Visiting Scholars


General Information

Since 1976, the Honors Program has undertaken the Visiting Scholars' Lecture Series, which has brought to Portland State University more than three hundred distinguished foreign and domestic visitors. Their visits are closely connected with the upper-division seminars of the Honors Program; typically, Honors faculty work with a small group of students from the Program in preparation for the visits of our guests; during their week-in-residence, those visiting scholars give public lectures and meet extensively with the seminar group.

Most Recently

In the Spring Quarter of 2005 we were delighted by the visits of three scholars. We were first joined by Professor Geraldine Heng, Director of Medieval Studies, University of Texas-Austin. Her visit was followed by those of Professor Dipesh Chakrabarty, Kempton Distinguished Service Professor of History in South Asian Languages and Civilizations, the University of Chicago, and Professor David Tracy, Greeley Distinguished Service Professor of Catholic Studies and Professor of Theology and Philosophy of Religion in the Divinity School, as well as the Committee on Social Thought, the University of Chicago.

Past Years

In 1994, for instance, we offered a colloquium on the tenth anniversary of the untimely death of Michel Foucault, at which such distinguished visitors as Paul Bové, Page duBois, and Jonathan Goldberg meditated on the intellectual legacy of the late French philosopher. An earlier colloquium, on "Structure and Meaning in the Pensées of Pascal," brought together vistors from many American and Canadian universities, as well as Philippe Sellier, of the Université de Paris-Sorbonne, the proceedings of which were published as a special number of the journal Biblio 17eme, Papers on Seventeenth-Century French Literature (Seattle and Tubingen).

The following is a list of the scholars participating in the Honors Program curriculum in the years 1977-2002:

Sir Ernst Gombrich, The Warburg Institute, London

Edward Said, Professor of Comparative Literature, Columbia University

Todd Savitt, Professor of History, University of Florida

Sir Peter Medawar, Nobel Laureate in Science

Emmanuel LeRoy Ladurie, Professor of History, Collège de France

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Professor of English Literature, University of Texas

Hayden White, Professor of History, University of California-Santa Cruz

Richard Harvey Brown, Professor of Sociology, University of Maryland

Carl Weber, Chair, Department of Directing, School of Theatre, New York University

Leon Richelle, M.D., Professor of Biology and President, University of New Orleans

Martin Jay, Professor of History, University of California-Berkeley

Robert Heilbroner, Professor of Economics, New School for Social Research

Lawrence Friedman, Professor, School of Law, Stanford University

Gunther Stent, Professor and Chair, Department of Molecular Biology, University of California Berkeley

Werner Hirsch, Professor of Economics, University of California-Los Angeles

Harry Paul, Professor of History, University of Florida

Rosemary Reuther, Professor of Theology, Garrett Theological Seminary

Vincent Sarich, Professor of Anthropology, University of California Berkeley

Bruce Kuklick, Professor of History and American Studies, University of Pennsylvania

Carlos Fuentes, Novelist, Professor of Literature, University of Mexico City

Mark Poster, Professor of History, University of California-Irvine

William Clebsch, Professor of Religious Studies, Stanford University

Robert McAfee, Professor of Theology, Pacific School of Religion

Aldo Scaglione, Professor of Comparative Literature, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

Sandra Gilbert, Professor of English Literature, University of California-Davis

Stephen Toulmin, Professor of Philosophy, Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago

Michael Holroyd, Biographer

Alice Stewart, M.D., Research Scientist, National Cancer Registry (U.K.), University of Birmingham (England)

Ronald Carson, M.D., Institute for the Medical Humanities, Galveston, Texas

Eleanor Leacock, Professor of Anthropology, City College of New York

Richard Lewontin, Professor of Zoology, Director of the Agassiz Museum, Harvard University

George Lewis, Professor of Sociology, University of the Pacific

Mott Greene, Professor of History, Skidmore College, MacArthur Prize Fellow

Hélène Cixous, Professor of Literature and Feminist Studies, University of Paris-Vincennes

