Past Events
SPRING 2007
Tuesday, January 8, 12–1pm, Huntington Library
Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West
“In Conversation with Robert Gottlieb”
Robert Gottlieb is the Henry R. Luce Professor of Urban Environmental Studies and Director of the Urban and Environmental Policy Institute at Occidental College in Los Angeles. He is the author or co-author of eleven books, including: Reinventing Los Angeles: Nature and Community in the Global City; The Next Los Angeles: The Struggle for a Livable City (2005); Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement -- New and Revised Edition (2005); Environmentalism Unbound: Exploring New Pathways for Change (2001); and A Life of its Own: The Politics and Power of Water (1989). He is the editor of two MIT Press series, Urban and Industrial Environments; and Food, Health, and Environment. A long-time activist and historian of social movements, Professor Gottlieb has been directly engaged in policy, program development and community action projects in such areas as food systems, transportation and land use, resource policy, and work and industry.
Friday, January 11, 1pm–3pm, Huntington Library Overseers' Room
The Long 18th-Century Seminar, EMSI
"Learning to Look: Art, Science, and Visual Expertise in the 18th Century"
Daniela Bleichmar
Art History/Spanish & Portuguese, University of Southern California
About our presenter:
Daniela Bleichmar holds a joint appointment in the Departments of Art History and Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Southern California. She was trained as a cultural historian of early modern science, specializing in the history of the natural sciences in Europe and the Spanish Americas in the period 1500-1800. Her work focuses on the production and uses of visual material in science, the history of collecting and display, the history of the book, and the history of the Spanish empire.
Her research and teaching interests include the history of collecting and display; interactions between art and science; Iberia, the Spanish Americas, and the Atlantic World; colonialism and imperialism; print, books, and reading; scholarly practices; travel; and anatomy and medicine. At USC, she has taught undergraduate courses on the history of the book and reading, on visual and material culture in colonial Latin America and early modern Europe, and on artistic and cultural exchanges between Europe and Asia in the early modern world, as well as graduate seminars on the history of collecting and display and the history of the book.
Dr. Bleichmar is the author of several articles on visual culture and natural history in the Spanish empire and a co-editor of a volume of essays on the history of science, medicine, and technology in the Spanish and Portuguese empire, to be published by Stanford University Press in 2008. She is also working on two new projects, one on collecting in the Spanish Empire and the other on the interactions of global trade, print culture, and empiricism in the Spanish and Portuguese empires in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Most recently, Dr. Bleichmar has been named to the Smithsonian Institution monthly magazine's special issue, "36 under 37: America's Young Innovators in the Arts and Sciences."
For more information on this event, please contact Prof. Emily Anderson: ehanders@usc.edu.
For general information, please contact emsi@usc.edu.
Coffee and refreshments will be available.
Saturday, January 12, 10am–12pm, Huntington Library Overseers' Room
Renaissance Literature Seminar, EMSI
Legacies, Connections, and Transmissions
"Dark Stars, Caviar and Snuff: The Meeting of English and Dutch Renaissance Poetry"
Nigel Smith
Princeton University
For more information on this event, please contact Prof. Heather James: hjames@usc.edu
For general information, please contact emsi@usc.edu.
Seminar chairs: Cyndia Clegg and Heather James
Coffee will be available from 9:30 am.
Wednesday, January 16, 7pm–9pm, Huntington Library Seaver Classroom #3
Past Tense Seminar, EMSI
"History as Literary Art: Two Experiments"
Sandy Zipp
Brown University
This month the Past Tense seminar considers components of literary form, with a particular attention to ways of writing about place. Our guest is Samuel (Sandy) Zipp, an urban and cultural historian whose work explores cultural, intellectual, and political facets of the built environment after World War II. Zipp’s principal research looks at urban renewal in mid century Manhattan; he argues that urban renewal was at the heart of New York's simultaneous rise to "world city" status and fall into the "urban crisis." He also has a background in journalism and is interested in exploring various forms of non-fiction writing. He coordinated Yale’s “Writing History” program in 2002 and interned at Hotwired and In These Times. Zipp has written articles and reviews for a number of publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Baffler, Metropolis, American Studies International, Southern California Quarterly, Cabinet, and In These Times. He is at work on a book called Manhattan Projects: The Rise and Fall of Urban Renewal in Cold War New York, to be published by Oxford University Press.
We will read two of Zipp’s essays, one a reflection on urban space, the other an episodic history of a desert: “The Pause That Refreshes: Columbus Circle” (Palimpsest, Volume 1, Number 1, 2002) and “The Bitter Scribe of Quail Springs” (Cabinet, Number 26, Summer 2007)
To receive the readings as pdf files and to RSVP for the seminar, please email emsi@usc.edu.
For other questions, please contact Laurra Mitchell: mitchell@uci.edu
Coffee will be available.
Saturday, January 19, 10am–12pm, Huntington Library Seaver
Native Peoples and the Americas Seminar/Study Group, ICW/EMSI
"Reclaiming Dine History: The Legacies of Navajo Chief Manuelito and Juanita"
Jennifer Nez Denetdale
University of New Mexico
For more information on this event, please contact Prof. Steven Karr: skarr@autrynationalcenter.org.
For general information, please contact emsi@usc.edu.
Coffee will be available.
Saturday, January 19, 10:30am–12pm, Huntington Library Seaver Classroom #3
American Origins Seminar, EMSI
"The Rise and Fall of British Liberties in the West Indies"
Christopher Leslie Brown
Rutgers University
Christopher Leslie Brown of Columbia University will present a paper entitled "The Planter Class: The Rise and Fall of English Liberty in the British West Indies, 1580-1840." The paper explores a central paradox in the political and cultural history of the planters' class in the English West Indies. Settlers understood themselves as English and emphasized their commitment to English liberties. At the same time, they became passionately committed and deeply invested in a set of rights and liberties (over slaves) that had few if any precedents in English practice. Few men in the English-speaking world enjoyed a greater degree of "freedom" than the owners of slaves in the West Indies during the eighteenth century. Yet it was precisely these novel liberties that came to alarm certain individuals and groups in the British Isles who thought of these liberties as in conflict with the true definition of English liberty. The campaign against slaveholding in the nineteenth century British Empire, therefore, needs to be understood as a campaign against liberty as well as a war against slavery.
If you would like to receive a copy of the paper, please contact Carolyn Powell at cpowell@huntington.org. The paper will be available after January 14.
If you have any questions regarding the American Origins Seminar, please contact Carole Shammas, Department of History, University of Southern California, at (213) 740-1671 or shammas@usc.edu.
For general information, please contact emsi@usc.edu.
Coffee will be available.
Friday, January 25, 12:30–2pm, SOS 250, USC
Literary, Visual, and Material Culture Initiative; USC Department of Art History; the Fisher Gallery; the Roski School of Fine Arts; The Contemporary Project
"'Other-Oriented' Performance: Anna Deavere Smith and Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992"
Cherise Smith
Assistant Professor, Department of Art and Art History, University of Texas at Austin
Saturday, January 26, 10am–12pm, Huntington Library Overseers' Room
Early Modern British History Seminar, EMSI
"High Noon in Lichfield"
Joseph Block
Cal Poly Pomona
For more information on this event please contact Prof. Lori Ferrel: lori.ferrell@cgu.edu or Prof. Cynthia Herrup: herrup@usc.edu.
For general information, please contact emsi@usc.edu.
Coffee and Refreshments will be available.
Monday, January 28, 4–6pm, SOS 250, USC
History Seminar Series, "It's About Time"
Daniel Lord Smail
Harvard University
Professor Smail will lead a discussion from his 2005 article, ‘In the grip of sacred history.’ This ground-breaking work is a condensed version of the argument that begins his new book, On Deep History and the Brain (University of California University Press, 2008).
The USC History Seminar is forum for substantive discussions of current work by leading historians on emerging questions of historical methods, topics, themes, and theories. During the inaugural two-year cycle of this series (2008-2010), the theme is “It’s About Time: Critical Perspectives on History’s Home Dimension.”
