Subscribe to The Huntington Lectures Podcast: Recent Episodes
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The Huntington hosts approximately twenty public lectures each year on themes related to its collections. Subscribe to the podcast to be notified every time a new lecture is released.
Author Wade Graham of American Eden explores the birth and career of the modern garden in California between 1920 and the 1960s.
Damian Duffy and John Jennings, the award-winning team behind the #1 bestseller Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation, discuss their new graphic novel adaptation of Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower.
Huntington President Karen R. Lawrence speaks with Drew Gilpin Faust, former president of Harvard and Civil War scholar, about the importance of the humanities.
Civil War scholar and former Harvard president Drew Gilpin Faust explores the ways The Huntington's collections have served as a critical resource for our understanding of the Civil War for this 2020 Founders' Day Lecture. Although the collection started with Henry Huntington, it has expanded since the library's founding, bringing new insights about the war's causes, motivations, and consequences.
Peter Stallybrass, professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, examines a single letter that Elizabeth Barrett Barrett wrote to Hugh Stuart Boyd, a scholar with whom she was passionately in love long before she met her fellow poet and future husband, Robert Browning.
Huntington President Karen R. Lawrence speaks with Carla Hayden, Librarian of Congress, about why archives and libraries exist and why the work they do continues to be important.
Hui-shu Lee, professor of Chinese art history at UCLA, reflects on two recipients of the Pritzker Architecture Prize—I. M. Pei and Wang Shu—and their instrumental reinterpretations of Chinese garden design for the modern and post-modern worlds.
Mae Ngai, professor of history at Columbia University, explores The Huntington's collections on the history of the American West, which includes some scattered references of the Chinese people, who were integral to California's history but were not always visible through historical records.
Sir Diarmaid MacCulloch, emeritus professor of the History of the Church at the University of Oxford and Fellow of St. Cross College, introduces his ground-breaking biography of the self-made statesman who married his son to King Henry VIII's sister-in-law, reshaped Tudor England and Ireland, and set the kingdom on a Protestant course for centuries.
Sally Gordon (University of Pennsylvania) and Kevin Waite (Durham University) explore the role of the Mormon Church and the spread of slavery across the continent in the mid-19th century through the life of Bridget "Biddy" Mason.
Featuring Paul G. Haaga Jr., Huntington Trustee emeritus, chair of the board of NPR, and retired chair of Capital Research and Management Company, in conversation with Meg Whitman, CEO of Quibi, former president and CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise and eBay Inc., and 2010 Republican nominee for governor of California.
Rose hybridizer Tom Carruth, the E. L. and Ruth B. Shannon Curator of the Rose Collections at The Huntington, discusses how he developed his newest floribunda, 'Huntington's 100th', named in honor of the institution's Centennial Celebration.
Rob Iliffe, professor of the history of science at the University of Oxford, discusses two little-known documents that reveal how Isaac Newton's approach to prosecuting contemporary counterfeiters as a warden of the Royal Mint was closely related to his strategy for revealing the corruption of Christianity.
Joyce Chaplin, James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History at Harvard University, revisits "The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin," which was one of Henry Huntington's most prized manuscript acquisitions. Franklin tells a tantalizingly open-ended story about his life because the manuscript was left unfinished.
Bill Esparza, author of "L.A. Mexicano: Recipes, People & Places," and Elisa Callow, author of "The Urban Forager: Culinary Exploring & Eating on L.A.'s Eastside," join award-winning journalist and L.A. chronicler Val Zavala in a Q&A about L.A. food culture.
James Brayton Hall, president of the Garden Conservancy, examines what America's gardens say about our culture and how new approaches pioneered by the Conservancy are helping to protect and document these landscapes for the future. Several examples of West Coast gardens are highlighted, including remarkable successes—such as the gardens surrounding the former prison on Alcatraz Island—and one near failure.
