“Much has been written about the ‘politics of representation’ or about how museums change what they do when immigrants come to town. The Bog and the Beast is about how museums represent the world outside their borders and about what they say concerning where the nation stands in relation to the rest of the globe.”
- Peggy Levitt
Prospectus for The Bog and the Beast: Museums,
the Nation, and the World, 2011
Peggy
Levitt
Senior Research Fellow
Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations
Mailing Address
Sociology Department
Wellesley College
106 Central St.
Wellesley, MA 02481
Contact
Email: plevitt @ wellesley.edu
HKS Directory Info
Profile
Peggy Levitt is a senior research fellow at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations and professor of sociology at Wellesley College. She also co-directs the Transnational Studies Initiative, a project based at the Hauser Center and at Harvard’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs where she is also a fellow.
At the Hauser Center, Professor Levitt is conducting research about the role of art and ethnographic museums in creating citizens. If museums in the past helped create national citizens, in today’s global world, do they now see themselves as creating global citizens too? What are the rights and responsibilities of global citizenship? What is it about the history and culture of particular cities that create more outward looking institutions while others create museums that look barely beyond their front doors? What do we learn about nationalism by looking at a country’s cultural institutions? Professor Levitt’s research is based on first-hand conversations with museum directors, curators, and policymakers, their descriptions of current and future exhibits, and the inside stories she has collected about the famous paintings and iconic objects that define the Louvre, the Met, and other museums across the globe.
She is the author of God Needs No Passport: How Immigration is Changing the Religious Landscape (The New Press, 2007), and The Transnational Villagers (U.C. Press, 2001), and editor of The Changing Face of Home: The Transnational Lives of the Second Generation (with Mary Waters, Russell Sage Foundation, 2002).
Learn More: Follow Peggy Levitt’s work at www.peggylevitt.org
Senior Research Fellow
Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations
Mailing Address
Sociology Department
Wellesley College
106 Central St.
Wellesley, MA 02481
Contact
Email: plevitt @ wellesley.edu
HKS Directory Info
Profile
Peggy Levitt is a senior research fellow at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations and professor of sociology at Wellesley College. She also co-directs the Transnational Studies Initiative, a project based at the Hauser Center and at Harvard’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs where she is also a fellow.
At the Hauser Center, Professor Levitt is conducting research about the role of art and ethnographic museums in creating citizens. If museums in the past helped create national citizens, in today’s global world, do they now see themselves as creating global citizens too? What are the rights and responsibilities of global citizenship? What is it about the history and culture of particular cities that create more outward looking institutions while others create museums that look barely beyond their front doors? What do we learn about nationalism by looking at a country’s cultural institutions? Professor Levitt’s research is based on first-hand conversations with museum directors, curators, and policymakers, their descriptions of current and future exhibits, and the inside stories she has collected about the famous paintings and iconic objects that define the Louvre, the Met, and other museums across the globe.
She is the author of God Needs No Passport: How Immigration is Changing the Religious Landscape (The New Press, 2007), and The Transnational Villagers (U.C. Press, 2001), and editor of The Changing Face of Home: The Transnational Lives of the Second Generation (with Mary Waters, Russell Sage Foundation, 2002).
Learn More: Follow Peggy Levitt’s work at www.peggylevitt.org
