Wells College, in partnership with the Phi Beta Kappa Society, is pleased to announce that on September 22, Professor Maya Jasonoff will give a lecture entitled, “Ancestry: Where Do We Come From and Why Do We Care?” Jasonoff will give her lecture at 4:30 pm in 209 Stratton Hall, on the Wells campus. The lecture is free and open to the public.
The lecture will touch on some of the themes of Jasonoff’s popular class of the same name, which explores some of the perspectives from which ancestry can be viewed, and their implications for both self and society. Jasonoff is currently writing a book on the same topic.
Jasonoff is both the X.D. and Nancy Yang Professor of History, and the Coolidge Professor of History, at Harvard College. Her area of focus is British Imperial and global history. In addition to her role at Harvard, she has been a Guggenheim Fellow in 2013, a fellow at the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, a Kluge Chair at the Library of Congress, and a member of the Institute for Advanced Study. She has also written three books, all of which have won prizes. Her 2017 book “The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World” was a New York Times best book for that year, in addition to being awarded the Cundill Prize in History. Essays written by Jasonoff appear in such publications as The Guardian and The New York Times.
