Teaching
My teaching, like my research, is highly interdisciplinary. It is shaped by my doctoral training in literature and culture and by my postdoctoral study in history and art history. Whether lectures or seminars, my courses focus on texts, images, and ideas, and on situating them in their social, cultural, political, and historical contexts. Though frequently centered on Italy and on the early modern period, they tend to pursue questions that transcend disciplinary boundaries, and because of this, span multiple centuries and fields. My courses combine field-specific content and methodologies with open-ended questions and a comparative, interdisciplinary approach. I bring canonical figures and works into conversation with lesser-known individuals and cultural expressions that share a natural affinity or complementarity based on form, content, or the questions they pursue.
Advising is at the core of my work as a teacher. I routinely serve on doctoral exam and PhD dissertation committees, and my mentoring and advising extend to undergraduates as well. At Stanford, I am Director of Undergraduate Studies for French and Italian and Chair of the Undergraduate Affairs Committee for the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages. Collaboration is also central to my teaching. I serve as Faculty Director for Stanford’s first-year Education as Self-Fashioning (ESF) Program, whose courses are delivered collaboratively in partnership with colleagues in Stanford’s Program in Writing and Rhetoric.
Three fundamental beliefs shape my teaching and instructional approach:
- Learning is a process that takes the whole person into account.
- Teaching is as much a disposition of heart and mind as it is a series of coordinated actions.
- Effective teaching is principled teaching.
In June 2023, I was honored to receive a Dean’s Distinguished Teaching Award from the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University.
COURSES (a representative selection)
The graduate and undergraduate courses I have designed and delivered reflect my research interests and intellectual investments as well as my commitment to the humanities and my deep and abiding love for education and the liberal arts.
“Storytelling and the Human”
Storytelling is intrinsic to the human experience. A mode of sense-making and a means of world-making, it is and has always been central to the creation and persistence of selves, societies, and states. Be they inwardly narrated or outwardly expressed, stories shape our human existence, from basic acts of sensory perception, through the mundane activities and encounters of daily life, to the great events and encounters of the public square. We are all, inevitably, producers and consumers of stories. In this combined literature and creative writing seminar on the phenomenon and the craft of storytelling, we will study short stories, biographies, and memoirs from different periods, cultures, and traditions, our investigation shaped by two guiding questions: What does it mean to tell a story? What makes for a compelling narrative? We will think critically about reading, writing, interpreting, and imagining as we engage in these activities and practices through the process of analyzing literature and composing texts. Students will have the opportunity to write and to workshop at least two pieces of fiction and/or non-fiction and to receive feedback on multiple drafts. If you are interested in becoming a better reader, writer, thinker, or communicator, to develop a story along with your voice, and/or to explore the human as a mode of being and expression, this course is for you.
“Between Gods and Beasts: The Struggle for Humanity”
Centuries ago, Plotinus famously wrote that humanity was “poised midway between gods and
beasts” (Enneads 3.2.8). Some individuals “grow like to the divine,” he asserted, and “others to the brute.” Since antiquity, many different societies, east and west, have understood education as a fundamental factor in determining whether individuals became fully realized as human beings or something less. Considered a civilizing force for individuals and societies, education aimed not only at the acquisition of knowledge and skills, but also at the cultivation of goodness, the attainment of wisdom, and the achievement of happiness. In short, the goal of learning was to live well. What does it mean to live well? How does one cultivate one’s nature or become one’s best possible self? What kind of personal and intellectual development does this presuppose? Are there limits to the human capacity for self-development and change? In this course we will ponder such questions as we reflect critically on human nature and on historical and contemporary ideas regarding education, self-development, and living well.