Participants are expected to read the pre-circulated papers, articles, or chapters. Presenters will make brief opening remarks but will not lecture. All participants are invited to join the critical discussion. Light refreshments provided. Free parking is available for those arriving from off-campus.
Professor Smail’s essay is from the American Historical Review, 110:5 (Dec 2005): 1337-1361. It is available to print here.
To reserve parking if you are coming from off campus, and to assure a place in the seminar, please send an email to Lori Rogers, lrogers@usc.edu.
Wednesday, January 30, 10am, SOS 250, USC
Early Modern Studies Institute
Forum: Publishing in Peer-Reviewed Humanities Journals
Karin Wulf, College of William and Mary
Christopher Grasso, College of William and Mary
Moderator: Peter C. Mancall, Editorial Board Member, Journal of American History
For general information, please contact emsi@usc.edu.
Thursday, January 31, 1:00–3:00pm, Huntington Library Overseers' Room
Visual Studies Graduate Certificate, USC; History of the Book Workshop, EMSI; IBIS; USC English Department
"Books and Readers"
"Toward a Pre-History of Collage"
William Sherman, University of York
"Words in the Mind and on the Page: Dugald Steward, Memory and Taking Notes"
Matthew Eddy, Durham University
For more information on this event please contact Prof. Daniela Bleichmar bleichma@usc.edu or Prof. Deborah Harkness: deharkne@usc.edu.
For general information, please contact emsi@usc.edu.
Coffee and Refreshments will be available.
Friday, February 1, 9am–5pm, SOS 250
East Asia Seminar, EMSI; USC Department of History; USC East Asian Studies Center; Korean Studies Institute at USC
A Symposium
"The Early Modern in East Asia: The Challenges of Periodization"
9:00-9:10am--Welcome and Opening Remarks
9:00am-10:50am--East Asia and the Early Modern World
“Some Earlier Divergences: China-Europe Differences that Mattered, Han to Ming”
John Wills Jr., University of Southern California
“Early Modern or Late Imperial: An Environmental Perspective”
Robert Marks, Whittier College
“An East Asian Early Modernity? Kinsei in Japanese Scholarship on Japanese and Chinese History”
Richard von Glahn, University of California, Los Angeles
11:00am-12:10pm--Consciousness and Culture
“Reimagining the Intellectual Landscape of 'Early Modern Japan'”
Samuel Yamashita, Pomona
“Discourse of 'Nation' in Chosôn Korea: Early Modern?”
Jahyun Kim Haboush, Columbia University
1:30pm-2:40pm--Interactions
“From External Stimulus to Internal Integration in Late Koryo and Early Choson Korea”
John Duncan, University of California, Los Angeles
“Early Modern Networks Without an Early Modern Period—or is it the Other Way Around?”
Kenneth Pomeranz, University of California, Irvine
3:00pm-4:40pm--Authority Structures
“The Eighteenth-century Qing State: Fantasies and Fallacies of the 'Early Modern'”
R. Bin Wong, University of California, Los Angeles
“Constructions of State and Society in the Late Chosôn”
Kyung Moon Hwang, University of Southern California
“Afterlives of the Shogun: Tokugawa Ieyasu’s Material Legacy in Early Modern Modern Japan”
Morgan Pitelka, Occidental College
4:40pm-5:00--Closing Discussion
Saturday, February 9, 10am–12pm, Huntington Library Overseers' Room
Renaissance Literature Seminar, EMSI
Legacies, Connections, and Transmissions
"Believing in Shakespeare"
Claire McEachern
University of California, Los Angeles
For more information on this event, please contact Prof. Heather James: hjames@usc.edu.
For general information, please contact emsi@usc.edu.
Coffee will be served frm 9:30am.
Monday, February 11, 4–6pm, SOS 250
History Seminar Series, "It's About Time"
Lynn Hunt
Eugen Weber Professor of Modern European History
University of California, Los Angeles
Professor Hunt will discuss a chapter from her most recent book, now in press, Measuring Time, Making History: The Natalie Zemon Davis Annual Lecture Series at Central European University, Budapest (Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 2008).
The USC History Seminar is forum for substantive discussions of current work by leading historians on emerging questions of historical methods, topics, themes, and theories. During the inaugural two-year cycle of this series (2008-2010), the theme shall be “It’s About Time: Critical Perspectives on History’s Home Dimension.”
Participants are expected to read the pre-circulated papers, articles, or chapters. Presenters will make brief opening remarks but will not lecture. An initiator will launch the discussion and all participants are invited to join the critical discussion. Light refreshments provided.
For her seminar, Professor Hunt has made available the first chapter of Measuring Time, Making History, titled, “Is Time Historical?” To download the chapter in .PDF form, click here: Hunt_2008_Ch1.pdf.
Seminar participants are expected to read the pre-circulated papers. Presenters will make brief opening remarks after which everyone is invited to join in critical discussion. Light refreshments will be provided. Free parking is available for those arriving from off-campus. To receive reserve parking and assure a place in the seminar, please send an email to Lori Rogers, lrogers@usc.edu.
Wednesday, February 13, 7–9pm, Huntington Library Overseers' Room
Past Tense Seminar, EMSI
"Finding the Story: From Notes to Narrative in Historical Writing"
Deborah Harkness
University of Southern California
Past Tense is pleased to welcome Deb Harkness for the February seminar. A scholar of early modern Britain writ large, Harkness’ work—including The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution. (Yale University Press, 2007) and John Dee's Conversations with Angels: Cabala, Alchemy and the End of Nature (Cambridge University Press, 1999)—explores issues in the history of science, medicine, and technology, paying particular attention to how social and cultural factors shaped the study of nature.
This month’s seminar will focus on the process of discovering, developing, and polishing the historical “story” that lurks in piles of notes, outlines, and your responses to historiography. We return to explicitly practical conversations about historians and the craft of writing begun in our December workshop, and welcome graduate student participation.
To receive the readings and to RSVP for the seminar, please email emsi@usc.edu.
Coffee and refreshments will be served.
Friday, February 15, 12pm, Huntington Library Seaver Classroom #3
Brown Bag Lunch
"The Ideology of Catholic Modernity"
Steven Pincus, Yale University
The paper is available in advance; please contact emsi@usc.edu for a copy.
Coffee will be available from 9:30am.
Wednesday, February 20, 11am–1pm, Doheny Library 240, USC;
3pm–5pm, SOS 250, USC
Early Modern Studies Institute; Center for Religion and Civic Culture, USC; Mediterranean Seminar (UCSC) with support from the UC France-Berkeley Fund
Mediterranean Event
"Moving Commodities and Identities in the Mediterranean"
"Confessional Identity, Crusade and Commerce in the Medieval Mediterranean"
Brian Catlos, University of California, Santa Cruz
"Crusade and Western Trade with Egypt and Syria (11th–14th Centuries)"
Damiel Coulon, Universite de Strasbourg
"The Role of the Andalusi Diaspora in the Commerce of Maghrebian Ports, XI–XV Centuries"
Dominique Valerian, Universite de Paris
Ramzi Rouighi, University of Southern California, Commentary
This event co-organized by Brian Catlos, Associate Professor of History, University of California, Santa Cruz, and Ramzi Rouighi, Assistant Professor of History, University of Southern California.
Wednesday, February 20, 12:30–2pm, SOS 250, USC
Literary, Visual, and Material Culture Initiative
"Beautiful Boys, Sodomy, Hammams, and Other Tropes: A Visual History of Near and Middle Eastern Homoeroticism"
Joseph Boone
Professor, English and Gender Studies, University of Southern California
This lecture is part of the USC LVMC faculty works-in-progress series.
Friday, February 22, 12pm, ACB 238, USC
Archaelogy Program, University of Southern California
"Social Organization of the Shang Foundries"
Liangren Zhang
Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, Department of History
Lunch will be provided.
Saturday, February 23, 10am–12pm, Huntington Library Overseers' Room
Early Modern British History Seminar, EMSI
"One flesh, two heads: Debating the Biblical blueprint for marriage in the seventeenth and twentieth centuries"
Frances Dolan
University of California, Davis
For general information, please contact emsi@usc.edu.
Coffee will be served.
