Caroline Winterer in Sicily

Caroline Winterer has been a professor in Stanford’s department of history since 2004, where she studies the exchange of ideas between Europe and America. She was director of the Stanford Humanities Center from 2013 to 2019. Raised in Europe and the United States, she’s a native speaker of both English and French. She has authored or co-authored five books, won many awards for teaching and research, taught in the Bing Overseas Studies Program in Paris and frequently lectures for the Stanford Alumni Association.

Professor Winterer loves figuring out how ancient people thought about their world. “Given the sometimes tiny amounts of evidence we have for the past,” she asks, “how can we put together the puzzle of other people’s lives and experiences?” Her research focuses on how the ancient civilizations of the Mediterranean and Europe—from the Paleolithic onward—have been interpreted and used by us moderns. She is keenly interested in exploring what ideas from these archaic societies continue to inspire us today.