987-

DIANA LOOSER | TAPS Department Chair; Associate Professor

  [email protected]  ROBLE GYM ROOM 105

Associate Professor of Theater & Performance Studies; TAPS Department Chair. Diana Looser comes to theatre academia from a background in theatre practice and education (acting, voice and speech), with other disciplinary training in literary studies, sociolinguistics, and social psychology. Before moving to Cornell to train as a theatre professor, she spent a decade working in New Zealand as a registered drama teacher, performer, and performing arts festival adjudicator. 

Her research and teaching interests lie in the following areas: historiographic approaches to performance; ethnographic approaches to performance; postcolonial, transnational, and intercultural performance; performance from/about the Pacific Islands region (Oceania) and the Southern Ocean; transpacific studies; environment and performance; global humanities; theatre history studies; contemporary theatre and performance.

Diana is the author of  Remaking Pacific Pasts: History, Memory, and Identity in Contemporary Theater from Oceania  (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2014; paperback edition, 2023), winner of the 2016 Rob Jordan Book Prize from the Australasian Association for Theatre, Drama and Performance Studies. Her subsequent book  Moving Islands: Contemporary Performance and the Global Pacific  (University of Michigan Press, 2021) was named a Finalist for the 2022 Outstanding Book Award from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, and a Finalist for the 2022 Barnard Hewitt Award for Outstanding Research in Theatre History from the American Society for Theatre Research. She is currently at work on a new book, Performing Beaches , under contract with Palgrave Macmillan Press. 

Diana’s writing has also appeared in  Theatre Journal ,  Theatre Survey ,  TDR ,  Theatre Research International,   Contemporary Theatre Review ,  Performance Research ,  New Theatre Quarterly ,  Modern Drama ,  Recherche littéraire/Literary Research ,  Pacific Arts ,  Australasian Drama Studies ,  The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism , and  The Contemporary Pacific , as well as in numerous edited collections. Her articles have received several awards, including the ADSA Marlis Thiersch Essay Prize, the ASTR Gerald Kahan Scholar’s Prize, and the ASTR Oscar G. Brockett Essay Prize. She has been an editorial board member of  Theatre Survey  and  Theatre Research International , and was the Book Review Editor for  Modern Drama  from 2016-2021. Diana currently serves on the editorial board for Palgrave Macmillan’s Transnational Theatre Histories monograph series.

Prior to working at Stanford, Diana taught Drama at The University of Queensland in Australia. 

SAMER AL-SABER | Assistant Professor

  [email protected]    ROBLE GYM  ROOM 112

JENNIFER DEVERE BRODY | Professor

  [email protected]    (650) 725-9109      ROBLE GYM ROOM 107

Jennifer DeVere Brody holds a BA in Victorian Studies from Vassar College and an MA and PhD in English and American Literature from the University of Pennsylvania. Her scholarship and service in African and African American Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, visual and performance studies have been recognized by numerous awards: a 2022 Guggenheim Fellowship, a 2023 Virginia Howard Fellowship from the Bogliasco Foundation, support from the Mellon and Ford Foundations, the Monette-Horwitz Prize for Independent Research Against Homophobia, the Royal Society for Theatre Research, and the Thurgood Marshall Prize for Academics and Community Service among others. Her scholarly essays have appeared in Theatre Journal, Signs, Genders, Callaloo, Screen, Text and Performance Quarterly and other journals as well as in numerous edited volumes. Her books include: Impossible Purities: Blackness, Femininity and Victorian Culture (Duke University Press, 1998), Punctuation: Art, Politics and Play (Duke University Press, 2008) and Moving Stones: About the Art of Edmonia Lewis (forthcoming from Duke University Press). She has served as the President of the Women and Theatre Program, on the board of Women and Performance and has worked with the Ford and Mellon Foundations. She co-produced “The Theme is Blackness” festival of black plays in Durham, NC when she taught in African American Studies at Duke University. Her research and teaching focus on performance, aesthetics, politics as well as black feminist theory, queer studies and contemporary cultural studies. She co-edited, with Nicholas Boggs, the re-publication of James Baldwin’s illustrated book, Little Man, Little Man (Duke UP, 2018). She held the Weinberg College of Board of Visitors Professorship at Northwestern University and has been a tenured professor at six different Universities in her thirty-year career. Her expertise in Black Queer Studies led to be the co-editor with C. Riley Snorton of the flagship journal GLQ. She serves on the Editorial Board of Transition and other key journals in global 19th Century Studies. At Stanford, she served as Chair of the Theater & Performance Studies Department (2012-2015) and Faculty Director of the Center for Comparative Studies in Race & Ethnicity (2016-2021) where she won a major grant from the Mellon Foundation and developed the original idea for an Institute on Race Studies.

BRANISLAV JAKOVLJEVIĆ | Professor; Artistic Director

  [email protected]    (650) 725-9109      ROBLE GYM 109

The Sara Hart Kimball Professor in the Humanities; Artistic Director. My main teaching and research interests are performance theory, avant-garde and experimental performance, performance and politics, theater history and, most recently, performance and climate change. My approach to the study of theater and performance is interdisciplinary. I often approach performance from the perspective of visual arts, film, feminist theory, critique of ideology, and political theories on the left.