Saturday, February 23, 10:30am–12pm, Huntington Library Seaver Classroom #3
American Origins Seminar, EMSI
"Final Passages: Intercolonial Slave Trading in 18th-century British America"
Gregory O'Malley
California Institute of Technology
If you would like to receive a copy of the paper, please contact Carolyn Powell at cpowell@huntington.org.
If you have questions regarding the seminar, please contact Carole Shammas at shammas@usc.edu.
Coffee will be served.
Thursday, February 28, 1:30–3pm, SOS 250, USC
Literary, Visual, and Material Culture Initiative; USC Visual Studies Graduate Certificate; USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute; USC English Department; USC Institute for British and Irish Studies
Text, Image, Object: Rethinking the History of the Book (February 28–March 1, 2008)
Cesare Vecellio's Habiti antichi et moderni: The Clothing of the Renaissance World (Europe, Asia, Africa, The Americas)
Margaret F. Rosenthal, Associate Professor, Department of French and Italian, University of Southern California
Ann Rosalind Jones, Esther Cloudman Dunn Professor of Comparative Literature, Smith College
Professors Rosenthal and Jones will discuss their forthcoming publication, Cesare Vecellio's 'Habiti Antichi et Moderni': The Clothing of the Renaissance World (Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas) (Thomas & Hudson, 2008).
Please note: after the public presentation, there will be further discussion of the material from 3–4:30 for those who have requested the reading. Please contact Deb Harkness (deharkne@usc.edu) if you would like to participate.
Coffee will be served.
Thursday, February 28, 7pm, LUC 108
Early Modern Studies Institute
Pre-Release Film Screening/Appearance by Author
Sony Pictures: "The Other Boleyn Girl"
This film is based on the book by Philippa Gregory. Please RSVP to emsi@usc.edu to reserve a spot.
Friday, February 29, 12pm, Overseers' Room, Huntington Library
Early Modern Studies Institute
Brown Bag Talks
"The African Diaspora, Christianity and the Law in Colonial British America"
Patricia Bonomi
If you would like to receive a copy of the paper, please contact emsi@usc.edu.
Saturday, March 1, 9:30am–1:30pm, Huntington Library Seaver #1
USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute; USC Visual Studies Graduate Certificate; USC English Department; USC Institute for British and Irish Studies
Text, Image, Object: Rethinking the History of the Book (February 28–March 1, 2008)
History of the Book Roundtable
Peter Stallybrass, University of Pennsylvania
Janine Barchas, University of Texas, Austin
Ellen Gruver Garvey, New Jersey City University
Peter Stallybrass, Janine Barchas, and Ellen Gruber Garvey will discuss their recent work and the past, present, and future of the history of the book followed by discussion.
Open to the public. Lunch for registered participants, RSVP to emsi@usc.edu.
Monday, March 10, 12:30–2pm, SOS 250, USC
Literary, Visual, and Material Culture Initiative
USC Faculty Publishing Visual Studies Across the Disciplines
Sarah Banet–Weiser, Associate Professor, Annenberg School for Communication
Richard Meyer, Associate Professor, Department of Art History
Vanessa R. Schwartz, Professor, Department of History
Xiaobing Tang, Professor, Department of East Asian Lanugages and Cultures
A round-table discussion of new books:
Sarah Banet-Weiser, Kids Rule!: Nickelodeon and Consumer Citizenship
Richard Meyer (co-authored with Anthony E. Lee), Weegee and Naked City (Defining Moments in American Photography)
Vanessa R. Schwartz, It's So French!: Hollywood, Paris, and the Making of Cosmopolitan Film Culture
Xiaobing Tang, Origins of the Chinese Avant-Garde: The Modern Woodcut Movement
Wednesday, March 12, 2–5pm, Faculty Lounge, Room 433, Gould School of Law, USC
Early Modern Studies Institute; Center for Law History and Culture
"Banishment and Jurisdictional Identity in Seventeenth-Century New England: The Case of Roger Williams"
Nan Goodman
University of Colorado, Boulder
The USC Center for Law, History, and Culture announces its seventh annual West Coast Conference on Law and Literature, a seminar on "Making Words into Law: banishment, exile, boundaries, identity." The featured paper will be "Banishment and Jurisdictional Identity in Seventeenth-Century New England: The Case of Roger Williams," by Professor Nan Goodman (English, University of Colorado, Boulder). The paper will be circulated in advance for discussion. Commentators will include Professors Gary Rowe and Clyde Spillenger, both of the UCLA Law School and Professor Nomi Stolzenberg (USC Law), and a conversation with participants from many fields will be moderated by Professor Hilary Schor (English, Comp Lit, Law, USC).
Professor Nan Goodman ( J.D. Stanford University; PhD Harvard University), is the author of Shifting the Blame: Literature, Law, and the Theory of Accidents in Nineteenth-Century America (Princeton Univ. Press, 1998; rpt. Routledge, 2000) and numerous articles on law and literature in American culture. Her current book project, of which this paper is part, is a study of banishment in 17th century New England, ranging from such familiar figures as John Cotton and Roger Williams, to Anne Hutchinson and other anti-nomians and Quakers, and the Deer Island Indians and the question of internal banishment. The study probes the question of the shifting relationship between place, identity and the law in the 17th century world and beyond, but draws heavily on theorists such as Foucault, and raises fascinating questions of the origins of racism and the history of civil and religious dissent in both England and the Americas.
As in past years, we expect the conversation to be free-ranging and exciting; we look forward to seeing you at this event.
The Co-Directors of CLHC, Hilary Schor, Nomi Stolzenberg, Ariela Gross
Thursday, March 13, 2:30pm–4:30pm, Huntingon Library Overseers' Room
The Long 18th-Century Seminar, EMSI
"The Hows and Whys of Shakespearean Adaptation in the 18th Century"
Jenny Davidson
English/Comparative Literature, Columbia University
Tuesday, March 25, 5pm, United University Church, USC University Park Campus
USC Thornton School of Music Early Music Program; Adam Knight Gilbert, Director; and Early Modern Studies Institute
Acclaimed Mezzo-soprano Karen Clark in a concert of Gothic Song, with Roy Wheldon, Vielle
Adam Gilbert, recorder, shawm, bagpipes
Rotem Gilbert, recorder, shawm, bagpipes
Featuring Music by Guillaume de Machaut, Francesco Landini, Antonio Zachara da Teramo, Guillame Dufay, and Hugo de Lantins
Facsimile Reproductions of the Music Manuscripts Recently Acquired by the USC Library will be on display.
Admission is Free
For more information call (213) 740-3228 or contact: adam.gilbert@usc.edu.
Wednesday, March 26, 11am–3pm, Newman Recital Hall, USC University Park Campus
USC Thornton School of Music Early Music Program and Early Modern Studies Institute
Master Class with Renowned Organist and Conductor Harry Bicket, Director of the English Concert
Mr. Bicket will coach members of the Thornton Baroque Sinfonia, including solo violin sonata by J.S. Bach, a Handel duet, a cantata by Clerambault, and a concerto grosso by Georg Muffat. Do not miss this exciting opportunity to see a master at work with talented young musicians.
Admission is Free
For more information, call (213) 740-3228 or email adam.gilbert@usc.edu.
Thursday, March 27, 7:30pm, Gamble House
Early Modern Studies Institute; Institute for British and Irish Studies; Institute on California and the West; with additional support from The Gamble House; California Institute of Technology; the Modern Language Societ
River, Rivalry, and Revolt: History and the Built Fabric of Dublin City
Christine Casey
A special lecture at The Gamble House on March 27, 2008
Visit Dublin as an architect, tourist, or armchair traveller under the guidance of noted Irish scholar Christine Casey, as she reveals the city of Dublin's churches, public buildings, streets, canals, and private homes, at an illustrated lecture on Thursday, March 27, 2008.
Casey's views of Dublin from Gothic to 21st century will come to life in the setting of the 100-year old Gamble House in Pasadena. She will feature grand 18th-century set pieces, Georgian cityscapes, commercial Victorian architecture, post-war buildings, and a new generation of Irish architects.