Henry Huntington acquired one of the rarest books in the history of English literature: the so-called "bad quarto" of Hamlet. Zachary Lesser, professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, discusses how this book's discovery in 1823 transformed our ideas about Hamlet, how it made its way to The Huntington, and what can we learn through this book's history about modern libraries.
Dennis Kruska, a noted authority on the Yosemite Valley, discusses the literature that enticed sightseers to experience the Yosemite's scenic wonders following the first tourist party to the valley in 1855.
Dympna Callaghan, William L. Safire Professor of Modern Letters at Syracuse University, considers Shakespeare's complaints about the limitations on what he could say and how he could say it.
An esteemed panel of astronomers, historians, and engineers explore astronomy's fantastical theories and fascinating discoveries with moderator and Caltech university archivist Peter Sachs Collopy. Panelists include Tracy Drain, JPL Psyche mission deputy project systems engineer; Eun-Joo Ahn, astrophysicist and graduate student in history at UCSB; W. Patrick McCray, professor of history at UCSB; and John Mulchaey, Crawford H. Greenewalt Chair and Director of the Carnegie Observatories.
Author Julie Leung and illustrator Chris Sasaki discuss the inspiring true story behind their children's book, Paper Son. Li Wei Yang, curator of Pacific Rim Collections at The Huntington, introduces the program and offers historical context. A book signing follows the talk.
William Deverell, director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West, explores the life of Henry E. Huntington (1850-1927) against the backdrop of American history. This program is a Haynes Foundation Lecture.
Noted ethnobotanist Mark Plotkin and cartographer Brian Hettler of the Amazon Conservation Team discuss the work of Richard Schultes, the 20th-century ethnobotanist, and share their new interactive map, based on the explorer's journals, that tracks his Amazon travels and offers insights into his role in the development of the field of ethnobotany in the US.
Kristen L. Chiem, associate professor of art history at Pepperdine University, explores the role of floral imagery in Qing-dynasty China.
Researcher T.J. Stiles describes the last year of Custer's life through the eyes of teenager Bertie Swett. Swett came to know Custer and his wife Libbie at Fort Abraham Lincoln and in Manhattan while America approached a historic turning point. Swett bared witness to the notorious soldier's life as he pushed his career and fortune to the brink of disaster.
Sachiko Kusukawa, professor of the history of science at the University of Cambridge, explores the many ways images served early modern science, from anatomical atlases and botanical illustrations to telescopic and microscopic observations.
Edmund Russell, professor of history at Carnegie Mellon University and the Dibner Distinguished Fellow at The Huntington, discusses the motives, construction, and consequences of the completion of transcontinental telegraph in 1861.
Eugene Wang, professor of art history at Harvard University, discusses the Qianlong Garden in the northeast corner of the Forbidden City. Built in the 1770s, the whole garden space can be seen as a five-act play.
James Walvin, professor emeritus at the University of York and the Los Angeles Times Distinguished Fellow at The Huntington, discusses the widespread global ramifications of African slavery that transformed the cultural habits of millions of people.
Award-winning author Susan Straight is joined by novelist Lisa See for a conversation about Straight's powerful new memoir, In the Country of Women, which traces the lives of six generations of immigrant and multiracial women in her extended family.
Steven Usselman, historian and author, traces how the invention of the deep well centrifugal pump triggered a cascade of change that reshaped the Golden State.
Barbara Lamprecht, an architectural historian, explores Richard Neutra's unique contribution to architecture: designing environments that fused buildings and settings to create "habitats."
Historian Victoria Johnson discusses the life of David Hosack, the attending physician at the Hamilton-Burr duel and founder of the nation's first public botanical garden, today the site of Rockefeller Center.
Peter Moore, writer and lecturer at the University of Oxford, discusses an 18th-century coal collier from a small port in northern England came to define an entire age.
Andrea Wulf, the New York Times bestselling author, discusses her new illustrated book "The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt"—her second work about the intrepid explorer and naturalist.