My most recent scholarly monograph is Alienation Effects: Performance and Self-Management in Yugoslavia 1945-1991 (University of Michigan Press 2016), which was the co-recipient of the 2017 ATHE Outstanding Book Award and the winner of the Joe A. Callaway Prize for the Best Book on Drama or Theater for 2016-17. I have recently completed my new book manuscript Performance Apparatus: Impossible Communities, Unextractable Behaviors , in which I investigate the relationship between performance art and theories of ideological formations from the 1970s until the present. If all goes well, it should come out in 2023.  

In TAPS, I have served as Director of Undergraduate Studies, Director of Graduate Studies, and Chair (2015-2019). As of the fall of 2021, I again assumed the role of Director of Undergraduate Studies. It is my hope that in this capacity I will be able to help TAPS transition back to its regular activities, which were disrupted by COVID closures. 

I teach both graduate and undergraduate courses. Over the years, I have offered a number of graduate seminars. Some of the seminars I offer on graduate level are Ars Theoretica: On Scholar-Artists, which explores the integration of scholarly research and creative practice as the main methodological premise of TAPS doctoral program, and Dramaturgy, which aims to help scholars to apply in production situations the skills and creativity they developed in their research. At undergraduate level, I teach History of Directing, The Avant-Garde, Revolutions in the Theater, and other courses. In Spring 2023, I will offer a new Introductory Seminar Climate Change and the Arts . In this seminar, I will share my research on this issue, on which I have worked for a few years now.  Over the past year, I have co-edited with my colleagues from TAPS Diana Looser and Matthew W. Smith a two-part special issue of TDR: The Drama Review on performance and climate change.

More information

YOUNG JEAN LEE | Professor; Director of Undergraduate Studies

  [email protected]      ROBLE GYM 145

Denning Family Professor in the Arts; Director of Undergraduate Studies. Young Jean Lee is a playwright, director, and filmmaker who has been called “the most adventurous downtown playwright of her generation” by The New York Times and “one of the best experimental playwrights in America” by Time Out New York. She is the first Asian-American female playwright to have had a play produced on Broadway, and she has written and directed ten shows in New York with Young Jean Lee’s Theater Company. Her plays have been performed in more than eighty cities around the world and have been published by Dramatists Play Service, Samuel French, and Theatre Communications Group. Her short films have been presented at The Locarno International Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, and BAMcinemaFest. Lee is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, two OBIE Awards, a Prize in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a PEN Literary Award, a United States Artists Fellowship, and the Windham-Campbell Prize. She has worked as a television writer for Disney, Hulu, and FX, and is currently developing an original television series with Made Up Stories for Fifth Season.

JISHA MENON | Professor

  [email protected]    (650) 723-2682  ROBLE GYM ROOM 143

Professor of Theater and Performance Studies and, by courtesy, of Comparative Literature. Fisher Family Director of Stanford Global Studies. Jisha Menon teaches courses at the intersection of critical theory and performance studies. Her research interests lie at the intersection of law and performance, affect theory and capitalism, aesthetics and politics. Her four books include Brutal Beauty: Aesthetics and Aspiration in Urban India (Northwestern UP, 2021,) which explores the aesthetic dimensions of neoliberalism. The book considers the city and the self as aesthetic projects that are renovated in the wake of neoliberal economic reforms in India. Her first monograph, Performance of Nationalism: India, Pakistan, and the Memory of Partition (Cambridge UP, 2013), analyzes the affective and performative dimensions of nation-making. The book recuperates the idea of “mimesis” to think about the mimetic relationality that undergirds the encounter between India and Pakistan. She is also co-editor of two volumes: Violence Performed: Local Roots and Global Routes of Conflict with Patrick Anderson (Palgrave-Macmillan Press, 2009) and Performing the Secular: Religion, Representation, and Politics with Milija Gluhovic (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.) She has published essays on toxic waste, governance feminism, diasporic feminist theatre, transnational queer theory, and neoliberal urbanism. She has served as Denning Faculty Director of Stanford Arts Institute and as Faculty Director of Stanford Center for South Asia. Previously, she served as Assistant Professor of English at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. She received her M.A. in English Literature from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and her PhD in Drama from Stanford University.

