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.
EMSI is soliciting applications for graduate and undergraduate student research assistants to support the programming.
Visit the application page here.
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.
French, 18th century manuscript
USC Libraries Special Collections BR120.A27 1700
Abregé des Principes de la Religion Chretiene du bonheur de l’home is an 18th-century manuscript primer to Christianity. The slim volume contains sixty-seven sections—each a page or two in length—on topics including happiness, Biblical history, the cardinal virtues, prayer, and the concept of grace. The brevity and simplicity of the entries suggest this text was intended for the religious education of children. In addition to the two intaglio prints attributed to Claude Duflos (1665-1727) bound with the text, three tiny paper sea creatures are loosely tucked into the book’s binding—a charming addition further indicating children interacted with this text.
For more information, contact Derek Christian Quezada Meneses, Rare Book Librarian, USC Special Collections and Lauren Dodds, EMSI Postdoctoral Researcher.
Recent Events
Upcoming Events
Music in the Early Modern Americas: Performances, Spaces, and Archives
Mary Beth Norton, Cornell University
Heather Keenleyside, University of Chicago & Emily Hodgson Anderson, USC
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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.
