Check out the 2024- 2025 EMSI Seminar Series.
View the full EMSI Calendar of events here.
EMSI Awarded Major Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for LA2026
For LA2026, EMSI will coordinate humanities discussions related to the 250th anniversary of 1776 and the West for public audiences.
The discussions will take place at our partnering institutions:
▪ Autry Museum of the American West.
▪ Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.
▪ USC Special Collections and USC Fisher Museum of Art.
▪ Mission San Gabriel Arcángel.
▪ The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino.
▪ El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument.
You can find our award listed on the NEH Press Release for grants awarded in August 2024.
We look forward to sharing more when the project begins in January 2025!
Early Modern Book-of-the-Month
This new feature highlights books from USC Libraries Special Collections with an emphasis on new acquisitions.
Flavius Josephus, edited and translated by Robert Goulet
Paris: Jean Petit, 1519
USC Special Collections PA4222.A3 1519
On view now in “Josephus, Translated and Transformed“
Josephi Judei Historici is a Latin edition of Flavius Josephus’s Antiquitates Judicae printed in Paris in 1519. Born in Jerusalem, Josephus (c. 37-100 CE) was a priest, scholar, and army commander. This text provides a Jewish history from Creation to the Great Revolt of 66-70 CE. Josephus was among the most popular ancient historians for early modern humanists in part because his writing provides a historical context for early Christianity. This edition of Josephus’s Antiquitates Judicae was produced for humanist scholars in and around the University of Paris; Robert Goulet, a priest and professor, translated the text, and the prominent Parisian bookseller Jean Petit published it. This may explain the inclusion of the contested “Testimonium Flavianum”—a passage in which Josephus refers to Jesus as the Messiah—which is assumed to be a later forgery.
For more information, contact Taylor Dwyer, Curator of Feuchtwanger Memorial Library, USC Special Collections.
Recent Events
Upcoming Events
“A French Christmas”: Great Music at Saint James from USC Thornton Baroque Sinfonia
Hannah Murphy, King’s College, London
“Jouez hautbois, résonnez musettes!” A Concert of 17th-Century French Noels
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Land Acknowledgement
The USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute (EMSI) exists on the ancestral lands of the Gabrielino-Tongva and Kizh Nation peoples who continue to call this region home. EMSI respectfully acknowledges these Indigenous peoples as the traditional caretakers of this landscape, as the direct descendants of the first people. EMSI recognizes their continued presence and is grateful to have the opportunity to work and learn on this land.
Image: Vallard Atlas, detail of chart 3, 1547. Courtesy of the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.
