Phi Beta Kappa Annual Lecture

Every year the national organization's Visiting Scholar Program makes available a number of distinguished scholars to spend time on campuses and give public lectures.

Individual chapters must apply and be approved to receive this honor. Wells College has hosted lectures by the following Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholars:

2018–19
Jamsheed Choksy

Distinguished Professor of Central Eurasian Studies, Indiana University–Bloomington
“State and Faith in Iran: Recent History as a Key to Understanding the Present”
Thursday, Sept. 20, 2018

2017–18
Lydia Liu

Professor of Comparative Literature at Columbia University
“Who Owns Great Ideas?”
Thursday, Oct. 19, 2017

2016–17
Shuhai Xiao

Professor of Geobiology at Virginia Tech
“On the Eve of the Cambrian Revolution”
Monday, Oct. 24, 2016

2015–16
Blaire Van Valkenburgh

Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UCLA and Associate Dean of Academic Programs in the Life Sciences
“Other Worlds: the View from the Pleistocene”
Thursday, Oct. 29, 2015

2014–15
Bambi Schieffelin
Collegiate Professor and Professor of Anthropology at New York University
“Language and intentionality: Whose mind are you speaking?”
Monday, Oct. 27, 2014

2012–13
Peter Crane
Carl W. Knobloch Jr. Dean of the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale University
“The Future of Plants”
Monday, Feb. 25, 2013

2011–12
Richard A. Shweder
William Claude Reavis Distinguished Service Processor of Human Development, University of Chicago
“Robust Cultural Pluralism in the New World Order: Three Prophecies”
Thursday, Oct. 27, 2011

2010–11
Jane Ginsburg
Morton L. Janklow Professor of Literary and Artistic Property Law, Columbia University School of Law, and director of its Kernochan Center for Law, Media, and the Arts
“The Author’s Place in the Future of Copyright”
Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2010

2008–09
Anne Kostelanetz Mellor
Distinguished Professor of English, UCLA
“Mothering Monsters: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein”
Monday, April 6, 2009

2007–08
Dan Huttenlocher
John P. and Rilla Neafsey Professor of Computing, Information Science and Business and Stephen H. Weiss Fellow, Cornell
“Computer Vision: From Autonomous Vehicles to Video Surveillance to Image Search”
Thursday, Nov. 15, 2007

2006–07
Chris Impey
Distinguished Professor of Astronomy, University of Arizona”The End of the World: Astronomy Meets Eschatology”
Tuesday, October 24, 2006

2005–06
Linda Greenhouse
New York Times Supreme Court Correspondent
“Court, Country, and Culture”
Thursday, April 6, 2006