“Michelangelo: Gateway to Early Modern Italy”
Revered as one of the greatest artists in history, Michelangelo Buonarroti’s extraordinarily long and prodigious existence (1475–1564) spanned the Renaissance and the Reformation in Italy. The celebrity artist left behind not only sculptures, paintings, drawings, and architectural designs, but also an abundantly rich and heterogeneous collection of artifacts, including direct and indirect correspondence (approximately 1400 letters), an eclectic assortment of personal notes, documents and contracts, and 302 poems and 41 poetic fragments. This course will explore the life and production of Michelangelo in relation to those of his contemporaries. Using the biography of the artist as a thread, this interdisciplinary course will draw on a range of critical methodologies and approaches to investigate the civilization and culture of Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Course themes will follow key tensions that defined the period and that found expression in Michelangelo: physical-spiritual, classical- Christian, tradition-innovation, individual-collective.
“Great Minds of the Italian Renaissance and Their World”
What enabled Leonardo da Vinci to excel in over a dozen fields from painting to engineering and to anticipate flight four hundred years before the first aircraft took off? How did Michelangelo paint the Sistine Chapel Ceiling? What forces and insights led Machiavelli to write The Prince? An historical moment and a cultural era, the Italian Renaissance famously saw monumental achievements in literature, art, and architecture, influential developments in science and technology, and the flourishing of multi-talented individuals who contributed profoundly, expertly and simultaneously to very different fields. In this course on the great thinkers, writers, and achievers of the Italian Renaissance, we will study these “universal geniuses” and their world. Investigating the writings, thought, and lives of such figures as Leonardo da Vinci, Niccolò Machiavelli, and Galileo Galilei, we will interrogate historical and contemporary ideas concerning genius, creativity, and the phenomenon of “Renaissance man” known as polymathy.
“Word and Image”
What impact do images have on our reading of a text? How do words influence our understanding of images or our reading of pictures? What makes a visual interpretation of written words or a verbal rendering of an image successful? These questions will guide our investigation of the manifold connections between words and images in this course on intermediality and the relations and interrelations between writing and art from classical antiquity to the present. Readings and discussions will include such topics as the life and afterlife in word and image of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Dante’s Divine Comedy, Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, and John Milton’s Paradise Lost; the writings and creative production of poet-artists Michelangelo Buonarroti, William Blake, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti; innovations in and correspondences between literature and art in the modern period, from symbolism in the nineteenth century through the flourishing of European avant-garde movements in the twentieth century.
“The Pen and The Sword”
As weapons, the pen and the sword have been used to wound, punish, and condemn as well as to protect, liberate, and elevate. Historically entangled with ideals of heroism, nobility, and civility, the pen and the sword have been the privileged instruments of men. Yet, throughout history, women have picked up the pen and the sword in defense, despair, and outrage as well as with passion, vision, and inspiration. This course is dedicated to them, and to the study of works on love, sex, and power that articulate female experience. In our readings and seminars, we will encounter real and fictive women in their own words and in narrations and depictions by others from classical antiquity to the present, with a special focus on the Renaissance and on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Touching on such topics as flattery and slander through the study of misogynistic, protofeminist, and feminist works in the early modern and modern periods in various European literary traditions, we will consider questions of truth and falsehood in fiction and in life. Course materials span a variety of genres and media, from poetry, letters, dialogues, public lectures, treatises, short stories, and drama to painting, sculpture, music, and film – works regarded for their aesthetic, intellectual, religious, social, and political value and impact.
Speaking
Speaking to specialists and generalists is at the core of what I do. I have spoken at dozens of conferences and given many public talks. Because my intellectual and imaginative work center on existential themes, my scholarly and creative endeavors naturally intersect with questions and concerns of broad human interest. Translating scholarly expertise into engaging talks and presentations for non-experts and interpreting history, literature, and art for contemporary audiences is a passion and a priority for me.
Talks can be developed for academic, cultural, educational, organizational, and general audiences and tailored to the themes and format of a particular event. I am available for lectures, keynotes, moderated conversations, panels, workshops, and interdisciplinary performances. I welcome public humanities initiatives, speaking engagements, and performances of many types. Current areas of active research and interest include:
- Between Gods, Beasts & Machines: What Does It Mean to Be Human Now?
