Stephen Greenblatt

Humanitas Visiting Professorship in Museums, Galleries and Libraries (2015-2016)

The Humanitas Visiting Professorship in Museums, Galleries and Libraries is a unique initiative at the University of Oxford dedicated to examining the crucial role that cultural institutions play in society. Ambitious in its scope, the initiative holds Visiting Professorships that bring individuals of outstanding practical and academic expertise to the University Oxford, which is home to some of the oldest and most important museums, libraries and collections in the Western world.

The initiative enjoys a special relationship with the Humanitas Visiting Professorship in Contemporary Art, often overlapping to provide a dynamic forum for exchange about arts and culture.

The Visiting Professorship in Museums, Galleries and Libraries has been made possible by the generous support of Foster + Partners and is hosted by Balliol College, Oxford.

Stephen Greenblatt is John Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University.

In Stephen Greentblatt’s two public lectures, entitled In the Bathhouse and Getting real, he offers his thoughts on the history and origins of  the greatest single story ever invented in the West – the rise and fall of Adam and Eve.

Stephen Greenblatt is Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. He is the author of twelve books, including The Swerve: How the World Became Modern and Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare.

He is General Editor of The Norton Anthology of English Literature and of The Norton Shakespeare, has edited seven collections of criticism, and is the co-author (with Charles Mee) of a play, Cardenio. His honours include the 2012 Pulitzer Prize and the 2011 National Book Award for The Swerve, the William Shakespeare Award for Classical Theatre, and two Guggenheim Fellowships.

Among his named lecture series are the Adorno Lectures in Frankfurt, the University Lectures at Princeton, and the Clarendon Lectures at Oxford, and he has held visiting professorships at universities in Beijing, Kyoto, London, Paris, Florence, Torino, Trieste, and Bologna, as well as the Renaissance residency at the American Academy in Rome.