Dr. Christine Casey is a senior lecturer in the School of Art History & Cultural Policy at University College Dublin and author of the critically acclaimed Dublin: The City Within the Grand and Royal Canals and the Circular Road, with the Phoenix Park (Yale University Press, 2006). An honorary member of the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland, she has served on the boards of the Irish Georgian Society and the Irish Architectural Archive and on the architectural committee of the Heritage Council.
The lecture will be held at The Gamble House, 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 27, 2008. General admission is $15.00. Tickets for the lecture may be reserved and purchased in advance by calling The Gamble House (626) 793-3334, ext. 13. A reception with Dr. Casey will follow.
Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, March 28–30, Huntington Library
Co-sponsored by the Early Modern Studies Institute
Pacific Coast Conference on British Studies
For more information on the conference and if you have any questions, please go to the PCCBS website at http://www.pccbs.org/.
Thursday and Friday, April 3–4, 9am–5pm, Davidson Conference Center
EMSI, co-sponsored with the Shoah Institute, with support from the Center for Religion and Civic Culture
International Conference on Tolerance
"Religious Tolerance and Intolerance from the Inquisition to the Present"
The conference will bring together leading scholars from France, the United Kingdom, Brazil, and the United States; topics will range from the emergence of religious toleration in early modern Europe to European ideas about the treatment of indigenous peoples in the Americas. Professor Benjamin J. Kaplan of University College London and the University of Amsterdam, author of Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe, will deliver the keynote address.
The conference will be held at the Davidson Conference Center on the USC Campus and is open to the public. Admission is free but reservations are required. To reserve a space, please contact Melissa McNear at (213) 740-6724.
For further information, see http:/college.usc.edu/vhi/pr/Tolerance_Conference.php.
Saturday, April 5, 10am–12pm, Huntington Library Overseers' Room
American Origins Seminar, EMSI
"A Roundtable on New Research in Early American Indian History"
Mathew Dennis, University of Oregon
Joseph Hall, Bates College
Eric Hinderaker, University of Utah
Keith Swinehart, Wesleyan University
The next meeting for 2007-2008 of the American Origins Seminar will be a "Roundtable on New Research in Early American Indian History" featuring Matthew Dennis (University of Oregon), Joseph Hall (Bates College), Eric Hinderaker (University of Utah), and Kirk Swinehart (Wesleyan University). This will be held at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday, April 5, 2008, in the Overseers Room at the Huntington. Some of the participants have provided short papers, which will be available next week. To receive copies, please contact Carolyn Powell at cpowell@huntington.org. NOTE: SINCE THIS IS A ROUNDTABLE WITH MULTIPLE PRESENTERS, WE WILL BEGIN AT 10:00 A.M., NOT 10:30.
If you have any questions regarding the American Origins Seminar, please
contact Carole Shammas, Department of History, University of Southern
California, at (213) 740-1671 or shammas@usc.edu.
Thursday, April 10, 3pm, Getty Research Institute Lecture Hall
USC-Getty Program in the History of Collecting and Display; Getty Research Institute's Project for the Study of Collecting and Provenance
Forum on the History of Collecting and Display
"Albums, the Collectible Collection"
Daniela Bleichmar, Assistant Professor of Art History and of Spanish and Portuguese, University of Southern California
Malcolm Baker, Eminent Scholar and Distinguished Professor of the History of Art, University of California, Riverside
Louis Marchesano, Curator of Prints and Drawings, Getty Research Institute
Frances Terpak, Senior Collections Curator, Getty Research Institute.
Albums that gather works on paper present an interesting and singular type of object for the history of collecting and display. An album of drawings, prints, clippings, or photographs can preserve the physical structure and arrangement in which a collector assembled his or her collection, providing insights into past practices that can otherwise be difficult to trace from catalogs, inventories, or contemporary descriptions. Albums are uniquely poised to allow rare glimpses into an intimate history of collecting and viewing: they often arise from highly personal interests or motivations, involve visual and tactile experiences, and were composed to be savored in small groups or as a solitary pleasure. However, as albums change hands and enter new collections, particularly institutional ones, they can pose interesting challenges to their new owners. Albums often create taxonomical pressures for curators and audiences when their organizing principles conflict with those of their new homes or when they challenge present-day notions of value and significance.
Please join us for a discussion of the album as a type of collection. The participants in this installment of the forum include organizer Daniela Bleichmar, assistant professor of art history and of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Southern California; Malcolm Baker, Eminent Scholar and Distinguished Professor of the History of Art at the University of California, Riverside; Louis Marchesano, curator of prints and drawings at the Getty Research Institute; and Frances Terpak, senior collections curator at the Getty Research Institute.
The Forum series on collecting is organized by the USC-Getty Program in the History of Collecting and Display in collaboration with the Getty Research Institute's Project for the Study of Collecting and Provenance (PSCP). Anyone with an interest in the history of collecting is invited to participate in this continuing series of forums that explore a range of topics in the field. Read more about PSCP at www.getty.edu.
Admission to this event is free. To attend, please make a reservation by visiting www.getty.edu or calling (310) 440-7300. Note, late arrivals cannot be guaranteed seating. Parking fee of $8.00 per car is free with a reservation.
Friday, April 11, 9am–5pm, Huntington Library Overseers' Room
Early Modern Spanish World Seminar, EMSI
"Homoeroticisms in the Early Modern Spanish World"
Presenters:
Adrienne Martin, University of California, Davis
Stephanie Kirk, Washington University, St. Louis
Israel Burshatin, Haverford College
Charlene Villasenor-Black, University of California, Los Angeles
Zeb Tortorici, University of California, Los Angeles
Mary Elizabeth Perry, Occidental College
Jose Cartagena-Calderon, Pomona College
Saturday, April 12, 10am–12pm, Huntington Library Overseers' Room
Renaissance Literature Seminar: Legacies, Connections and Transmissions, EMSI
"Slavery and Comedy a League from Epidamnum: Plautus, Shakespeare, and Hellenistic Servitude"
Susanne Wofford
New York University
For more information on this event, please contact Prof. Heather James: hjames@usc.edu. For general information, please contact emsi@usc.edu.
Seminar Chairs: Cyndia Clegg and Heather James
Coffee will be available from 9:30 am.
Tuesday, April 15, 4pm, University of Southern California Taper Hall 420 (Ide Common Room)
Early Modern Studies Institute
"'The Use of Flogging in Venereal Affairs:' Sexual Flagellation in Early Modern English Culture"
Will Fisher, CUNY
All are welcome! Light refreshments will be served. Please email rlemon@usc.edu or phone (213) 740-7232 for more information.
Tuesday, April 15, 7–9pm, University of Southern California Leonard Davis Auditorium
Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West, USC College of Letters, Arts & Sciences, Provost's Arts & Humanities Initiative
Visions and Voices: The USC Arts & Humanities Initiative
"What Does California Mean?"
Janet Fireman
D.J. Waldie
James Quay
Ruthie Gilmore
Kevin Starr
The Institute on California and the West has been awarded a grant to sponsor a springtime 2008 panel discussion exploring the history and meaning of California. The panelists -- Janet Fireman, D.J. Waldie, James Quay, Ruthie Gilmore, and Kevin Starr, with ICW Director Bill Deverell serving as moderator -- are all experts in analyzing California from a variety of perspectives, and their careers are ideal representations of the contributions which engaged humanities scholarship can make to the broader society. The event will be accompanied by two programs specifically designed to engage undergraduates with the themes of the panel, including an essay contest open to all USC undergraduates to explore the theme of California’s meaning over time.
Friday, April 18
USC English Department
"Researching the Archive"
I'm delighted to announce that we've persuaded Bill Sherman, Professor of English at the University of York (UK), associate editor of Shakespeare Quarterly, a veteran organizer of a seminar on "Researching the Archive" at the Folger Shakespeare Library, and the author of the just-published book Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), to convene this year's English Department workshop on research and publication. Applications are invited from those of you who would like to participate in the one-day workshop, which will be held on Friday, April 18. In the morning Prof. Sherman will be providing general information, tips, and instruction; in the afternoon, he will be meeting individually with the participants in the workshop and will provide advice tailor-made to each person's project. There is room for eight participants. If you'd like to be considered, please submit to Bruce Smith, English 0354, THH 420, MC 0354, a three-page description of your project and why you think you would benefit from participating in the workshop. Electronic applications are welcome (brucesmi@college.usc.edu). The deadline for submissions is Friday, April 4, at noon. Prof. Sherman welcomes applications from all departments affiliated with the Early Modern Studies Institute, and the time-frame of projects can extend into the eighteenth century.
