Mariatte Denman, Ph.D.

Mariatte Denman, Ph.D. Associate Director for the Humanities 412 Sweet Hall, MC: 3087 Phone: (650) 723-6487 Fax: (650) 725-9580 mdenman@stanford.edu

Mariatte Denman offers one-on-one consultations to faculty in the humanities on teaching issues, end-quarter evaluations, and course design. Many faculty and lecturers have also invited Mariatte to their classrooms to conduct midquarter small group evaluations.

As a way to generate conversations about teaching among faculty, she facilitates quarterly teaching lunches. In addition, she supports departments in curriculum review processes and TA training program design. Many departments have invited her to give workshops for their graduate students on teaching topics and professional development, including the art of discussion leading, learning theories and classroom practices, evaluating essays, and teaching portfolios.

Her interest in research on teaching and learning is broad and varied. Currently, she is focusing on how students read and process (especially literature), how emotions impact learning, and how studies in cognitive development and educational psychology can inform and enhance classroom practices. She also follows the latest discussions on teaching in the humanities and enjoys lively debates about teaching and pedagogy. Teaching and research on learning have been her professional interest ever since she received a BA in Education and Literature and a teaching credential from the University of Berne in Switzerland. She later pursued a Ph.D. in German with designated emphases in Critical Theory and Feminist Research and Theory from the University of California at Davis. Prior to joining the Stanford CTL team in 2004, she was an assistant professor in German studies at Duke University for four years and also taught as an IHUM postdoctoral teaching fellow at Stanford. Her interest in how students process memories continues her scholarly work in German studies that also focused on the cultural and literary formation of memory. Her articles in New German Critique, German Quarterly, and The Germanic Review explore the formation of cultural memory and national identity in contemporary German and Swiss culture.

Two energetic daughters keep her and her husband, Todd, busy and provide her with a real-life testing ground for motivational theories and mindful parenting. In the remaining rare moments of peace, she enjoys reading academic and literary mystery novels and takes advantage of the many cultural opportunities in San Francisco.