Petra Dierkes

Petra Dierkes is a residential Undergraduate Advising Director in Academic Advising in the Vice Provost Office for Undergraduate Education and occasionally teaches as a Lecturer in Comparative Literature and Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies. Other roles Petra has held at Stanford are (most recently) Associate Director of Public Service and Inclusion and Diversity Education (directing the Emerson Fellowship Program for sophomores interested in social equity and public service leadership and intergroup communication) and Assistant Vice Provost for Strategic Initiatives in the former Vice Provost Office for Teaching and Learning, where she directed the Year of Learning, a 2015-16 Stanford-wide presidential initiative.

Petra is passionate about literature, culture and interdisciplinary relationships among the arts culture (including visual arts, opera, dance, early film) of the 1880s-1920s, specifically Oscar Wilde and his circle as well as “forgotten” women writers and artists of the period; feminist and LGBTQ Studies, history and theory of genders and sexualities; digital pedagogy; and community-engaged teaching and learning in the humanities.