Author Talk: Peggy Levitt - Move Over, Mona Lisa

About

Join us for an author talk and signing with Peggy Levitt, Wellesley College professor and renowned sociologist. In her new book, Move Over, Mona Lisa , Peggy asks: If the public is loudly calling for a wider range of art, literature, and ideas in our museums, libraries, and classrooms, why are our cultural and educational institutions so slow in making the change? Her answer is what she calls the "inequality pipeline," the layers of obstacles that keep art and ideas from circulating freely across the globe. Drawing on conversations with artists, writers, and cultural professionals in Argentina, Lebanon, and South Korea, Peggy shows that many of them have stopped waiting for old gatekeepers to change and are instead building new, alternative hubs and pathways that let art and ideas travel from cities like "Buenos Aires to Mexico City without having to pass through Madrid." Peggy takes us from the studios and desks where art and ideas are first created, through the museums and institutions that circulate and exhibit them, to the classrooms where they're researched and taught. Along the way, she reveals how cities, museums, and libraries influence more about both what creatives do and what the public learns than we might generally assume. The result is a hopeful, sharply observed new theory of how global cultural and intellectual change really happens. Peggy Levitt is the Mildred Lane Kemper Chair of Sociology at Wellesley College. She is also a co-founder of the Global (De)Centre . Her latest book, Move Over, Mona Lisa: Reimagining What We Read, Look At, and Learn was published this year by Stanford University Press. Peggy has previously written on social protections across borders, museums as site of immigration and national story-building, the influence of immigration on religion, and the socio-political realities of 1st and 2nd generation American immigrants. She 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 the Harvard Kennedy School from 1998 to 2020. Peggy received Honorary Doctoral Degrees from the University of Helsinki (2017) and from Maastricht University (2014) and has held numerous fellowships and guest professorships at academic and research institutions from Edinburgh to Hong Kong. Accessibility Notice : We strive to make our events accessible. To request a disability accommodation and/or language services, contact the department listed in the "Contact Info" pane on the right. Please allow at least two weeks to arrange accommodation.