Gabriela S
- Research Program Mentor
PhD at Stanford University
Expertise
American Literature, Philosophy and Film, Feminist and Queer Literature, Confessional and Autobiographical writing, Political Theory and Philosophy, History
Bio
I've taught humanities at Stanford for 12 years—first while a PhD candidate in the Department of English, where I served as a teaching assistant, and now as a professor in Stanford's intensive program for first-year students, Structured Liberal Education (SLE). SLE requires students to read great books from antiquity to modernity, starting in fall with works by figures like Plato and Homer and ending in spring with Marx and Fanon. The books in this curriculum comprise some of the most important—and difficult—works in philosophy, religion, and literature. Students also study films and some paintings. I'm an expert in mentoring students on writing. While most of my experience is with academic writing and training students to do research, I also have experience in magazine/editorial work, and take an interest in writing essays intended for more public audiences. My writing philosophy is to help students find their passion, and to collaborate with students to build a research agenda and set of questions that speak to their authentic interests. One of the big assets I bring to our time together is an understanding of academic disciplines and writing, which I translate into a process that makes sense to high school students who are just beginning to hone their skills in college-level academic writing. While I have spent over a decade working mostly with college-aged students, I have experience teaching students of most ages. I have taught in Stanford's summer humanities institute for high school students. And before coming to Stanford, I taught middle school teacher and spent a summer tutoring high school students in SAT reading. Outside of my teaching and research, I adore music, writing letters, home cooking, and the outdoors. I'm an avid reader of political theory and history, and follow contemporary events and social movements closely. In addition to my full-time teaching at Stanford, I volunteer on collaborative editorial projects for online and print publications that cover contemporary political movements. Telling stories and sharing ideas with others is my passion, so even when I'm not teaching, intellectual exchange occupies a large part of my life.Project ideas
Review of Reviews: How Canons Are Made
For this project, you'll select a very recently published work of literature and conduct a survey of the critical reception of the work. What are critics saying about the work? How do they value the work's worth? Putting your own reading of the work together with research on the author and on the genres with which that author is staging a conversation, you will determine, in an analytical piece of writing, whether the work you have read merits the reception that it has received. For example, if the author you've chosen has written a work of historical fiction, how does the work speak to the tradition of historical fiction? Does the work carry out any innovations on the genre? Or does it abide by certain conventions visible in other novels belonging to a similar body of works? To answer such questions, you will bring your own reading of the text and the survey of its critical reception together with a historical understanding of the genre to which it belongs or to which it aspires to belong. This project is intended both to deepen your relationship to a contemporary living author, and to engage your critical sensibilities with the question of canon formation. What kinds of works earn accolades? How do critics make determinations about generic belonging? When and how are new genres born? Depending on your own interests, your project can take a more scholarly tone or it can be written more in the style of a New York Review of Books feature, helping you hone your own voice as a public intellectual.