Saturday, April 19, 10am–12pm, Huntington Library Overseers' Room
Early Modern British History Seminar, EMSI
"The Courtship and Singlehood of Elizabeth Isham, 1630–1634"
Isaac Stephens
University of California, Riverside
Coffee will be available from 9:45.
The seminar will be led by Isaac Stephens, UC Riverside, who will speak on "The Courtship and Singlehood of Elizabeth Isham, 1630-1634." This talk will be drawn from Mr. Stephens' forthcoming essay in Historical Journal.
All scholars and graduate students with an interest in early modern Britain are cordially invited to attend. For further information, please contact Lori Anne Ferrell (lori.ferrell@cgu.edu), Cynthia Herrup (herrup@usc.edu), or
Mary Robertson (mrobertson@huntington.org).
Monday, April 21, 2–4pm, SOS 250, USC
USC History Seminar Series
John B. Henderson
Bell Professor of History and Coordinator of Asian Studies
Louisiana State University
Professor Henderson will discuss his manuscript essay: “Premodern Chinese Views of Astronomical History and Calendrical Time.” Link to paper
The USC History Seminar is a forum for substantive discussions of current work by leading historians on emerging questions of historical methods, topics, themes, and theories. During the inaugural two-year cycle of this series (2008-2010), the theme is “It’s About Time: Critical Perspectives on History’s Home Dimension.”
Participants are expected to read the pre-circulated papers, articles, or chapters. Presenters will make brief opening remarks but will not lecture. All participants are invited to join the critical discussion. Light refreshments provided. Free parking is available for those arriving from off-campus.
To reserve parking if you are coming from off campus, and to assure a place in the seminar, please send an email to Lori Rogers, lrogers@usc.edu.
Biographical Sketch:
John B. Henderson received his B.A. in History from Duke University in the year 1970, and his Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Berkeley in 1977. He is now Professor of History at Louisiana State University. His books include The Development and Decline of Chinese Cosmology (Columbia UP, 1984), Scripture, Canon, and Commentary (Princeton UP, 1991); The Construction of Orthodoxy and Heresy (SUNY Press, 1998); and two co-edited books including Imagining Boundaries (SUNY, 1999) and Notions of Time in Chinese Historical Thinking (Chinese University Press, 2006). His current project is an 'intellectual history of Chinese astronomy,' under contract with E. J. Brill. He has recently developed an interest in the history of opera, and will be teaching a new course at LSU next fall on "opera and empire from Monteverdi to Mahoganny." His strangest attractor article (co-authored) appears in Bulletin No. 72 (2000) of The Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities (Stockholm), and is entitled 'Neurobiology, Layered Texts and Correlative Cosmologies: A Cross-Cultural Framework for Premodern History.'
Tuesday, April 22, 12:30–2pm, SOS 250, USC
Literary, Visual, and Material Culture Initiative
"Lessons on the Monument Lifecycle: Civic Virtue and the Politics of Display in Manhattan and Queens"
Michele H. Bogart
Professor, Art History & Criticism, State University of New York, Stony Brook
This paper tells the complex history of one very troubled monument in New York City.
Thursday, April 24,12pm, Huntington Library Overseers' Room
Brown Bag Series, Huntington Library
"Etchingham (Sussex), 1480: The Monumental Brass Society Meets Queer Theory"
Judith Bennett
University of Southern California
It's in a brown-bag lunch series, so bring your lunch.
Tuesday, April 29, 4:30–6pm, SOS 250, USC
Project for Premodern Japan Studies and the Early Modern Studies Institute
"Tokugawa Ieyasu as Warlord, Shogun, Deity: Thoughts on Biography, Material Culture, and Japan’s Long Sixteenth Century"
Dr. Morgan Pitelka
Associate Professor of East Asian Studies, Occidental College
Morgan Pitelka, a historian of late medieval and early modern Japan, will discuss his current research on Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542-1616), the founder of the Tokugawa Shogunate and an iconic figure in Japanese history. He will explain how material culture— in this case swords, art, and falcons— helps to complicate the top-down, hagiographic tendencies of biography. He will also address how this project fits into a planned series of studies on Japan’s long sixteenth century, which began with his previous book Handmade Culture (2005) and will continue in his next project, a study of daily life in the late medieval castle town of Ichijödani in old Echizen (today’s Fukui Prefecture).
Tuesday, April 29, 7–8:30pm, Huntington Library Overseers' Room
Past Tense Seminar, EMSI
"Writing for the In-Between Public"
Lynn Hunt
University of California, Los Angeles
This month, the Past Tense Seminar will explore the rich terrain between academic and popular writing guided by historian Lynn Hunt. We will read chapter one, "'Torrents of Emotion': Reading Novels and Imaging Equality," from her most recent book Inventing Human Rights (W.W. Norton, 2007).
Prof. Hunt teaches French and European history and the history of history as an academic discipline. Her specialties include the French Revolution, gender history, cultural history, and historiography. Inventing Human Rights, examines the origins of human rights in the eighteenth century. She has written extensively on the French Revolution and about historical method and epistemology.
To request a copy of the reading as pdf, please email emsi@usc.edu.
For other questions, please contact Laura Mitchell: mitchell@uci.edu.
Coffee will be available.
Friday, May 2, 1–3pm, Huntington Library Overseers' Room
The Long 18th-Century Seminar, EMSI
"The Sex of Children: Family, Nature, and Culture in Early Modern Thought"
Marta Vicente
History/Women's Studies, University of Kansas
Professor Vicente works on women’s history in eighteenth-century Spain and teaches on topics ranging from european women’s history from 1600's to the present, feminist theory and women and work, and women and sexuality in the early modern world. Her book, entitled Clothing the Spanish Empire: Families and the Calico Trade in the Atlantic World, 1700-1815 (Palgrave 2006), looks at how clothing the Spanish Empire narrates the lives of families on both sides of the Atlantic who profited from the craze for calicoes, and in doing so helped the Spanish empire to flourish in the eighteenth century. Other research projects include the history of the relations between notions of women and work in the Spanish Enlightenment and the actual experience of ordinary women. These projects look at a variety of archival documentation from court suits to business letters that reveal how women constructed their public identity and whether such construction had any relation to the political, intellectual and cultural changes that Spanish society witnessed at the end of the eighteenth century.
Please join us for the talk, refreshments, and to hear some about our next year's schedule of events.
For more information on this event please contact Prof. Emily Anderson: ehanders@usc.edu.
For general information, please contact emsi@usc.edu.
Coffee and Refreshments will be available.
Monday, May 5, 5–6pm, United University Church, USC University Park Campus
USC Thornton School of Early Music Program; USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute
Special Concern of Medieval and Renaissance Music
The USC Thornton Collegium
Featuring works by Perotin, Josquin Desprez, Thomas Morley, Orlando Gibbons, songs from the Llibre Vermell and a selection from Hildegrad von Bingen's Ordo Virtutum.
Featuring:
The Thornton Collegium Singers
directed by Abby Winnick and Allyson Ramsey
The Thornton Alta Cappella
(shamws and sackbuts)
directed by Rotem Gilbert
And, in their first publica appearance:
The Thornton Dulcian Ensemble
directed by Christina Havens
Admission Free
For more information:
www.usc.edu/emsi
adam.gilbert@usc.edu
Wednesday, May 7, 7:30pm, Huntington Library Friends' Hall
Special Lecture
"Death and the American Civil War"
Drew Gilpin Faust
President, Harvard University
Author, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War
Reception to follow
RSVP by May 1 to Angie Pfeiffer (626) 405-2262 or apfeiffer@huntington.org.
