To: The Wellesley College Community
From: President Paula A. Johnson
Re: Distinguished Faculty Lecture 2025
Date: February 18, 2025
I am delighted to announce that Peggy Levitt, professor of sociology and the Mildred Lane Kemper Chair of Sociology, will deliver this year’s Distinguished Faculty Lecture.
Professor Levitt will present “Decentering the Inequality Pipeline: Expanding the Global Circulation of Ideas and Culture” on April 15 at 4:30 p.m. in Collins Cinema, to be followed by a reception in the Davis Museum lobby. Please register to attend the lecture in person; it will also be livestreamed.
For almost three decades, Professor Levitt has taught Wellesley students about the deep sociological implications of our most important cultural and educational institutions, including museums, libraries, and schools. Her courses have included Global Arts and Culture, Comparative Perspectives on International Migration and Mobility, Urban Sociology, Sociology of Education, and more.
Her service to the College has been significant, and includes chairing her department from 2005 to 2008 and from 2015 to 2023. I want to applaud Professor Levitt for hosting a meeting of the Global (De)Center at Wellesley next month that will gather a group of international scholars and researchers to discuss how to produce, disseminate, teach about, and act upon knowledge in more inclusive ways.
An accomplished scholar, Professor Levitt’s current research examines cultural and intellectual inequality and transnational efforts to provide social welfare across borders. She is also completing her latest book project, Move Over, Mona Lisa. Move Over, Jane Eyre: Decentering the World’s Universities, Museums, and Libraries.
Over the course of two decades, Professor Levitt has authored, co-authored, and edited numerous articles and books, including Transnational Social Protection: Social Welfare Across National Borders; Artifacts and Allegiances: How Museums Put the Nation and the World on Display; Religion on the Edge; God Needs No Passport; and The Transnational Villagers. She regularly teaches abroad and presents her work at international conferences.
From 1998 to 2020, Professor Levitt co-directed the Transnational Studies Initiative and the Politics and Social Change Workshop at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University and the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard Kennedy School.
Professor Levitt has received numerous fellowships, most recently from the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency Program, Vienna’s Institute for Human Sciences, the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh, the Institut Convergences Migrations in Paris, the European University Institute, and Hong Kong Baptist University. She holds honorary degrees from the University of Helsinki and Maastricht University.
Sponsored by the Office of the President, the Distinguished Faculty Lecture was established in 1999 to provide an opportunity for the College’s accomplished and respected faculty members to deliver a public lecture that allows the community to reflect on the meaning of a liberal arts education.
Please join us for a lecture that I know will be both timely and engaging.
