Harvard University history professor to deliver Global Studies Lecture at Alfred University

ALFRED, NY – Maya Jasanoff, professor of history at Harvard University will deliver the Third Annual Global Studies Lecture at Alfred University at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 22. Her lecture—titled “Ancestors: Where do we come from? Why do we care?”—will be presented virtually via Zoom.

Jasanoff is the X.D and Nancy Yang Professor and Coolidge Professor of History at Harvard. Her lecture will discuss “the human preoccupation with lineage; from the origins of homo sapiens to the DNA tests of today.”

"Everyone comes from somewhere,” Jasanoff wrote in the course description for a general education course she taught on ancestry last spring. “We carry our ancestries in our DNA, genealogy, family stories, and more. What do these forms of evidence tell us about who we are, as a species, as a social group, or as an individual?"

Jasanoff is the author of three prize-winning books. Her most recent, The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World, examines the dynamics of modern globalization through the life and times of the novelist Joseph Conrad. Published in 2017, it won a New York Times Best book Award. She has been a Guggenheim Fellow (2013), a fellow at the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, an ACLS Charles A. Ryskamp Fellow, and in 2019 held a Kluge Chair at the Library of Congress. Jasanoff has participated in several BBC documentaries, and her essays and reviews regularly appear in publications including The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, and The New York Times. In 2017, Jasanoff was awarded the Windham-Campbell Prize in recognition of her contributions to non-fiction literature.

Use this Zoom link to access the lecture online. The meeting ID is 957 4343 3077; passcode is 717909.