Academic Conferences and Lectures

The Huntington hosts academic conferences and lectures every year 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

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)
March 21–22, 2025
Music in the Early Modern Spanish Americas, Performance Spaces, and Archives
Conveners: Savannah Esquivel (UC Riverside), Cesar Favila (UCLA)
April 4–5, 2025
The Geological Imagination in the Long Nineteenth Century
Conveners: Nina Armstutz (University of Oregon), Stephanie O’Rourke (University of St. Andrews)
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

Jan. 15, 2025
Peregrine Tyam and Mrs. Mary Verney: Patriarchy and Race in late 17th century England
Susan Amussen (UC Merced)
Jan. 22, 2025
Billington Lecture: The Whites-Only Immigration Regime
Kelly Lytle Hernandez (UCLA)
Feb. 5, 2025
Huntington Lecture in Mormon Studies
Paul Reeve (University of Utah)
Feb. 19, 2025
Cheng Foundation Lecture
Anna Pegler-Gordon (James Madison College)
Feb. 26, 2025
Avery Distinguished Fellow Lecture
Susan Scott Parrish (University of Michigan)
April 9, 2025
Zeidberg Lecture in the History of the Book
Cristina Dondi (University of Oxford)
April 17, 2025
Dibner Lecture
Naomi Oreskes (Harvard University)
April 23, 2025
Isherwood-Bachardy Lecture
Edward Mendelson (Columbia University)
April 30, 2025
Los Angeles Times Distinguished Fellow Lecture
Nayan Shah (University of Southern California)
May 7, 2025
Ritchie Distinguished Fellow Lecture
Serena Zabin (Carleton College)

Past Conferences

2024

Dec. 4, 2024
Goya’s Portraits and a New Prize for The Huntington
Frederick Ilchman (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
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)