PEGGY PHELAN | Professor

  [email protected]    (650) 725-7017    ROBLE GYM ROOM 103A

My publications include: Unmarked: the politics of performance (Routledge, 1993); Mourning Sex: performing public memories (Routledge, 1997; honorable mention Callaway Prize for dramatic criticism 1997-1999); the survey essay for Art and Feminism , ed. by Helena Reckitt (Phaidon, 2001, cited as one of the “The top 25 best books in art and architecture” by Amazon.com, 2001, translated into several languages, and three editions); the survey essay for Pipilotti Rist (Phaidon,2001). Additionally, I contributed to the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time Initiative, primarily by editing and writing the lead essay for Live Art in Los Angeles: Performance in Southern California, 1970-1983 (Routledge, 2012). With the late Lynda Hart, I co-edited, Acting Out: Feminist Performances (University of Michigan Press, 1993; cited as “best critical anthology” of 1993 by American Book Review); and with Jill Lane, I co-edited The Ends of Performance (New York University Press, 1997). Some essays I have written for art catalogs include: Intus: Helena Almeida (Lisbon, 2004). Everything Loose Will Land: 1970s Art and Architecture in Los Angeles (Mak Center, 2013), Haunted: Contemporary Photography, Video, and Performance (Guggenheim Museum, 2010); WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution (Museum of Contemporary Art, 2007); Out of Now, The LifeWorks of Tehching Hsieh (MIT Press, 2015) and Andy Warhol: Giant Size (Phaidon, 2008), among others. With my colleague in Art and Art History, Richard Meyer, I co-curated the Cantor Art Center’s exhibition, Andy Warhol: Photography Without End , and MIT Press published our book with the same title in 2018. With Amy di Pasquale, I organized and wrote the text for the Stanford Library online exhibition devoted to Andy Warhol’s photography: https://exhibits.stanford.edu/warhol .

Recent writing includes:

“Bodies to Come” on feminism and trans art: https://feministartcoalition.org/essays-list/peggy-phelan

On the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson and adoption: https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/30/article/881455/pdf

MICHAEL RAU | Assistant Professor

  [email protected]      ROBLE GYM ROOM 142

Assistant Professor, Performance-making. Michael Rau is a live performance director specializing in new plays, opera, and digital media projects. He has directed projects internationally in Germany, the UK, Brazil, Ireland, Denmark, Mexico, Canada, Australia, and the Czech Republic. He has created work in New York City at Lincoln Center, The Public Theater, PS122, HERE Arts Center, Ars Nova, The Bushwick Starr, The Brick, 59E59, 3LD, and Dixon Place. Regionally, his work has been seen at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, MA, the Ann Arbor Summer Festival, and the Humana Festival at Actors Theater of Louisville. His work with composer Kate Soper has been performed at the Seattle Symphony, Smith College, and The New York Festival of Song at the Dimenna Center. He has developed new plays at the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, Playwrights Realm and the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. His production of temping was selected by the Guardian and the Telegraph as one of the best productions of the 2022 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and the piece was featured twice in New York Times. He is a recipient of a 2021 Artists + Machine Intelligence Research Award from Google, as well as fellowships from the Likhachev Foundation, the Kennedy Center, and the National New Play Network. He has been a resident artist at the Orchard Project, E|MERGE, and the Tribeca Performing Arts Center. His experimental opera, developed in collaboration with MeowWolf narrative director Joanna Garner was a finalist for the Finnish National Opera’s Opera Beyond competition. Rau is a Forward/Story fellow and a speaker at Books in Browsers, Performing Robots, and StoryCode. He is a fellow of the Akademie für Theater und Digitalität and a resident of Stochaistic Labs. He has been an assistant director for Francesca Zambello, John Turturro, Robert Woodruff and associate director for Anne Bogart, Les Waters, and Ivo Van Hove. He is a New York Theater Workshop Usual Suspect and a member of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab. He is a graduate of Wesleyan University and received his MFA in Theater Directing from Columbia University. At Stanford, he is an affiliate faculty member with the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence.

RUSH REHM | Professor

  [email protected]    (650) 723-0485  MEMORIAL HALL ROOM 208

Professor, TAPS and also Professor in the Department of Classics.

Founder and Artistic Director of Stanford Repertory Theater (SRT), Rush has overseen the work of this professional company for the past 25 years. Go to http://stanfordreptheater.com/ for production histories, cast, reviews, scripts, and translations SRT presented the visual version of Voices of the Earth: From Sophocles to Rachel Carson and Beyond at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts in November 2021. We hope to re-stage the production in South Africa in May/June 2023.

 Rehm’s books include Aeschylus’ Oresteia: A Theatre Version (Melbourne 1978); Greek Tragic Theatre (Routledge: London 1992, paper 1994, modern Greek translation 1999; a new edition entitled Understanding Greek Tragedy appeared in 2016); Marriage to Death: The Conflation of Marriage and Funeral Rituals in Greek Tragedy (Princeton 1994, paper 1996); The Play of Space: Spatial Transformation in Greek Tragedy (Princeton 2002); Radical Theatre: Greek Tragedy and the Modern World (Duckworth: London 2003), and Euripides: Electra (Bloomsbury 2021), the final volume in the Duckworth Companion to Greek and Roman Drama series. 

Recent contributions to edited volumes include essays in Eurypides Innowator (Osrodek Praktyk Teatralnych „Gardzienice” Warszawa); Dramaturgias 17 , Aeschylus , (Brasilia) ; Looking at Persians , Looking at Agamemnon , and Looking at Antigone (all Bloomsbury); Aeschylus’ Tragedies: The Cultural Divide and the Trauma of Adaptation (Brill); Close Relations : The Spaces of Greek and Roman Theatre (Cambridge); The Brill Companion to Euripides ; The Brill Companion to Sophocles ; The Cambridge Companion to Greek and Roman Theatre; The Oxford Handbook of Greek Drama in the Americas ; Rebel Women (Methuen); Aeschylus’ Agamemnon in Performance (Oxford); Sophocles and the Greek Language (Brill); Antigone’s Answer ( Helios Supplement), and Post-Colonial Classics (Oxford).