Allison L. Strom, Carnegie Fellow at the Carnegie Observatories, shows how astronomers use the world's largest telescopes to determine the chemical DNA of even very distant galaxies.
Sean Bradley, Ph.D. candidate at the University of Washington, explores the history and development of an early text on emergency Chinese medicine, the Zhouhou beiji fang 肘後備急方 (Emergency Medicines to Keep on Hand), by the 4th-century alchemist and scholar, Ge Hong 葛洪.
Larry Nittler, Department of Terrestrial Magnetism at the Carnegie Institution for Science, discusses his use of microscopic analyses to understand what tiny grains of dust in meteorites can tell us about the evolution of stars and the matter that became the sun and planets.
H.R. Woudhuysen, rector of Lincoln College, Oxford, talks about the market for old books and manuscripts in England in the time of the Tudors and Stuarts in this Zeidberg Lecture.
Rosalie McGurk, fellow in instrumentation at Carnegie Observatories, discusses the latest technological advances to build a new, custom-designed instrument for Carnegie Observatories' Magellan Telescopes that can peer into the Universe with extreme detail.
Sujit Sivasundaram, director of the Centre of South Asian Studies at the University of Cambridge, discusses the historic gardens that existed in Sri Lanka before the arrival of the British and the changes they faced during the colonial period.
C. Pierce Salguero, associate professor of Asian history and religious studies at Penn State Abington, provides an introduction to the principles of Sino-Buddhist medicine, the product of centuries of cross-cultural exchange between medieval India and China.
Pamela H. Smith, Seth Low Professor of History and Director of the Center for Science and Society at Columbia University, discusses her work with the Making and Knowing Project.
Alexander Ji, Hubble Fellow at the Carnegie Observatories, leads a short tour of the early history of our Universe, offering intriguing glimpses of an epoch known as Cosmic Dawn, when the first stars and galaxies were born.
Louis Warren, professor of U.S. Western History at the University of California, Davis, explores how Californians remade American ideas of property and power between 1848 and the present.
Authors Bryan Mealer and Joshua Wheeler discuss hardscrabble times, places, and people in Texas and New Mexico.
Karen Lawrence, president of The Huntington and a James Joyce scholar, delivers the annual Founder's Day Lecture on how Joyce wrote "Ulysses" by stealing from everybody else.
Shigehisa Kuriyama, professor of cultural history at Harvard University, discusses the Inshoku yōjō kagami (Rules of Dietary Life), a Japanese woodblock print produced around 1850.
Author Icy Smith and illustrator Gayle Garner Roski discuss their book Mei Ling in China City, based on a true story set in Los Angeles during World War II.
William Deverell, professor of history at USC, explores the regional dimensions of American entrepreneurialism, asking what special features or challenges found in the American West helped drive entrepreneurs and stimulate original thinking?
Fara Dabhoiwala, professor of history at Princeton University, explores why speech, before the 18th century, was continually monitored and policed in every sphere of life across the Western world.
Susan Burns, professor of history at the University of Chicago, explores the incorporation of saffron into Japanese pharmacology, a complex process that involved the rise of natural science and a "productive confusion" that linked saffron with other botanicals.
Chris Woods, award-winning horticulturist, describes the most arresting features in public parks, botanic gardens, and private estates in locations ranging from New Delhi and Dubai to Chile and Australia from his book GardenLust. Throughout, he reveals the fascinating people, plants, and stories that make these gardens so lust-worthy.
Mary Sarah Bilder, Founders Professor at Boston College Law School, discusses the responses of George Washington and Benjamin Rush to Eliza Harriot O'Connor's remarkable university lectures in 1787 and their implications for female political status under the Constitution. O'Connor was the first American female lecturer and principal of a female academy. This program is a Nevins Lecture.
Naomi Tadmor, professor of history at the University of Lancaster and the Fletcher Jones Foundation Distinguished Fellow at The Huntington, discusses the sophisticated system of social welfare developed in 17th- and 18th-century England aimed to assist the poor and its impact on local government and the lives of families and communities.
