Honorary degree recipient Jill Lepore gave the keynote address at this year’s baccalaureate ceremony on May 22. Lepore is the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History at Harvard University and a staff writer at The New Yorker. She is a preeminent academic, a gifted teacher, and an esteemed essayist. Lepore’s research, teaching and writing often explores absences and asymmetries of evidence in the historical record.

Her current work concerns the histories and technologies of evidence and of privacy. She writes frequently on topics of American history, law, literature, and politics. In 2012, she was named Harvard College Professor, in recognition of distinction in undergraduate teaching.

A prolific writer, she has been a regular contributor to The New Yorker since 2005. She is the author of 10 books, most recently The Secret History of Wonder Woman, an exploration of women’s rights in America through the lens of the iconic comic book character. In 2015 she will begin a Guggenheim Fellowship Year, working on her next book, Dickens in America, an account of the novelist’s 1842 American tour.

Lepore earned a B.A. in English from Tufts University, an M.A. in American Culture from the University of Michigan, and a Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University.