 As well as courses on ancient theater and culture, Rehm teaches courses on contemporary politics, the media, and U.S. imperialism. Rush received the Dinkelspiel Award for outstanding service to undergraduates in 2014.

AILEEN ROBINSON | Assistant Professor

  [email protected]  ROBLE GYM ROOM 138A

Her primary research and teaching interests are in the history of optics and physics, magic performance and practice, and eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British theatrical performance and stagecraft. She teaches classes on the intersection between science, stagecraft, and theatre, as well as British and American theatrical traditions. At Northwestern, she also served as dramaturg and assistant director on productions such as The Secret Garden and Lydia Diamond’s The Bluest Eye . She served as a Mellon Fellow in the Scholars in the Humanities program for 2016-2018 at Stanford University.

MATTHEW WILSON SMITH | TAPS Professor; Director of Graduate Studies

  [email protected]    (650) 723-2576    ROBLE GYM ROOM 141

ARTISTS-IN-RESIDENCE

Amy freed | artist-in-residence; coordinator of the acting concentration.

  [email protected]    (650) 736-4154    MEMORIAL HALL ROOM 203

Freed received a BFA in theater from Southern Methodist University, and an MFA in Acting from the American Conservatory Theater. She has taught acting and directed for ACT’s MFA program. She’s also taught playwriting at San Francisco State and for the MFA playwriting program of UCSD.

amara tabor-smith | Artist-In-Residence

  [email protected]   ROBLE GYM 111

amara tabor-smith is a dancer, choreographer/performance maker, and the artistic director of Deep Waters Dance Theater. She describes her work as Afro Futurist Conjure Art. Her site responsive and community specific performance making practice utilizes Yoruba Lukumí spiritual ritual to address issues of social and environmental justice, race, gender identity, and belonging. amara is a 2024 recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship award, and a 2023 recipient of the Religion in the Arts Award from the American Academy of Religion. She is also a 2021 inaugural recipient of the Kenneth Rainin Foundation Fellowship, a  2019 Dance/USA Fellow, and a 2018 United States Artist Fellow. Her work has been performed nationally and internationally. amara has performed in the works of artists such as,  Ed Mock, Joanna Haigood, Ana Deveare Smith, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Faustin Linyekula, and was formerly the associate artistic director and company member with Urban Bush Women. Other grants and awards include, A Blade of Grass Fellowship (2019); Creative Work Fund (2016); Sacatar artist in residence (2018); MAP Fund (2017, 2022); Kenneth Rainin Foundation (2017); Urban Bush Women Choreographic Center Fellowship (2017), and she is a co-recipient of the 2016 Creative Capital grant with longtime collaborator, Ellen Sebastian Chang.

amara received an MFA in Dance from Hollins University and the University of Music and Performance in Frankfurt, Germany.

EMERITUS PROFESSORS

William eddelman | associate professor emeritus.

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HARRY J. ELAM, JR. | Professor Emeritus

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Senior Vice Provost for Education, Vice President for the Arts, Freeman-Thornton Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and the Olive H. Palmer Professor in Humanities, Emeritus. Harry J. Elam, Jr. is author of and editor of seven books, Taking It to the Streets: The Social Protest Theater of Luis Valdez and Amiri Baraka ; The Past as Present in the Drama of August Wilson (Winner of the 2005 Errol Hill Award from the American Society of Theatre Research); and co‑editor of four books, African American Performance and Theater History: A Critical Reader ; Colored Contradictions: An Anthology of Contemporary African American Drama; The Fire This Time: African American Plays for the New Millennium ; and Black Cultural Traffic: Crossroads in Performance and Popular Culture . His articles have appeared in American Drama, Modern Drama, Theatre Journal, Text and Performance Quarterly as well as journals in Israel, Taiwan and Poland and several critical anthologies. Professor Elam is also the former editor of Theatre Journal and on the editorial boards of Atlantic Studies, Journal of American Drama and Theatre , and Modern Drama . He was elected to the College of Fellows of the American Theatre in April 2006. In August 2006 he won the Betty Jean Jones Outstanding Teaching Award from the American Theatre and Drama Society and in November 2006 he won the Distinguished Scholar Award form the American Society of Theatre Research. In July 2014, Elam received the Association of Theatre in Higher education’s highest award for theatre scholars, the Career Achievement Award. In addition to his scholarly work, he has directed professionally for over twenty years: most notably, he directed Tod, the Boy Tod by Talvin Wilks for the Oakland Ensemble Company, and for TheatreWorks in Palo Alto California, he directed Jar the Floor by Cheryl West and Blues for an Alabama Sky by Pearl Cleague, which was nominated for nine Bay Area Circle Critics Awards and was the winner of DramaLogue Awards for Best Production, Best Design, Best Ensemble Cast and Best Direction. He has directed several of August Wilson’s plays, including Radio Golf , Joe Turner’s Come and Gone , Two Trains Running , and Fences , the latter of which won eight Bay Area “Choice” Awards. At Stanford he has been awarded five different teaching awards: The ASSU Award for Undergraduate Teaching, Small Classes (1992); the Humanities and Sciences Deans Distinguished Teaching Award (1993); the Black Community Service Center Outstanding Teacher Award (1994), The Bing Teaching Fellowship for Undergraduate Teaching (1994-1997); The Rhodes Prize for Undergraduate Teaching (1998). He received his AB from Harvard College in 1978 and his Ph.D. in Dramatic Arts from the University of California Berkeley in 1984.