Rebecca Corbett, Japanese studies librarian at USC, explores aspects of tea culture in Japan's Edo period (1603–1868) and its use in children's education. Corbett's current project focuses on the Buddhist nun and artist Tagami Kikusha (1753–1826) and the transmission of her work in modern Japan. This program is part of the East Asian Garden Lecture series.
Michael Vinson, author and proprietor of Michael Vinson Americana, shares the tale of John Holmes Jenkins III (1940–1989), a Texas antiquarian bookseller, publisher, historian, and gambler who, in 1971, helped the FBI recover a valuable set of original colored engravings of Audubon's The Birds of America.
Jonathan Waldman, author of "Rust: The Longest War," provides an illuminating look at the unsung heroes—engineers—who are working to keep our modern world from wasting away due to rust, which has been called "the great destroyer." Rust consumes cars, fells bridges, sinks ships, sparks house fires, and nearly brought down the Statue of Liberty. This program is a Trent R. Dames Lecture.
Joel A. Klein, the Molina Curator for the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences at The Huntington, explores the work of Daniel Sennert (1572–1637), professor of medicine at Wittenberg University, who sought to reform 17th-century medicine through alchemy, atomism, and experimentation. Sennert's reform led to clashes with traditionalists as well as profiteering charlatans, and ultimately resulted in charges of heresy and blasphemy. This lecture is sponsored by the Dock Society for the History of Medicine.
Steve Martino, award-winning landscape architect, is joined by Caren Yglesias, author of Desert Gardens of Steve Martino, for a discussion about landscaping for arid climates. Martino's pioneering designs combine dramatic man-made elements with native plants in gardens that honor the natural ecology of the desert, inviting spaces of beauty and color while solving problems such as lack of privacy or shade.
Paul Theroux, travel writer and novelist, explains how Jack London's experiences and observations in the Hawaiian Islands still resonate today, based on Theroux's own experiences and observation as a 30-year resident there.
Tom Ford, fashion designer and filmmaker, discusses the making of his 2009 film, A Single Man, based on Christopher Isherwood's semi-autobiographical novel, published in 1964. Isherwood's archive, including the manuscript of the novel, is part of The Huntington's literary collections.
Benjamin Madley, associate professor of history at UCLA, discusses the near-annihilation and survival of California's indigenous population under United States rule.
Glenn Webb, professor emeritus at Pepperdine University, discusses the globalization of the Japanese tea ceremony in the decades following World War II. Webb's lecture inaugurates the Dr. Genshitsu Sen Lecture Series, which focuses on Japanese tea culture.
Chinese theater-maker Stan Lai (Lai Sheng-chuan 賴聲川) discusses the origins and evolution of Nightwalk in the Chinese Garden, his new, site-specific production for The Huntington. The play is the culmination of Lai's residency at The Huntington as the 2018 Cheng Family Visiting Artist and is developed and produced by the CalArts Center for New Performance.
Daniel Lewis, the Dibner Senior Curator of the History of Science at The Huntington, discusses his new book about the birds of Hawaii. Belonging on an Island: Birds, Extinction, and Evolution in Hawai'i takes readers on a thousand-year journey as it explores the state's magnificent birds, touching on topics ranging from the concept of belonging to the work of pioneering bird conservationists.
Local historian Ann Scheid gives a fascinating lecture about this once-famous theme park, remnants of which can still be glimpsed around the neighborhood where it once stood. When German brewing magnate Adolphus Busch purchased a mansion on Pasadena's "Millionaires' Row" in 1904, he quickly bought up some 60 additional acres stretching down to the bottom of Arroyo Seco and developed it into a lushly landscaped park. Busch Gardens, which opened to the public in 1906, featured terraced hillsides, waterfalls and ponds, and "fairy scenes" drawn from tales of the Brothers Grimm.