Saturday, May 10, 10am–12pm, Huntington Library Overseers' Room
Early Modern British History Seminar, EMSI
Polly Ha
University of Cambridge
Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow & Lecturer of History, University of Southern California
All scholars and graduate students with an interest in early modern Britain are cordially invited to attend. For further information, please contact Lori Anne Ferrell (lori.ferrell@cgu.edu) or Cynthia Herrup (herrup@usc.edu).
Coffee will be available from 9:45 am.
FALL 2007
Friday and Saturday, August 3–4, 8:30am–4:30pm, Friends' Hall, Huntington Library
Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West
ICW Conference: "Rocket Science and Region: The Rise, Fall, and Rise of the Aerospace Industry in Southern California"
Thursday, August 30, 5pm–7pm, USC University Club Banquet Room and Patio
Literary, Visual, and Material Culture Initiative and USC Roski School of Fine Arts Handtmann Photography Lecture Series
Welcome Back Reception
"Los Angeles and 'The End of Photography'"
Screening: "My Getty Center" and "The End of Photography"
Discussion with the artist, Judy Fiskin
Followed by a reception
Judy Fiskin's photographs and films have been shown at MoMA, MOCA, the Pompidou Center, the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam and in many other national and international venues. She teaches at Cal Arts.
Saturday, September 8, 9am–5pm, Huntington Friends Hall
American Origins Seminar, EMSI
Jamestown at 400: Natives and Newcomers in Early Virginia
Allison Games, Georgetown University
James Horn, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
Karen Kupperman, New York University
Peter Mancall, University of Southern California
Camilla Townsend, Colgate University
Saturday, September 15, 10am, Huntington Library Overseers' Room
Early Modern British History Seminar, EMSI
Ann Hughes
University of Keele
Tuesday, September 18, 12pm–1pm, Upstairs Commons, University of Southern California
Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West
ICW "In Conversation Series"
Yamashita—Screenwriter, Letters from Iwo Jima
Justin Lin—Director, Writer, Producer, Finishing the Game
Thursday, September 20, 12:30pm–2pm, SOS 250
Literary, Visual, and Material Culture Initiative
"Picturing the Prehistoric: Authenticity, Imagery, and the Transformation of Display at the American Museum, 1890–1920"
Victoria Cain
Visual Studies/Shoah Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellow, University of Southern California
Although scientists had relied on illustrations for century, curators of nineteenth century natural history museums in the United States remained wary of visual representation. But in the 1890s, this attitude changed profoundly at the American Museum of Natural History, eventually causing a nationwide revolution in museum display. Led by curator Henry Fairfield Osborn, the museum's department of paleontology used paintings by Charles Knight not only to eludicate facts, but also to arouse emotional appreciation for the prehistoric past. Knight's commissioned images raised a series of questions about the role of truth in scientific art, and aroused a contest between artists and scientists for authority over display.
Tuesday, September 25, 7pm, Los Angeles Central Public Library
Zocalo and the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West
"Will Grand Avenue Live up to the Hype?"
Dana Cuff
Christopher Hawthorne
William White
Saturday, September 29, 8:30am–4:30pm, Friends' Hall, Huntington Library
Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West, University of Southern California Libraries, and the Los Angeles History Research Group
Archive Fever: 2nd Annual Los Angeles Archive Bazaar
Friday, October 5, 12pm–1pm, Munger Research Center, Huntington Library
Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West
ICW Brown Bag Series for Graduate Students in Western American History
Saturday, October 6, 9:30am–4:30pm, Munger Research Center, Huntington Library
Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West, co-sponsor
Graduate Student Grant-Proposal Workshop
Tuesday, October 9, 12pm–1pm, Gamble House, Pasadena
Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West
ICW "In Conversation" Series
"Preserving California's Japantowns"
Donna Graves—Public Arts and Cultural Planner
Thursday, October 11, 1pm–3pm, Huntington Library Overseers' Room
The Long 18th-Century Seminar, EMSI
"Making the Portrait Bust Modern: The Changing Role of Sculptural Portraiture in 18th-Century Britain"
Malcolm Baker
History of Art, University of California, Riverside
Wednesday, October 17, 5:30–7pm. Garden Court in the Commons
Department of History, University of Southern California
Reception for History Majors
Come to the Garden Court in the Commons on Wednesday October 17 5:30–7 pm. Meet your professors and enjoy hors d'oeuvres.
Saturday, October 20, 10:30am–12pm, Huntington Library Seaver Classroom #3
American Origins Seminar, EMSI
"Intimate Networks on the New Netherland Frontier in the 17th Century"
Susanah Romney
Whittier College
Wednesday, October 24, 12:20pm–1:30pm, University of Southern California Law School, Room 118/120
Center for Law, History and Culture and Early Modern Studies Institute
CHLC Seminar
"Legal Communications and Imperial Governance: British North America and Spanish America Compared"
Richard Ross
University of Illinois College of Law
For more information on this event, please contact Karen Choi: 213-821-1239 or facserv@law.usc.edu
For general information, please contact emsi@college.usc.edu
Thursday, October 25, 12:30pm–2pm, SOS 250
Literary, Visual, and Material Culture Initiative and the Department of Art History, University of Southern California, and the Department of History, University of Southern California
"'The Congo I Presume': Tepid Revisionism at the Belgian Royal Museum of Central Africa, Tervuren 1910/2005"
Debora L. Silverman
University of California Presidential Chair in Modern European History, Art and Culture, University of California, Los Angeles
Few European imperial endeavors were as outrageous as Leopold's Congo. This paper examines how it was represented at home at the turn of the century and is now being reconsidered.
Saturday, October 27, 10am, Huntington Library Overseers' Room
Early Modern British History Seminar
"The Assize Sermon 1600–1688"
Barbara Shapiro
University of California, Berkeley
For general information, please contact emsi@college.usc.edu
Coffee will be available
Saturday, October 27, 10am–12pm, Munger Research Center, Huntington Library
Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West
ICW History of Los Angeles Working Group Meeting
"Urban Removal: California's Prison Labor Camps, 1944–1973"
Volker Janssen, California State University, Fullerton
For general information, please contact emsi@college.usc.edu
Coffee will be available
Tuesday, October 30, 10am–4pm. SOS 250
Department of History, University of Southern California
History Department Open House
Come to SOS 250 on Tuesday October 30 10–4 to obtain descriptions of classes and speak with professors about courses, the major, and special programs.
Saturday, November 3, 10am–12pm, Overseers' Room, Huntington Library
Renaissance Literature Seminar: Legacies, Connections, and Transmissions, EMSI
"Searching for Shakespeare's Letters"
Alan Stewart
Columbia University
For more information, please contact Prof. Heather James: hjames@usc.edu
For general information, please contact emsi@college.usc.edu
Seminar Chairs: Cyndia Clegg and Heather James
Coffee will be available from 9:30am
Saturday, November 3, 10:30am–12pm, Seaver Classroom #3, Huntington Library
American Origins Seminar, EMSI
Discussion of What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848
Daniel Walker Howe, University of California, Los Angeles
Comment by Jonathan Earle, University of Kansas
Daniel Walker Howe is Rhodes Professor of American History Emeritus at Oxford University and Professor of History Emeritus at UCLA
For general information, please contact emsi@college.usc.edu
Coffee will be available from 9:30am
Monday, November 5, 12pm–1:30pm, SOS 250
Literary, Visual, and Material Culture Initiative and Latin American Studies Initiative
"Freud in Mexico: The Enigma of the Pyramid"
Rubén Gallo
Assistant Professor, Department of Spanish & Portuguese Languages & Cultures, Princeton University
A discussion of the reception of Freud's writings in 1940s Mexico by artists and poets, focusing on various attempts to translate psychoanalytic concepts into visual images. Rubén Gallo is the author of Mexican Modernity: the Avant-Garde and the Technological Revolution (winner of the 2006 MLA's Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize) and New Tendencies in Mexican Art: the 1990s. He has also edited The Mexico City Reader and Heterodoxos mexicanos.