MICHAEL RAMSAUR | Professor Emeritus

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ALICE RAYNER | Professor Emerita

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JANICE ROSS | Professor Emerita

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Professor Emerita, Dance Studies, Dance History, Dance in Prisons.   Former Professor in the Department of Theater and Performance Studies and Founding Faculty Director of ITALIC, Immersion In The Arts Living In Culture, freshman residential program. She has a BA with Honors from UC Berkeley and MA and PhD degrees from Stanford. Her newest book, The Choreography of Environments: How the Anna and Lawrence Halprin Home Transformed Contemporary Dance and Urban Design, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press in 2025. Her other books include  Like a Bomb Going Off: Leonid Yakobson and Ballet as Resistance in Soviet Russia  (Yale University Press, 2015). The Russian translation of Like A Bomb was published in 2024 by Academic Studies Press (Boston, USA/Moscow, Russia).  Anna Halprin: Experience as Dance,  (University of California Press 2007/2009 paper), winner of a de la Torre Bueno Award 2008 Special Citation,  San Francisco Ballet at 75  (Chronicle Books 2007) and  Moving Lessons: The Beginning of Dance in American Education , (University of Wisconsin 2001/UPF 2021 second edition). She is co-editor, with Susan Manning and Rebecca Schneider, of  Futures of Dance Studies , (University of Wisconsin Press, 2020). 

Her essays on dance have been published in numerous anthologies including  The Articulate Body , ed. Lynn Brooks, (University Press of Florida, 2024), The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Ballet , (Oxford University Press, 2021), The Oxford Handbook of Dance Improvisation, Ed.V. Midgelow, (Oxford University Press 2019), On Stage Alone , ed. Claudia Gittleman, (Univ. of Florida Press, 2012),  Dignity in Motion: Dance, Human Rights and Social Justice , ed. by Naomi Jackson (Scarecrow Press 2008),  Perspectives on Israeli and Jewish Dance , ed. Judith Brin Ingber, (Wayne State University Press, 2008),  Performance and Ritual, edited by Mark Franco  (Routledge 2007),  Everything Was Possible (Re) Inventing Dance in the 1960s , edited by Sally Banes (University of Wisconsin Press 2003),  Caught by Surprise: Essays on Art and Improvisation , edited by Ann Cooper Albright and David Gere (Wesleyan University press 2003). 

Her awards include Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellowships, two Stanford Humanities Center Fellowships, a 2022 Bogliasco Foundation Fellowship, Italy, NYU Center for Ballet and the Arts 2018-19 Fellowship, research grants from the Iris Litt Fund of the Clayman Institute for Research on Women and Gender, the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, a Jacobs’ Pillow Research Fellowship, and a fellowship from the Djerassi Resident Artists Program. She received the 2021-2022 Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching at Stanford, and in 2022 she was named an Honorary Fellow of the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, Israel. From 2012-2018 she was co-director, with Susan Manning and Rebecca Schneider, of the Mellon Foundation Initiative,  Dance Studies in/and The Humanities . She is past President of the international Society of Dance History Scholars and past President of the Dance Critics Association and a former delegate to the American Council of Learned Societies.

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• Saturday, October 26

CBD 2024: In-person Interactive Workshop, The Power of the Pause with Tia Rich, PhD

• Contemplation by Design

Saturday, October 26, 2024 8:30am to 9:30am PT

Lathrop Library, 282 518 Memorial Way, Stanford, CA 94305 View map

This event is open to: General Public Everyone

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Event Details:

“The Power of the Pause” Illuminates the Light Within and Promotes Health and Well-being for Individuals, Communities, and the Planet

Experience how contemplative practices strengthen our capacity to effectively engage in the complex work of creating health and well-being for all individuals, communities, countries, and the planet. 

“ iPause to Thrive, Create, and Serve” describes lives that integrate Contemplation by Design ®.

This interactive workshop provides opportunities to:  - Cultivate your understanding of evidence-based contemplative lifestyle skills that develop wise compassionate competence and sustain moral courage to meet the needs of the moment.  

- Develop a lifestyle that includes contemplative practices (e.g., loving-kindness cultivation, moral engagement, breath-based movement, mindfulness meditation, compassionate communication, and transformative service). 

- Develop a Personal Action Plan for greater equanimity, insight, empathy, kindness, and wise action.  

- Become more fully equipped to address the societal challenges and meaningful causes to which you are dedicated.

