Petra Dierkes-Thrun teaches Comparative Literature and Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Stanford University, and is Director of Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning for the Office of the Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning. She is an advocate of digital pedagogy to support and develop the Humanities by bridging the past and the present, not only in academia, but society at large. The Phi Beta Kappa Society (Northern California chapter) recently recognized her teaching with a Teaching Excellence Award. Petra’s academic research focuses on Oscar Wilde and his circle, forgotten women writers, and feminist and LGBTQ literature and history since the 19th century, as well as digital pedagogy involving social media and blended learning in the Humanities. At Stanford, she is engaged in Stanford’s new “CS+X” program, a joint undergraduate major between Computer Science and the Humanities that offers new interdisciplinary and integrated perspectives on teaching and learning. Petra also works as an advisory editor for boundary 2: An International Journal of Literature and Culture, and was the founding editor of the open-access, literary-feminist internet journal The Latchkey: Journal of New Woman Studies.
