Visiting Scholars

Phi Beta Kappa’s Visiting Scholar Program offers undergraduates the opportunity to spend time with some of America’s most distinguished scholars.  Visiting Scholars spend two days at each institution; they meet informally with students and faculty members, participate in classroom discussions and seminars, and give a public lecture open to the entire academic community. Members of Delta of North Carolina will be notified by email of upcoming events and are encouraged to participate! For more information about the Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Program, click here.

Scholars who have recently visited Wake Forest under the aegis of the Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Program include:

2023-24   Corey D.B. Walker, Dean of the Divinity School, Wake Forest Professor of Humanities, and Phi Beta Kappa Frank M. Updike Memorial Scholar, Wake Forest University On Earth as it Is: On Ethics and the Environment in the Age of the Anthropocene

2023-24   Julia Bryan-Wilson, Professor of Art History and member of the core faculty of the Institute for the Study of Sexuality and Gender at Columbia University The Faces of Wood: An Exploration of Sculpture and the Climate Crisis

2019-20    Jock Reynolds, Yale University Art Gallery The Museum Exhibition as a Collaborative Learning Experience

2018-19    Dava Newman, MIT Exploring Space for Earth: Earth’s Vital Signs Revealed

2017-18    Judith Carney, UCLA Seeds of Memory: Food Legacies of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

2016       Larry A. Silver, University of Pennsylvania India Ink: Europe’s First Views of the Subcontinent

2014       Jeffry Alexander, Lillian Chavenson Saden Professor of Sociology, Yale University Cultural Trauma, Social Solidarity, and Moral Responsibility

2013       David Forsythe, Charles J. Mach Professor of Political Science, Emeritus, University of Nebraska The United States and Torture after 9/11

2011       John Straub, Professor of Chemistry, Boston University Molecules in Motion: How the Dynamics of Molecules Dictate the Form and Function of Our World

2010       Ronald Mellor, Professor of History, University of California, Los Angeles East Meets West: Encounters along the Silk Road

2008       Michael J. B. Allen, Distinguished Professor of English, University of California, Los Angeles Neoplatonic Myths of the Text in the Renaissance

2006       Jean E. Taylor, Professor Emerita of Mathematics, Rutgers University Soap Bubbles and Crystals

2005       Joseph A. Farrell, Jr., Professor of Classical Studies, University of Pennsylvania Literature and Society in the First Modern Period, 321 BC-AD 235

2003       Leonard Barkan, Arthur W. Marks ’19 Professor of Comparative Literature, Princeton University Words on Pictures

2001       Terry L. Anderson, Stanford University Free Market Environmentalism

2000       Giles B. Gunn, Professor of English and of Global and International Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara Rethinking Human Solidarity: The Difference that Difference Makes in a Globalized World

2000       William F. May, Cary M. Maguire University Professor of Ethics, Southern Methodist University Contending Myths for Understanding Nature and the Role of Technology

1997       Luke Timothy Johnson, Woodruff Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins, Emory University The Influence of Greco-Roman Religion in Early Christianity

1994       Vera Pless, Professor of Mathematics, University of Illinois at Chicago The Last Fifty Years: A Period of Great Change

1989       Paul J. Steinhardt, Mary Amanda Wood Professor of Physics, University of Pennsylvania The Inflationary Universe

1963       C. Vann Woodward, Sterling Professor of History, Yale University Is History Obsolete?