- Michelangelo and the Creative Self: Renaissance Perspectives on Making, Meaning, and Becoming
- Human Flourishing Today: Education, Self-Fashioning, and the Good Life
Additional areas of expertise include:
- Power, Character, and Action: What History Reveals About Leadership
- Genius, Polymathy, and the Creative Life
- Storytelling, Interpretation, and the Making of Meaning
- Love, Beauty, and Transcendence
- The Inner Life in Renaissance Culture
SELECTED MEDIA & PUBLIC APPEARANCES
“The Sex Life of Michelangelo,” a documentary podcast for the History Hit network’s “Betwixt the Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society” with Dr. Kate Lister (Episode 299). Released on February 28, 2025, in the UK.
Commencement Address, June 12, 2022, Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, Stanford University (also included in full below)
“Love, Beauty, and Salvation: The Poetry of Michelangelo,” a documentary podcast I participated in that Tony Luppino and Nicola Luksic brilliantly produced for CBC Ideas. First aired by the Canadian Broadcast Corporation on June 3, 2021.
Personal interview with Kate Wheeler and Sharon Caddy on the radio release of the title track to my debut album, Dark Angel (2015). Aired on What She Said, Sirius XM, Canada Talks, Channel 167 on March 11, 2016.
Speech. Book Launch: Friulians in Canada. JD Carrier Gallery, Columbus Centre. February 25, 2015
SELECTED ACADEMIC TALKS & PUBLIC LECTURES
“Between Word and Image: The Poetry of Michelangelo”
Paola’s Studiolo, Florence, Italy, Dec. 6, 2025 (virtual)
“The Space Between: Women, Wisdom and the Poetics of Spiritual Self-Fashioning in Early Modern Italy”
Program in Italian Studies, Princeton University, Mar. 6, 2025.
“Transcendence, Immanence, and the Early Modern Italian Lyric”
Department of Italian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, Mar. 14, 2024
“Representing and Engaging Divine Wisdom in Early Modern Italy”
Toronto Renaissance and Reformation Colloquium, University of Toronto, Jan. 18, 2024
“Michelangelo’s Phenomenology of Love”
Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies (CMEMS), June 7, 2023
“Poetry of Sacred Enchantment in Early Modern Italy”
Workshop in Poetics, Stanford Humanities Center, Feb. 18, 2022
“The Poet, the Artist, and the Word: Michelangelo in the Age of Religious Reform”
Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, virtual, May 3-5, 2021
“Dante’s Commedia: The Afterlife and its Afterlives in Art and Literature” (a lecture series comprised of three hour-long public talks):
“Inferno: A Guided Descent to the Depths”
Columbus Centre, Toronto, May 14, 2019
“Purgatorio: An Orchestrated Climb to the Summit”
Columbus Centre, Toronto, May 21, 2019
“Paradiso: Approaching God”
Columbus Centre, Toronto, May 28, 2019
“Women of the Italian Renaissance” (a lecture series comprised of three hour-long public talks):
“Isabella D’Este, Marchioness of Mantua (1475-1539): Patron and Political Figure”
Columbus Centre, Toronto, Jan. 15, 2019
“Vittoria Colonna, Marchioness of Pescara (1490/92-1547): Writer and Religious Reformer”
Columbus Centre, Toronto, Jan. 22, 2019
“Veronica Franco (1546-1591): Poet and Courtesan; Sofonisba Anguissola (c. 1532-1625): Painter
Columbus Centre, Toronto, Feb. 5, 2019
“Michelangelo: Gateway to the Renaissance” (a lecture series comprised of four hour-long public talks):
“Michelangelo: From Apprenticeship to Early Acclaim (1475-1505)”
Columbus Centre, Toronto, Sept. 11, 2018
“Michelangelo: From the David to the Sistine Ceiling (1505-1513)”
Columbus Centre, Toronto, Sept. 18, 2018
“Michelangelo: From the Sistine Ceiling to the Last Judgement (1513-1541)”
Columbus Centre, Toronto, Sept. 25, 2018
“Michelangelo: His Life in Rome, His Late Works (1541-1564), and His Legacy”
Columbus Centre, Toronto, Oct. 2, 2018
Commencement Address
Commencement Address, 12 June 2022, Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, Stanford University
“Hello, and a warm congratulations to our graduates! My name is Sarah Prodan, and I am a faculty member in the Department of French and Italian. It is my pleasure and my honor to speak to you on behalf of the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages.