Scholars have pointed to the role of American colleges and universities as embodied places of societal values and aspirations, reflecting both academic traditions and heritages alongside social and scientific change and innovation. Campus communities can engender positive outcomes including skills for inter- and intra-personal relationships, moral courage, and civic engagement. Collectively, these outcomes can contribute to individual, community and planetary health and well-being, and to thriving functional democracies.

Tia Rich, PhD, MA, MSW , is the founder and director of the Stanford School of Medicine’s Contemplation by Design® program. As the principal lecturer for the School of Medicine’s Applied Contemplative Science concentration in Community Health and Prevention Research, Rich teaches and mentors Stanford undergraduate and graduate students. Academic classes she teaches include: Contemplative Science , Applying Contemplative Practices , Contemplative Competence for Sustainability of Public and Planetary Health and Well-being , Contemplative Movement , and Translating Contemplative Science into Timely Community Programming . She also teaches co-curricular classes through the Stanford Healthy Living program, including the "The Power of the Pause" contemplative retreat for faculty, staff, students, and community members. She has been integrating contemplative science and practices into Stanford academic classes and professional development programs since her completion of graduate studies in Social Welfare at UC Berkeley, and in Education at Stanford, after earning her undergraduate degree in Human Biology at Stanford.

This workshop is offered twice, first at 8:30am and again at 10:00am. Choose to particiapte in the workshop offered at the time most conveneint for you.

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‘It was like we were garbage’: Stanford to ‘cycle out’ creative writing lecturers

One creative writing lecturer requested anonymity due to fears of professional retaliation. Pseudonyms and gender neutral pronouns were used to protect sources’ identities and improve readability.

Many of Stanford’s creative writing lecturers will be phased out over the next two years, as the University restores the Jones Lectureship’s term limit as part of the restructuring of the Creative Writing Program.

The restructuring, executed under the recommendation of a working group formed after the lecturers secured pay raises last September, was announced in a Zoom meeting on Wednesday, Aug. 21 by Humanities and Sciences dean Debra Satz, Humanities and Arts senior associate dean Gabriella Safran and Creative Writing Program co-director Nicholas Jenkins. The working group was composed of creative writing faculty members but no Jones Lecturers. 

The Jones Lectureship came with a four-year cap that only began to be enforced on fellows hired after 2019, but over the course of the years, some lecturers have stayed longer than the terms of the program. With the restoration of the original term-limited appointments, however, all current Jones Lecturers — including those hired prior to 2019 — will be let go within the next two years.

Some lecturers have already been affected; for instance, Rose Whitmore was dismissed in 2023 after winning that year’s Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Prize.

For Casey, a lecturer who requested the use of a pseudonym due to fear of professional retaliation, the Wednesday meeting felt cold and awkward.

“It was like we were garbage,” Casey said. “They didn’t even acknowledge how difficult this news would be, and when they did give us time to ask questions, the way they fielded the questions, particularly [Jenkins], it was just very cold and very dismissive.”

Safran disagreed with Casey’s characterization in a statement on behalf of the Creative Writing Program and the School of Humanities and Sciences. The Daily also reached out to the University for comment but has not obtained a response.

During the Wednesday meeting, the deans told the lecturers that they would be “cycled out.” They clarified that it meant the lecturers’ jobs would be “terminated,” Jones Lecturer Tom Kealey told The Daily. Some lecturers will be teaching for an additional year, while others will be teaching for two more years. Kealey called the situation a “future fire.” 

“We were brought in to discuss the ‘restructuring’ of the overall program, and then we were all fired,” Kealey said. One lecturer even told him the meeting felt like the Red Wedding from Game of Thrones. 

Five minutes after the meeting, an email from Christina Ablaza, the administrative director of the Creative Writing Program, informed the lecturers that they could sign up for one-on-one meetings to discuss their individual situations. 

Lecturers to be affected by the decision were frustrated that they had no say in the phase-out. But Satz and Safran do not have voting power in the working group either — only the faculty members do. The faculty members made the decision “to fire all 23 of their junior colleagues” in what Kealey called a “secret meeting.” 

“I got the impression that the deans themselves were confused as to why the professors had voted to fire them,” Kealey said.

Kealey believed that 10 out of all the creative writing faculty members on the working group only taught 13 undergraduate classes last year, while the same number of Jones Lecturers would have taught 50 classes. Lecturers also advise about 90% of students in the Creative Writing Program and 50% of students in Department of English, he estimated.

Many students expressed concerns that they will lose a strong community of creative writing peers and classes. They are also confused as to what the program will look like in the future. 

Students are receiving information from each other, lecturers, a recently created Instagram page called “ripstanfordcw” (which stands for rest in peace, Stanford creative writing) and even from Fizz, an anonymous social media platform. The confusion comes a week before course enrollment is set to begin on Sept. 5.

Students have tried to voice their displeasure with the current decision. A petition , started by Kyle Wang ’22 M.A. ‘23, has received over 600 signatures from students and alumni. He began the petition after talking to some of his friends about the positive impact many of the Jones Lecturers have had on their lives. Other community membes tried to write emails to University administrators.