Thursday, November 8, 3pm, Getty Research Institute Lecture Hall, The Getty Center
Getty Research Institute's Project for the Study of Collection and Provenance and the USC-Getty Program in the History of Collecting and Display
PSCP Forum VII: Collecting Cultures
Peter Mancall
Jeanette Favrot Peterson
Kim Walters
Collecting Cultures is the seventh in a series of public forums presented over the past three years by the Project for the Study of Collecting and Provenance (PSCP). In this forum three invited speakers present 10-minute commentaries on practices of collecting and museum display and how they construct narratives about cultures, past and present, local and distant. A particular focus is placed on the exhibition of Latin American and American Indian art and cultural artifacts. Using the brief presentations as points of departure, an informal discussion will explore the roles of historians, curators, community members, and institutions in using objects to tell stories about peoples, cultures, and Culture.
Saturday, November 10, 10am–12pm, Munger Research Center, Huntington Library
Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West
ICW Pacific Rim/Early California Working Group Meeting
"Teaching World, United States, and California History as if the Pacific Mattered (a Lot)"
Tom Osborne
Charles Wheeler
Emily Rader
Monday, November 12, 4pm–6pm, SOS B40
University of Southern California Department of History
"Why Were They Ill? Thinking about the Mind and Body in Nineteenth-Century America"
A Seminar Presentation
Helen Horowitz
Sydenham Clark Parsons Professor of History, Smith College
For more information, see the flier.
Wednesday, November 14, 12pm–1pm, Munger Research Center, Huntington Library
Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West
ICW "In Conversation" Series
Gregory Rodriguez—Political Journalist, Irvine Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation
Wednesday, November 14, 7:30pm, United University Church, University of Southern California, University Park Campus
USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute and the Early Music Program of Thornton School of Music
"The Amorous Lyre: Music by Tarquinio Merula and his Contemporaries"
La Monica
Admission free
The ensemble La Monica embodies the passion, drama, and innovation of 17th century Italian music wherein the growth of opera brought new theatrical dimensions to vocal and instrumental music. Castello, Marini, and Merula broke new compositional ground, creating music with poetry, melody and harmony that was raw, fresh, and surprising. Quirky love songs, charming ground basses, and virtuoso sonatas capture the vivid emotional expression of the early Baroque.
A Fire Marshall will be on hand to Keep an Eye on Their Strings!
With USC's own William Skeen and Daniel Zuluaga!!
For more information, contact Adam Gilbert at adam.gilbert@usc.edu.
Thursday, November 15, 12:30pm–2pm, SOS 250
Literary, Visual, and Material Culture Initiative and Center for Visual Anthropology
"The Color of the Sacred"
Michael Taussig, Professor, Department of Anthropology, Columbia University
This talk concerns the historical understandings of color. Bringing together texts from literature, anthropology, history, and philosophy, Taussig will theorize the confluence of color in Benjamin's theory, Marcel Proust's and William Borroughs's fiction, and artificial color manufacture in nineteenth-century Germany.
Friday, November 16, 8:30am –2pm, Overseers' Room, Huntington Library
Colonial Latin America Seminar, EMSI
A Symposium
"Race and Science in the Atlantic World"
8:30-9:00--Welcome and Opening Remarks
James Delbourgo and María Elena Martínez
9:00-10:30
"White or Black?: Eighteenth-Century Portraits of Spotted Blacks in the Colonial World"
Ilona Katzew, Los Angeles County Museum of Art
"The Newtonian Slave Body: Racial Enlightenment in Colonial Virginia"
James Delbourgo, McGill University
"León y Gama's Treatise on Skin Color and the Enlightened Creole 'Science' of Race in Eighteenth-Century New Spain"
María-Elena Martínez, University of Southern California
10:30–10:45--Break
10:45–11:15
Comments:
Robert Bernasconi, University of Memphis
Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, University of Texas-Austin
11:15–12:00--Discussion
12:00-1:00--Lunch (rsvp to emsi@usc.edu)
Friday, November 16, 10am–4pm, SOS 250
Literary, Visual, and Material Culture Initiative
Working Student-Faculty Conference: "Visualizing Colonialism"
This workshop will include a morning session in which students will present their images and comments, and an afternoon session drawing together all of the guest instructors (Philippa Levine, Saloni Mathur, Nancy Lutkehaus, Panivong Norindr, Patricia Morton, Viet Nguyen, Debora Silverman, Daniela Bleichmar, Andrew Apter, Machael Tassig and Priya Jaikumar) for an intensive discussion of the theoretical and methodological issues involved in defining, studying and comparing ways of seeing and being seen in a colonial and post-colonial context. The value of notions like the gaze, spectatorship, different forms of visual literacy or visual discourses, and visual aspects of both surveillance and resistance will be reconsidered.
Saturday, November 17, 10:30am–12pm, Huntington Library Overseers' Room
American Origins Seminar and Colonial Latin America Seminar, EMSI
Discussion of Puritan Conquistadors
Jorge Cañizares-Esquerra
University of Texas–Austin
For general information, please contact emsi@usc.edu
Coffee will be available
Saturday, November 17, 2pm–4pm, Fisher Gallery, University of Southern California
USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute and the Early Music Program of Thornton School of Music
"What Can You Do with Greensleeves, II? A Baroque Ground Bass Jam Session"
Led by Adam Knight Gilbert, University of Southern California
Admission Free
Audience Participation Welcome!
During the Renaissance and Baroque eras, musicians improvised and composed music on repetitive chord progressions called "grounds" or "ground basses." These ostinato patterns rest at the heart of musical creativity. Some of these patterns remain familiar today. The popular tune Greensleeves (also known as the carol "What Child is This?") is built on an Italian dance known as the Passamezzo Romanesca. Come join professional and student musicians from the Thornton School Early Music Program and the Los Angeles community as we recreate the practice of improvising on a ground. The public is welcome to watch and listen, or join in active improvisation. The worst you can do is hit a wrong note!
For more information about how to participate or to reserve a space,
contact Adam Gilbert at adam.gilbert@usc.edu.
Tuesday, November 27, 5pm, United University Church, University of Southern California
USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute and The Early Music Program of Thornton School of Music
Music Series
"Quel Bambin: A Concert of Medieval and Renaissance Italian Christmas Music"
The Thornton School of Music Collegium
Admission free
Join us for a concert of devotional Christmas Music from Medieval, Renaissance, and Early Baroque Florence. With laudi spirituali from the 14th-century Florence Laudario and Serafino Razzi's Libro Primo di Laudi Spirtuali (1563). Hear the glorious timbres of the Thornton Shawm and Sackbut Ensemble, the refined sounds of a baroque chamber ensemble, and the radiant voices of the Thornton Collegium.
Sing along!
For information, contact emsi@usc.edu or adam.gilbert@usc.edu.
Wednesday, November 28, 6:30pm–8pm, Friends' Hall, Huntington Library
Huntington–USC Institute on California and the West
ICW "In Conversation" Series
"Exploring the Signficance, Meaning, and Beauty of Spanish Colonial Revival Homes in Southern California"
Diane Keaton and D.J. Waldie—California Romantica (Rizzoli, 2007)
Thursday, November 29, 12pm–1pm, University of Southern California
Huntington–USC Institute on California and the West
ICW "In Conversation" Series
Louise Nelson Dyble—Author, Paying the Toll: Power, Politics, and the Golden Gate Bridge, 1923–1971 (forthcoming)
Tuesday, December 4, 12pm, Huntington Library Seaver Classroom #3
The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens Brown Bag Talks
"'We are not in these daies to build upon dreames': Dreaming, Controversy, and Colonization in England and New England, 1550–1700"
Ann Marie Plane
Associate Professor of History, University of California, Santa Barbara
No reservations required.
Tuesday, December 4, 7pm–9pm, Overseers' Room, Huntington Library
Past Tense Seminar, EMSI
"Practical and Poetic Approaches to Writing History"
In December, the Past Tense seminar will be a workshop—a different format from our previous meetings. We will focus on specific strategies for getting first drafts on paper (or saved on a hard drive, as changing technology changes our figures of speech), and moving from rough drafts to polished text.
We especially encourage graduate students to join us for this hands-on writing workshop, which is open to writers of history in any form, at all stages of careers and accomplishments.