In preparing for today, I contemplated many different addresses. Some of them humorous. One of them titled “Of Unicorns”: not the rare start-up valued at over a billion dollars, but rather the fantastical creature that has dominated the human imaginary for at least a millennium – a figure that in the West has symbolized indomitability, gentleness, civility, and grace as well as our irrepressible capacity and abiding commitment to dream.
At the first in-person convocation since 2019, you see, I wanted to sound an optimistic note and to speak to the perennial gifts of a humanities education. I hope to do both with my address. Rather than speak of unicorns, I thought I would ground my discussion of universal things in a very concrete, historical particular with the words one friend wrote to another in the year 1513:
‘When evening comes, I return to my home, and I go into my study; and on the threshold, I take off my everyday clothes, which are covered with mud and mire, and I put on regal curial robes; and dressed in a more appropriate manner I enter into the courts of ancient men and am welcomed by them kindly, and there I taste the food that alone is mine, and for which I was born; and there I am not ashamed to speak to them, to ask them the reasons for their actions; and they, in their humanity, answer me; and for four hours I feel no boredom, I dismiss every affliction, I no longer fear poverty nor do I tremble at the thought of death: I become completely part of them.’
The author of these words, originally composed in Italian, is none other than the Italian Renaissance writer and political thinker Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527). This famous personal letter from which I have shared but a brief excerpt ranks among the most memorable in the Italian epistolary tradition. In it, Machiavelli describes his existence in the Tuscan countryside – the new life he was attempting to build, or re-build, on the ashes of the old. The previous year, he had been imprisoned and tortured on the suspicion that he had engaged in activities against the newly restored Medici rulers of Florence whose recent return from exile signaled the end of the Florentine Republic. A former high-ranking bureaucrat, and a diplomat personally acquainted with the most powerful rulers in his age, Machiavelli found himself suddenly out of work, out of favor, and out of luck.
Among the daily activities he undertook during that difficult time, reading and study were central. He began his day with the great poets of the Italian literary tradition, Dante and Petrarch. In the evening, he set aside time to commune with the great thinkers and writers of antiquity, from whom he sought both wisdom and comfort.
His letter describes the ritual he established. His words convey the sacredness he attributed to the affair and the transformative effect of the exercise. He writes of sustenance, and the resonances are religious. The monastic tradition encouraged rumination on sacred text as a way to assimilate and embody divine knowledge.
It is left to our imagination whether Machiavelli’s dialogue with the ancients took the form of a literal conversation – a séance with the dead, if you will – or rather a more figurative kind of engagement on his part with the texts his favorite authors had left behind: artifacts of a lost world containing valuable knowledge and insight for the modern age; relics of great thinkers to be revived and revered.
Machiavelli was no passive adopter of history or tradition, nor was he an individual given to mystification. He was the very founder of modern political theory. He became so, in part, because, like Leonardo da Vinci and the other great polymaths of his day, he opened himself to the truths and authorities of the past, then submitted them to critical analysis and rigorous testing, revising and reproposing concepts and narratives that they might better reflect current knowledge and circumstances and better serve the moment and the people inhabiting it.
Is this not the essence of the humanistic enterprise? To open oneself to a text, a language, or another. To seek engagement, understanding, and insight. To imagine and re-imagine the world and our stories about it. To interpret and re-interpret, to create and re-create human realities and our narratives about them in meaningful ways and forms that might positively impact our lot as individuals and societies.