In an online announcement published on Wednesday, Aug. 28, the Creative Writing Program states that Stanford will increase “the number of creative writing classes to better meet high student demand as well as ensuring competitive compensation for both the lecturers and fellows.” According to the statement, more details will be released in the fall. 

“I know they said that they were having meetings and they’re reworking [the program], but it’s not very transparent,” said English major Skya Theobald ’25.

Mia Grace Davis ’27, a prospective English major, wanted to take “English 190E: Novel Writing Intensive,” a class known for its popularity and limited enrollment, in the fall. Now she is not even sure if it will be offered in the future. 

For Davis, the main appeal of Stanford had always been its Creative Writing Program, but “it’s kind of falling apart as we’re watching it,” she said.

To students who have taken numerous creative writing classes like Theobald, it doesn’t make sense why lecturers are being cycled out when the program wants to meet the growing demand for creative writing. 

Prospective English major Annabelle Wang ’27 said what’s happening has even made her reconsider her course of study.

“It definitely makes the English major less desirable,” she said of the phase-out. “I think for students and the student experience, it’s going to be a really big loss. A lot of community is going to be lost.”

Theobald also expressed concerns the variety of creative writing classes will be reduced. A lot of them such as “English 190G: The Graphic Novel” and “English 190E: Novel Writing Intensive” are rarely offered at other universities, but incoming freshmen now may not have the same opportunities to explore those classes. For instance, specialized classes like “The Graphic Novel” may not be offered again if the lecturers who teach them are let go, Kealey said.

Students felt that the Jones Lecturers have shaped the way they view their own writing. Lydia Wang ’27 had often struggled to understand the value of her writing, but her lecturers were the ones to help her realize there is a place in the world for what she creates. 

“That’s the type of impact that really changes people, and when people change, they can change the world as well,” she said. “So I really hope that Stanford learns to value the humanities, and especially creative writing, because we’re creating change, and we’re creating something for ourselves.” 

Some lecturers remain hopeful that the restructuring, which is ongoing, will be reconsidered.

“I may be naive, but I still believe in Stanford. I think Stanford is much better than this,” Kealey said. “I think as light is shed on this, enough people are going to say, ‘This doesn’t make our university better. It makes our university much worse.’”

Judy N. Liu '26 is the Academics desk editor for News and staff writer at The Daily.

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Stanford MD Physician Scientist Programs

Become a Physician-Scientist at Stanford School of Medicine

Developing Tomorrow’s Leaders in Discovery and Care

As part of our mission to train future leaders and scholars in multiple domains, Stanford School of Medicine offers unique, highly flexible curricula that enable MD students to pursue clinical investigation during medical training.

With several degree and non-degree physician-scientist pathways available, most Stanford MD students pursue scholarly investigation and biomedical research – giving them the skills to translate research, create better understanding of disease, and lead clinical trials. In addition to traditional physician-scientist areas such as basic science, students have recently pursued research in diverse areas, including epidemiology, global health, health policy, and clinical trials and biomarkers.

Our novel physician-scientist training programs offer:

• Funding: Opportunities for fully funded research training
• Flexibility: The ability to change pathways to deepen scholarly pursuits
• Faculty Mentorship: One-to-one guidance from faculty physician-scientists

The Physician-Scientist Pathway at Stanford School of Medicine

• Physician-Scientist Training Program (PSTP) : Students engage in a broad range of biomedical research, within the medical school, on the university campus or abroad as part of global health projects led by Stanford faculty.
• Berg Scholars : Berg Scholars pursue a MS in Biomedical Investigation while enrolled in the MD program at Stanford.
• Medical-Scientist Training Program (MSTP, MD/PhD) : One of the nation’s most recognized programs, MSTP trains students and prepares them for careers dedicated to biomedical research.

• *Does not include other non-research master’s degrees
• **Internal MSTP admits who move into MSTP, which typically occurs after MD2, receive full funding the fall quarter after acceptance.

What role do physician-scientists have in medicine?

Physician-scientists — doctors trained as both expert care providers and scientists – possess a mix of skills and expertise that enable them to have central roles in the basic science discovery process, test new diagnostics and therapeutics in clinical settings, and deliver discoveries at individual and societal levels.

Though physician-scientists make up less than 1% of the physician workforce in the United States, they account for 37% of all Nobel laureates in physiology or medicine and some 70% of chief scientific officers of major pharmaceutical companies and National Institutes of Health (NIH) leadership.

What does physician-scientist training at Stanford look like?

Stanford’s MD students admitted into physician-scientist training programs pursue curiosity-driven research to the depth of their interests. This flexibility allows them to transition from one pathway to another as they immerse themselves more into physician scientist training. Some trainees opt for exposure to biomedical research in a non-degree pathway, while others choose to pursue more research-intensive programs and graduate with an MD/MS or MD/PhD.

What is the Split Curriculum?

Stanford's "Split Curriculum" provides medical students an opportunity to acquire in-depth research experience alongside academic coursework. More beneficial than a gap-year approach, the Split Curriculum starts after the first year of medical training, with students dedicating half their time to lectures or clinical activities and the rest for research. Unlike gap year pathways offered by other medical schools, the Split Curriculum is unique to Stanford and allows students to combine research and preclinical coursework over seven consecutive quarters.

