Watch, Read, Listen

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.

Award-winning horticulturist Chris Woods 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.

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.