Martha Franks spent the academic years 2012-14 in Beijing, China, developing and teaching a liberal arts curriculum at the Affiliated High School of Peking University (BDFZ). She brought to that task her experience as a faculty member at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico. At St. John’s, and then at BDFZ, she taught the classics of Western literature through discussion classes. Both the books and the style of teaching were new experiences for her Chinese students.
Ms. Franks has a separate career as a lawyer practicing Southwestern water law. She has worked on a variety of cases involving environmental issues as well as water rights quantification issues, including cases before the United States Supreme Court. She offered a class in American Law to Chinese students.
Ms. Franks has a degree in theology from the Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Virginia. In addition to her recently published Books without Borders: Homer, Aeschylus, Galileo, Melville and Madison Go to China,she has a number of publications in both water law and theology. She is a painter, having attended the Marchutz School of Art in Aix-en-Provence, France.
