Academic Conferences and Lectures
The Huntington hosts academic conferences and lectures every year that are open to the public. Information and dates may be found on the calendar. For conferences, program details are typically available two months before the conference date; Conference registration does not include entrance to the research library.
For information about becoming a researcher, visit Using the Library.
2025
Upcoming Conferences
- May 16–17, 2025
The South Sea Company and the Atlantic Slave Trade
Conveners: Nicholas Radburn (Lancaster University), Daniel Domingues da Silva (Rice University) - May 30–31, 2025
The Americas’ Civil War Era: Diverse Histories
Conveners: Christopher Clark (University of Connecticut), Verónica Castillo-Muñoz (UC Santa Barbara)
Upcoming Lectures
- April 30, 2025
Los Angeles Times Distinguished Fellow Lecture
Life’s “Continual Vibrations”: Asian American Artists and the Natural World
Nayan Shah (University of Southern California) - May 1, 2025
Auden and Isherwood: Religion versus Friendship
Edward Mendelson (Columbia University) - May 7, 2025
Ritchie Distinguished Fellow Lecture
Serena Zabin (Carleton College) - May 14, 2025
Shapiro Book Prize Lecture
“Serving Herself: The Life and Times of Althea Gibson”
Ashley Brown (University of Wisconsin-Madison) - May 27, 2025
Alliance & Collectivity: Retracing the Vibrant History of Asian American Artistic Communities in Interwar California
ShiPu Wang (UC Merced)
Past Conferences
2025
- April 4–5, 2025
The Geological Imagination in the Long Nineteenth Century
Conveners: Nina Amstutz (University of Oregon), Stephanie O’Rourke (University of St. Andrews)
2024
- Jan. 17–18, 2025
Abortion in American History: Intimate Decisions, Medical Knowledge, and Legal Decrees in the Two Centuries Before Roe v. Wade
Convener: Patricia Cline Cohen (UC Santa Barbara) - Nov. 1–2, 2024
Storm Cloud: Environment, Empire, and the Arts in the Industrial Age
Conveners: Karla Nielsen (The Huntington), Melinda McCurdy (The Huntington), Kate Flint (USC) - Sept. 27–28, 2024
Extra Extra! The Material History of the Visually Altered Book
Conveners: Julie Park (Pennsylvania State University), Adam Smyth (Balliol College, Oxford)
- April 12–13, 2024
Gods, Guns, and Gardens: China and the West, from the Manchu Conquest to the Opium Wars
Convener: Tonio Andrade (Emory University) - Feb. 23–24, 2024
Shaping Black Modernisms: Art, Culture, and Community in California
Conveners: Jacqueline Francis (California College of the Arts), John Bowles (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Dennis Carr (The Huntington) & Lauren Cross (The Huntington) - March 1–2, 2024
Ecologies of Photography: Materials, Industries, and Environment in the American West
Conveners: Monica Bravo (USC) & Carolin Gorgen (Sorbonne) - May 23–24, 2024
Futurity as Praxis: Learning from Octavia E. Butler
Conveners: Andre Carrington (UC Riverside) & Sherryl Vint (UC Riverside)
2023
- Dec. 8–9, 2023
Correspondence and Embodiment: The Bluestocking Corpus Online | Verso story about the conference
Conveners: Nicole Pohl (Oxford Brookes University) & Anna Senkiw (Oxford Brookes University) - Nov. 3–4, 2023
Maritime History from Below: Re-Thinking Societies and the Sea | Verso story about the conference
Conveners: James Davey (University of Exeter) & Kevin Dawson (UC Merced) - Sept. 22–23, 2023
Paintings, Peepshows, and Porcupines: Exhibitions in London, 1775-1851 | Verso story about the conference
Conveners: Jordan Bear (University of Toronto) & Catherine Roach (Virginia Commonwealth University) - June 2–3, 2023
Slave Trading in the Spanish and British Atlantic Worlds
Conveners: Greg O’Malley (UC Santa Cruz) & Emily Berquist Soule (CSU Long Beach) - April 21–22, 2023
Objects, Pathways, and Afterlives: Tracing Material Cultures in Early America | Verso story about the conference
Conveners: Jennifer Van Horn (University of Delaware), Scott Manning Stevens (Syracuse), Christina DeLucia (Williams College), Tiya Miles (Harvard)
2022
- Sept. 16–17, 2022
Law and New Media
Convener: Jennifer Tucker (Wesleyan University) - Oct. 14–15, 2022
Centering Race and Disability in Histories of Eugenics
Conveners: Alexandra Minna Stern (Michigan) & Natalie Lira (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) - Nov. 11–12, 2022
Imagining Shakespeare in 2050
Convener: Ayanna Thompson (Arizona State University) - Dec. 8–9, 2022
Race and Place in Nineteenth-Century New York State: Rethinking William S. Seward and Thomas Cole
Conveners: Graham Hodges (Colgate) & Tim Barringer (Yale)