Bill Taliaferro retired in 2015 after serving with the U.S. Department of State as a Foreign Service Officer in Poland, Malawi, Afghanistan, Slovakia, Norway, and Niger. Prior to joining the Foreign Service, he worked in private-sector marketing and public relations in Silicon Valley, taught literature at Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley, and commanded a U.S. Army bomb disposal unit at the Presidio of San Francisco. Bill has a bachelor’s degree in humanities from The Johns Hopkins University and a Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Berkeley. He lives on a small farm outside Eugene, Oregon with his wife, Joy, three horses, and two big poodles. A movie fan since childhood, Bill is a member of the UO Osher Lifelong Learning Institute’s Film Series steering committee.