This conference brings together a range of perspectives on medical texts that emphasize their lives as books, bringing together the disciplines of the history of medicine and of book history. Speakers will explore a wide variety of medical genres in diverse chronological contexts, posing questions about change and continuity in the nature of the medical book.

Focusing on the imagination and creation of gardens in the disparate geographies of 18th-century Europe, the Caribbean, and North America, this conference explores transatlantic ideas of nation, location, and self, and asks how the experience of gardens might be shared across nations, oceans, and cultures.

The death of Queen Elizabeth I in 1603 marked not only the succession of James VI of Scotland to the English throne but also a change of dynasty from Tudor to Stuart. This conference explains how, in a world of weak bureaucracy that depended on the willingness of powerful people to govern, a change of dynasty influenced the governance of the realm.

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. This program is part of the East Asian Garden Lecture series.

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; no one believed speech should be free. This program is a Crotty Lecture.

Benjamin Madley, associate professor of history at UCLA, discusses the near-annihilation and survival of California's indigenous population under United States rule in this Billington Lecture

Contemporary artist Tang Qingnian 唐慶年 demonstrates his calligraphy, which enlivens past traditions with a modern aesthetic sensibility. Originally from Beijing, Tang was at the forefront of China's "New Wave" art movement in the 1980s before relocating to the United States. The artist uses cursive script to write the “Song of Eight Drinking Immortals 飲中八仙歌,” a poem composed by the Tang-dynasty poet Du Fu 杜甫 (712–770).