What does the funding structure for physician-scientist training look like?

Stanford School of Medicine is committed to creating an environment where a student’s training is defined by their interests, not concerns about future debt. Our clinician-scientist pathways provide full funding for research pursuits, and some pathways also include full funding for the student’s medical training.

Another differentiator, Stanford offers the Medical Scholars Research Program , a fellowship that supports medical student research, including scholarly concentration projects. With MedScholars funding, students carry out research under the direction of faculty members in the medical school, hospital and clinics,  throughout the university, and in some cases across the globe.

Addressing the physician-scientist shortage

The number of U.S. physicians engaged in research has dropped more than 50% over the past 40 years, and this has accelerated since the start of the pandemic. Stanford School of Medicine aims to address this urgent crisis by reinvigorating this pipeline through funding, flexibility, and faculty mentorship. These unprecedented offerings enable Stanford MD students to become physician-scientists who serve as a bridge between biomedical research and patient care. With transformative medical advances on the brink of reality – including cures for genetic illnesses, the ability to program cells, vaccines for cancer, personalized medicine, and AI-enabled medicine – the unique skills of physician-scientists will become only more important to advancing research, translation, and care.

Who should consider becoming a physician-scientist?

Stanford’s physician-scientist pathways are designed for MD students who have an interest in conducting independent scientific investigation during their medical training. The skills developed in these programs have broad application in professional environments, with demand across academia, health systems, and biotech and pharmaceutical companies. Most importantly, Stanford wants to attract and develop the abilities of students who have a keen interest in developing innovative solutions to today’s greatest health challenges.

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Bringing environmental law to life

PhD student Eeshan Chaturvedi is driven to create meaningful change worldwide. He’s advancing sustainability through both his legal research and global leadership.

There’s a saying in Hindi that roughly translates to, “knowledge increases when dispersed.” It’s a philosophy that guides environmental lawyer and PhD student Eeshan Chaturvedi in his ongoing effort to understand and engage with others at the intersections of climate law, policy, and finance.

Chaturvedi’s interest in environmental issues first began in Firozabad, his hometown in Uttar Pradesh, India. A major hub of India’s glass manufacturing industry, the city experienced heavy air pollution in the early 1990s. “I grew up where black clouds of smoke were normalized,” he said.

Having personally witnessed the impacts of unchecked pollution, Chaturvedi was immediately drawn to environmental law as a young JD student. This interest developed into a passion when he served as a law clerk both on the Supreme Court of India and at the National Green Tribunal, India’s dedicated judicial body for dealing with environmental disputes.

“I had a good view of how law transpired in courts,” he said. “What really intrigued me was how environmental laws come to life in context. I think of them as skeletons by themselves, and then it’s the context – political, social, and economic – that becomes their flesh and blood.”

Chaturvedi went on to engage with environmental law from a variety of perspectives. He earned a master’s degree from Stanford Law School , where he focused on environmental policy. Later, Chaturvedi worked with several international organizations including the World Commission on Environmental Law and the Global Alliance for a Sustainable Planet .

He was also an assistant dean and associate professor at the O.P. Jindal Global University’s School of Environment and Sustainability in Haryana, India, where he taught environmental policy and climate governance. That experience marked a major turning point in his approach to the discipline.

“For the first time my learning was not limited to just law – I was venturing into policy, management, economics, and more. Through my teaching I realized that law is only a part of the puzzle,” he said.

This revelation inspired Chaturvedi to expand his academic pursuits. The Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability’s Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources (E-IPER) presented the perfect opportunity to get involved in the kind of cross-sector scholarship he was looking for.

Now going into his third year in the PhD program, Chaturvedi is researching judicial decision-making in environmental law and the ways it can be informed by concepts from policy and finance.

“Despite the emphasis on interdisciplinary efforts in sustainability, the empirical methods of the physical and social sciences have yet to be widely incorporated into legal decision-making frameworks,” he said. “My current research aims to bring these facets together.”

Outside of the immediate goals of his research, Chaturvedi is focused on real-world impact.

“I’m very aware that my publications can get trapped in solely academic spaces,” he said. Instead, he’s intentional about “dispersing knowledge” more broadly, whether by teaching students, writing about environmental issues, or serving in leadership roles with international organizations.

“Implicit in my idea of being a good academic is to be involved in global efforts that are directed towards bettering sustainability laws,” he said. “It has been – and will remain – a constant goal of mine that my research is applicable at a global scale.”

Explore More

Sustainability Accelerator welcomes first cohort of entrepreneurial fellows

The Sustainability Accelerator’s new postdoctoral fellowship program kicks off fall quarter with four entrepreneurial fellows who will pursue individual research on greenhouse gas removal.

Meet students who spent their summer pursuing sustainability research

Through programs offered by the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, undergraduate students from Stanford and institutions across the U.S. worked on projects that tackled pressing environmental challenges and advanced fundamental knowledge about our planet. Here’s an inside look at their experiences.

Dual goals in health and sustainability

Intent on having a widespread impact, Evelyn Pung focuses on work that simultaneously improves the health of people and the environment.

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