We’ll start the workshop by thinking about beginnings, considering the many possibilities for opening an essay or a chapter. A conversation about opening lines is not the same as strategies for starting a piece of writing, since a well-conceived beginning may be the last thing you write. In addition to reading the two short pieces about the craft of writing, we ask each participant to bring two copies of a beginning that you particularly admire—from a paragraph to a passage that's a page or two long. Please also bring two copies of a short selection from piece of your own writing that you're currently working to improve—ideally an introduction or opening, but if you’re hard at work on another section, feel free to bring that instead.
We will provide a light supper.
Please RSVP to emsi@usc.edu by Nov. 27 so that we can get an accurate head-count for catering, and to request PDF versions of the readings.
Suggested reading:
Anne LaMotte: "Shitty First Drafts," in Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (Anchor Books, 1994).
Highlighted selections from Michael Scully, "Present at the Creation," Atlantic Monthly, September 2007.
Tuesday, December 4, 7:30pm, Huntington Library Friends' Hall
The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens Distinguished Fellow Lecture
"Death and the Maiden in Chaucer's England"
Judith M. Bennett
Professor of History, University of Southern California
Ever since the ancient Greeks told stories about the abduction of the maiden Persephone by the god Hades, Western Civilization has nurtured a creepily erotic link between death and maidenhood. This link was particularly charged during Chaucer's time, when English society first began to cope with large numbers of never-married women. How did Chaucer and others imagine the deaths of maidens? How did maidens themselves approach death? How were they memorialized?
No reservations required—free and open to the public.
Thursday, December 6, 4pm–6pm, USC History Conference Room, SOS 250
American Origins Seminar, EMSI
"The American Farmer"
Richard L. Bushman
Columbia University
If you would like to receive a copy of the paper, please contact Carolyn
Powell at cpowell@huntington.org. The paper will be available after
November 26.
IMPORTANT: Non-USC faculty or students will need to contact emsi@usc.edu to
obtain a parking pass and get the necessary directions on where to park.
If you have any questions regarding the American Origins Seminar, please
contact Carole Shammas, Department of History, University of Southern
California, at (213) 740-1671 or shammas@usc.edu.
Coffee and cookies will be served.
Friday, December 7, 7pm, University Park Campus, Alfred Newman Recital Hall
Early Modern Studies Institute and Visions and Voices: The USC Arts & Humanities Intitiative
Adam Gilbert and the Thornton Baroque Sinfonia perform alongside Italian zampognaro Guido Iannetta, a premier bagpiper, instrument maker and forest ranger from Italy's Molise region.
7pm: Lecture and Demonstration
8pm: Concert
Admission is free.
To more fully understand the concept of music as communication, one must experience its origins not as music intended for performance on stage, but as music intended for community participation and group ritual. When we hear it this way, we can explore our assumptions and judgments about high art music and folk music, or music of the people.
For as long as anyone can remember, Italian shepherds have been playing bagpipes and folk oboes to announce the coming of Christmas. Their famous Canzona di Zampognari (Carol of the Bagpipers) inspired Arcangelo Corelli to compose the “Piva” movement of his Christmas Concerto. Georg Frideric Handel imitates these same pipers in his aria And He Shall Feed His Flock, and, in a moment of sublime pastoral symbolism, quotes their melody in the climactic moment of the “Hallelujah Chorus” of his Messiah.
At this event, Iannetta and Gilbert will demonstrate Italian bagpipes and shawms before and during the concert, juxtaposing rustic pipes and high art music, and inviting the audience to sing along with the famous piper’s carol and the “Hallelujah Chorus.”
Organized by Adam Gilbert (Music)
SPRING 2008
Monday February 26, 4-6pm. SOS 250
Susan Dwyer Amussen (Professor, Graduate College of the Union Institute),"To the Caribbean and Back: Caribbean Settlement and English Society in the Seventeenth Century." (IBIS and EMSI co-sponsors)
Wednesday February 28, 5 pm. SOS 250
Phi Alpha Theta Research Social
Majors please come to exchange information about your current research
Tuesday March 27, 11-2 pm SOS 250
Undergraduate Open House
Learn about courses being offered next fall form the profs themselves.
Sandwiches and drinks will be available.
March 5: 4-6pm SOS 250
Deborah Valenze (Barnard College) and Brett Sheehan (USC) Heads or Tails: Representation and Money (IBIS and VSGC co-sponsor)
March 26: 2-4 pm. SOS 250
Workshop on the concept and history of “Glamour” with Lois Banner, Liz Willis, and Victoria Vantock.
April 2: 5-7pm. (venue TBA)
Bao Maohong, Peking University History department. Title to be announced.
April 9: (time and venue TBA)
Lucie Skeaping will present "The English Broadside Ballad: Street Songs of the 17th Century." (English Department and EMSI co-sponsor)
April 16: 2-4pm. SOS 250 Getting Medieval, a History Department Roundtable.
April 23 2-4pm. SOS 250 Andrez Resendez, UCDavis. Title to be announced.
Spring 2008
Thursday, May 15, 7–8:30pm, Huntington Library Overseers' Room
Past Tense Seminar, EMSI
"A Hole in the Dream: The Ghost Dance and the Making of Modern America"
Louis Warren
University of California, Davis
For many people, the Ghost Dance and its tragic climax at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in 1890 have come to symbolize the close of the frontier and the end of the nineteenth century. Yet the perceived closure of an old order often has a curious way of becoming an opening for something new. Environmental and western historian Louis Warren will discuss the proposal for his next book, in which he argues the Ghost Dance is best understood not as the death knell of an outmoded way of life, but rather as an expression of desire for environmental renewal which was widely shared among Indians and non Indians. Perhaps more surprisingly, among its results was the beginning of a modern, twentieth century sensibility that we now call multiculturalism. Writing against popular beliefs poses its own challenges, and will feature among the topics for discussion in this seminar.
Past Tense is sponsored by the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute and by the Institute on California and the West (http://college.usc.edu/huntington/).
Saturday, May 17, Huntington Library
USC-Huntington Institute on California and the West
ICW Workshop
"Under the West"
Thursday and Friday, May 22–23, 9am–5pm, Huntington Library Overseers' Room
Annual EMSI-WMQ Workshop
"Writing Early American History"
Conveners:
Fred Anderson, University of Colorado
Andrew Cayton, Miami University of Ohio
Saturday, May 31, 10am–12pm, Huntington Library Seaver Classroom #3
Early Modern Studies Seminar, EMSI
William A. Pencak
Pennsylvania State University
Saturday, June 14, 9am–5pm, The Auditorium, Botanical Center, Huntington Library
Homer D. Crotty Endowment; USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute
"Renaissance Libraries: New Perspectives on Old Collections"
Biblioteca Marciana, Venice (1537-88)
A Workshop at the Huntington Library
This workshop will showcase new work on Renaissance books, the people who collected them, and the spaces that housed them. Our speakers will explore the following questions: How were Renaissance libraries different from Medieval ones? What kinds of programs and purposes did they serve? What do we know about their systems of organization and their decorative schemes? How did the books sit alongside other objects (maps, instruments, and natural wonders)? Did the Renaissance see the birth of modern bibliography and if so who were its parents?
9:00-9:30 Registration & Coffee
9:30-9:45 Welcome Robert C. Ritchie & Bill Sherman
9:45-10:45 "Thomas Elyot's Dangerous Enterprise: The Library of the Henrician State"
Jennifer Summit, Stanford University
11:00-12:00 "John Leland and his Sources: The Bibliographical Tradition in England"
James Carley, York University
12:00-1:00 Lunch
1:00-2:00 "Mapping the World of Knowledge: The Repertorios of Hernando Colón"
Bill Sherman, University of York, California Institute of Technology
2:00-3:00 "Conrad Gesner in the Renaissance Library"
Paul Nelles, Carleton University
3:00-3:30 Break
3:30-4:30 "A Renaissance Collector and His Books: The Library of Ulisse Aldrovandi in Sixteenth-Century Bologna"
Paula Findlen, Stanford University
4:30-5:00 Concluding discussion
