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Through courses based in theory, musicianship, analysis, and history, Stanford’s Department of Music trains students for careers as composers, performers, teachers, and scholars. The department supports a culture that is not only firmly rooted in history and tradition but also vigorously engaged with the technological and artistic evolution of sound. Resources include the Archive of Recorded Sound—where students can explore the progression of music on formats from wax cylinders to streaming media—and the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics, a multidisciplinary facility that serves composers and researchers collaborating at the crossroads of technology and art.

Campus-wide, the department also promotes the enjoyment and understanding of music through private lessons. Students enjoy extraordinary opportunities to participate in ensembles, chamber groups, and major productions.

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The Department of Art and Art History at Stanford encompasses the history of art, the practice of art in the studio, and film and media studies. Courses investigate the historical development of images and media and their influence on society, as well as their relationship to other disciplines such as literature and music.

Critical thinking and technical skills learned in the classroom inform the creation of artwork in studios, labs, screening rooms, and galleries on campus. Between lecture series, symposia, gallery exhibits, film screenings, and design presentations, the department participates in more than 60 events a year.

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Asian American Studies (AAS) is dedicated to understanding Asian peoples in the U.S. from contemporary and historical points of view. With a broad range of interests and expertise, faculty in AAS take an interdisciplinary approach to studying the complex, diverse, and ever-changing cultures that constitute the Asian American experience.

Undergraduates at Stanford may earn a major or minor in Asian American Studies by taking courses in many departments, including history, English, anthropology, and music. The program is a home for students exploring every dimension of Asian American life from art and literature to social and cultural history to politics and policy. It provides an excellent foundation for appreciating complexity within a diverse, interdependent world.

This interdisciplinary program offered by the Taube Center for Jewish Studies promotes research on Jewish literatures, languages, religion, politics, and history. In addition to traditional strengths in history and religious studies, the program also comprises scholarship on the role of the arts, especially music and theater, in Jewish culture.

Courses offer a rich understanding of the many areas of Jewish studies, such as Jewish history, Israeli culture, religious literature, and the Hebrew and Yiddish languages. Undergraduates may earn a major or minor in Jewish studies. The Taube Center also supports graduate students and visiting scholars as part of its mission to educate the broader community, Jewish and non-Jewish, through lectures and other public events.

The interdisciplinary program in American Studies promotes a broad understanding of U.S. culture and society. It connects scholars of English literature, performance studies, education, sociology, and many other disciplines whose work examines the past and present of the United States and also shapes how the nation imagines its future.

Students design their own course of study while investigating the many dimensions of U.S. life—race, gender, technology, religion, and mass media, for example. Because the program spans many disciplines, students benefit from access to faculty in economics, history, music, and other departments. American Studies offers endless opportunities to apply the full range of Stanford’s resources to the project of understanding the U.S. in a global context.

Comparative Literature (part of the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages) provides students the opportunity to study literature in all its forms. While other disciplines focus on works of literature as parts of specific national or linguistic traditions, comparative literature examines the nature of literary phenomena themselves by drawing together texts from around the globe and from different historical periods. The department focuses on literary forms such as narratives, performance, and poetry, as well as cinema, music, and new emerging media.

Along with the traditional model of comparative literature that juxtaposes two or more national literary cultures, the department supports teaching and research that uses specialized tools of inquiry such as literary theory, the application of philosophy to literature (and vice versa), and other methods that enrich literary study.

At Stanford’s Department of Theater and Performance Studies (TAPS), students receive instruction—in the classroom and onstage—from faculty as well as artists-in-residence. The curriculum integrates theory, criticism, and a historical study of drama with the experience of live performance in theater spaces on campus. Students apply analytical skills developed in courses to artistic endeavors that range from performing in classic dramas and stage-managing musicals to creating costumes for period pieces and directing experimental one-act plays.

The department also houses a Dance Division, in which students consider movement both as performance and as a cultural, political, and social lens for understanding the body and the world. Courses covering critical and historical perspectives on dance complement studio classes that teach forms ranging from ballet to hip-hop.

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