Jill Lepore, Author of 'The Secret History of Wonder Woman,' Will Be the 2017 Balch Speaker
Wonder Woman is the hottest film of the summer and this fall Bryn Mawr’s first-year students will get to know more about the iconic hero from Jill Lepore, author of the New York Times bestseller The Secret History of Wonder Woman, winner of the 2015 American History Book Prize.
Lepore will visit the campus on Oct. 26, 2017, for an on-stage interview and Q&A in Goodhart auditorium, followed by the famous Balch Speaker themed dessert reception in Thomas Great Hall. This evening event is open to all students taking the Emily Balch Seminar, who will be encountering Lepore’s work in their Balch Seminar classes in the weeks leading up to her visit.
Lepore is the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History at Harvard University. She is also a staff writer at The New Yorker. Her most recent book is Joe Gould's Teeth.
Her earlier work includes a trilogy of books that together constitute a political history of early America: The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity, winner of the Bancroft Prize, the Ralph Waldo Emerson Award, and the Berkshire Prize; New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan, winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Award for the best nonfiction book on race and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; and Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin, Time magazine's Best Nonfiction Book of the Year, winner of the Mark Lynton History Prize, and a finalist for the 2013 National Book Award for Nonfiction.
Lepore has been contributing to The New Yorker since 2005, writing about American history, law, literature, and politics. Her latest piece is The World That Trump and Ailes Built.
Taught by scholar/teachers of distinction within their fields and across academic disciplines, Balch Seminars challenge students to think about complex, wide-ranging issues from a variety of perspectives.
Past speakers have included Suzan-Lori Parks, Cheryl Strayed, Alison Bechdel, Karen Russell, Zadie Smith, and Elizabeth Kolbert.