Najita Tetsuo, Professor of East Asian Studies, University of Chicago

Dennis Grafflin, Professor of Chinese History, Bates College

Benjamin Keen, Professor Emeritus, Northern Illinois University

John Root, Professor and Chair, Humanities and Social Sciences, Illinois Institute of Technology

Nell Sinton, Painter

Perry Anderson, Editor, New Left Review, London

Mary Catherine Bateson, Professor of Anthropology, Amherst College

David Hollinger, Professor of the History of Science, University of Michigan

Steven Meyer, Professor of the History of Science and Technology, Illinois Institute of Technology, National Science Foundation Fellow

Ted Humphrey, Professor of Philosophy, Arizona State University

Daniel Kevles, Professor of the History of Science and Technology, California Institute of Technology

Marcia Colish, Frederick Artz Professor of Medieval History, Oberlin College, Visiting Fellow, Institute for Advanced Studies

Fredric Jameson, Head, Department of Comparative Literature, Duke University

Karl Morrison, Ahmansohn-Murphy Distinguished Professor of History, University of Kansas, Guggenheim Fellow

James J. Murphy, Head, Department of Rhetoric, University of California-Davis

Brian Stock, Senior Fellow, The Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, Toronto, Visiting Fellow, Collège de France

Howard Wiarda, Professor of Political Science, University of Massachusetts-Amherst

Timothy Reiss, Professor of Comparative Literature, New York University

Robert Lamberton, Professor of Classics, Princeton University

Charles Rowan Beye, Distinguished Professor of Classics, Lehmann College, City University of New York

Charles Natoli, Professor of Philosophy, St. John Fisher College

David Wetsel, Professor of French Language and Literature, Arizona State University

Hugh Davidson, Commonwealth Professor of French Literature, University of Virginia

Sara Melzer, Professor of French Language and Literature, University of California Los Angeles

Leo Steinberg, Benjamin Franklin Professor, Mellon Professor of Art History, University of Pennsylvania

Thomas Hughes, Professor of the History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania

Craig Kallendorf, Professor of English and Classical Language, Texas A & M

Anthony Grafton, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of History, Princeton University

Robert Proctor, Professor of Italian, Connecticut College

Frank Turner, Professor of History and Provost, Yale University

Dominick LaCapra, Professor of History, Cornell University

Donna Haraway, Professor, History of Consciousness Board, University of California Santa Cruz

Donald McCloskey, Professor of Economics and Co-Director, Project on the Rhetoric of
Inquiry, University of Iowa

Stephanie Coontz, Professor of History, The Evergreen State College

John S. Nelson, Professor of Political Science and Co-director, Project on the Rhetoric of Inquiry, University of Iowa

Jonathan Goldberg, Sir William Osler Professor of English Literature, the Johns Hopkins University

Paul Bové, Professor of English Literature, University of Pittsburgh

Page duBois, Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature, University of California San Diego

Bette Talvacchia, Professor of Art History, University of Connecticut, Storrs

Dorothy Ross, Distinguished Professor, University of Virginia

John Dixon Hunt, the Oak Spring Garden Library, Senior Editor Word and Image

Warren Wagar, Distinguished Teaching Professor, SUNY-Binghampton

Erika Rummel, Professor of History, Wilfrid Laurier University, Ontario, Canada

Mario Biagioli, Professor of History of Science, Harvard University

Thomas L. Dumm, Professor of American Politics and Contemporary Political Thought, Amherst College

Laurence Lampert, Professor of Philosophy, Indiana University at Indianapolis

Matt Matsuda, Professor History, Rutgers University

Wolfgang Iser, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of Constance

Edith Wyschogrod, J. Newton Rayzor Professor of Philosophy and Religious Thought, Rice University

John Caputo, David R. Cook Professor of Philosophy, Villanova University

Mary Poovey, Director, Institute for the History of the Production of Knowledge, Professor of English, New York University

Peter Dear, Professor of History and Science and Technology Studies, Cornell University