This letter reveals but one facet of Machiavelli, or one of many Machiavellis, if you will. To me, it is the most beautiful one, a Machiavelli both fragile and fierce. One with whom I can find common ground despite the differences in culture and character for which the great Renaissance thinker would have likely denied me this podium and the very education we celebrate today.
The Machiavelli of this letter is an individual who met adversity with ingenuity. An individual aware of his humanity and the importance of the stories we tell (and he could craft a good tale!). More importantly, it is a Machiavelli who understood that certain kinds of light can only be perceived under particular conditions of darkness – shrouds of mystery and shadows of night. He likely conceived of humanistic study in a manner akin to the way Plato understood education: as a “re-orientation of a mind from a kind of twilight to true daylight” (ct, Book 7).
Machiavelli’s ritual was a nocturnal exercise, one conducted as dusk yielded to the darkness of night – a time “more sacred than day,” to borrow the words of the great Florentine artist and poet Michelangelo, for “only shade will do for sowing mankind” (“ma l’ombra sol a piantar l’uomo serve”).
Michelangelo meant both literal and figurative sowing, acts of procreation as well as self-cultivation – such was the playfulness of Michelangelo and the character of Renaissance wit. But the metaphor of cultivation has a long tradition, from the garden philosophy of the ancient Greek sage Epicurus through the eighteenth-century French Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire, who expressed through his character Candide the importance of sowing and tending: “il faut cultiver notre jardin” (“We must cultivate our garden”).
Machiavelli’s letter suggests not only that the humanistic pursuit is sacred and transformational, but also that it’s a continuous process, a collective endeavor, and an enterprise born of love and fueled by it. His letter speaks to the allure of literature; to the power of history and other imagined realities to stimulate the mind; and, to the continuity of discourse, dialogue, and project between one generation and the next.
Like Machiavelli, you’ve pierced veils and discovered new worlds. Like him, you possess treasures that will never leave you: your education and your experience – two things that can never be taken from you. Those throughout history who have suffered the worst this world can offer attest that this is everything.
Perhaps the most important lesson to be learned from a Plato, a Michelangelo, a Machiavelli, or your time at college, is that behind committed engagement lies deep love – the kind that gets you through a degree in the humanities at Stanford; the kind that enables us to help each other through a program or a pandemic.
As we celebrate your numerous achievements and look forward with anticipation to the ones that surely lie ahead, I wish for you to appreciate the importance not only of what you’ve done, but also of who you’ve become.
You are imaginers, interpreters, bridge builders, and gardeners. In ways big and small, you are world-shaping events. Each a galaxy, with its beauty, power, and quintessence; its unique modes of thinking, feeling, expressing, and operating. Each in a constant state of evolution and becoming.
I have many wishes for you – the present you and the you(s) to come. Chief among them is that your education be more than an adornment of your person or your wall; that it be a vital and vitalizing instrument; a living flame to warm and illuminate skies, personal and collective; an enduring promise to yourself and to your communities, for here’s the twist: while your education and your educational experience is deeply personal, it is not only for or about you. A liberal arts education never has been.
Your education is more than the ideas to which you’ve been exposed, the habits you’ve developed, the metaphorical bread you’ve tasted. It is a sacred trust. Plato’s philosopher king did not leave the cave to see the light and walk away. He had a duty to return, armed with a new perspective, a new consciousness about the cave and its dwellers. As you prepare to re-enter the world beyond Stanford, you do so with similar gifts and responsibilities.
And so, I wish for you to wear your education lightly, with joy and a sense of freedom. I wish also that you deploy it wisely in service of personal goals and development but also social and civic life. And like that enchanting horned creature that I did not speak to you about today, may you embody the kind of rare hybridity for which it has been made to stand: keenness of intellect complemented by openness of mind; strength of will tempered by tenderness of heart. May the best, and the best of you, be yet to come!
Thank you.”