Werner Sollors is Henry B. and Anne M. Cabot Professor, Emeritus, at Harvard University, where he taught English, African American Studies, and Comparative Literature for more than three decades. He received his doctorate from the Freie Universität Berlin and held positions at Columbia University, Università degli Studi di Venezia and at New York University Abu Dhabi. His most recent books are The Temptation of Despair (Belknap) and The Werner Sollors Reader (Edinburgh UP)
Accompanying him is Alide Cagidemetrio, Professor emerita at the Università degli Studi di Venezia. Together, Werner and Alide are working on their joint book, Face to Face with Antiquity, about travelers to ancient sites. The book explores the appeal of such sites in travelogues, fiction, drawings, photography, and other sources. Excerpts from Alide’s chapter on Pompeii and Werner’s on Persepolis have appeared in The European Review of Books.