May 8, 2025
Levan Institute for the Humanities Book Chat with Emily Hodgson Anderson
Shadow Work: Loneliness and the Literary Life
Julia Lee, Loyola Marymount University, and Anahid Nersessian, UCLA, discussants
Dana Johnson, USC, moderator
Online event
Co-sponsored by the Levan Institute for the Humanities, USC Department of English, and the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute.
May 2, 2025
Huntington-USC Institute on California & the West 20th Anniversary Conference
Dam Nation: The Fate & Future of Dams in the American West
Huntington Library
This conference is sponsored by the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West and co-sponsored by the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute.
April 8, 2025
Levan Institute for the Humanities Book Chat with Lindsay O’Neill
The Two Princes of Mpfumo: An Early Eighteenth-Century Journey into and out of Slavery
Catherine Molineaux, Vanderbilt University, and Asheesh Siddique, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, discussants
Peter Mancall, USC, moderator
Online event
This event is co-sponsored by the Levan Institute for the Humanities, USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute, and Van Hunnick History Department.
March 28 & 29, 2025
“Russian Afterlives of the Early Modern”
USC
Conference organizers
Kelsey Rubin-Detlev, USC
Colleen McQuillen, USC
Speakers
Frederic Clark, USC
Erica Camisa Morale, Stanford University
Luba Golburt, UC Berkeley
Oleg Lekmanov, Tashkent/Princeton University
Rebecca Lemon, USC
Chloe Papadopoulos, USC
Sasha Pchelintseva, USC
Igor Pilschchikov, UCLA
Ellina Sattarova, USC
Thomas Seifrid, USC
Ilya Vinitsky, Princeton University
Erik Zitser, Duke University
This event is co-sponsored by the USC Department of Slavic Literature and Languages; the USC Van Hunnick History Department; the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute; the USC Visual Studies Research Institute; the USC Center for International Studies; and the USC Levan Institute for the Humanities.
November 14, 2024
Legend of Destruction Screening
Online event
This event is co-sponsored by the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute, USC Department of History, and USC Department of Jewish Studies.
October 28 – December 18, 2024
“Josephus, Translated and Transformed: From the 1st Century to the 21st Century”
Exhibition in USC Libraries Special Collections, Doheny Memorial Library
This event is co-sponsored by the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute, USC Department of History, and USC Department of Jewish Studies.
October 4, 2024
Nova Forum Symposium with Peter Harrison, University of Queensland
“Nature after Disenchantment: New Histories of Religion and Science”
USC
Participants
Peter Harrison, University of Queensland
David Albertson, USC Religion & Nova Forum
Alexandre Roberts, USC Classics
Jessica Zu, USC Religion
Susanna Berger, USC Art History & Philosophy
Frederic Clark, USC Classics
Janet Hoskins, USC Anthropology & Religion
This event is co-sponsored by the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute, USC School of Religion, and Religious Ecologies Project, Nova Forum, and CHARM.
October 3, 2024
Nova Forum Science & Religion Series with Peter Harrison, University of Queensland
“The Battle of Science and Religion? New Perspectives on a Troubled Relationship”
USC
September 30, 2024
Levan Institute for the Humanities Book Chat with Nathan Perl-Rosenthal
The Age of Revolutions and the Generations Who Made It
David Armitage, Harvard University, and Marlene Daut, Yale University, discussants
Bob Shrum, USC, moderator
Online event
This event is co-sponsored by the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute, Department of French and Italian, and the Levan Institute for the Humanities.
June 19-21, 2024
“Vast Early America: A Transcontinental Conversation”
University of Poitiers
This conference was co-sponsored by the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute, MIMMOC (Mémoires, Identités, Marginalités dans le Monde Occidental Contemporain), and MSHS Poitiers.
Past Special Events
May 3 & 4, 2024
“Craft and Crafting in the Early Modern World”
Huntington Library
Conference Organizers
Anne Goldgar, USC
Ethan Matt Kavaler, University of Toronto
Presenters
Frederic Clark, USC
Adam Knight Gilbert, USC
Laura Hutchingame, UCLA
Richard Ibarra, USC
Ethan Matt Kavaler, University of Toronto
Alexander Mazzaferro, UCLA
Marina Nye, UCLA
Amy Powell, USC
Eyal Sagie Pundik, University of Toronto
Wenyi Qian, University of Toronto
John Rogers, University of Toronto
Sean Silvers, Rutgers University
Paul Stevens, University of Toronto
Misha Teramura, University of Toronto
Andrea Walkden, University of Toronto
Deanne Williams, York University, Toronto
November 10 & 11, 2023
“Women in Art and Science in the Early Modern World”
Huntington Library
Conference Co-organizers
Daniela Bleichmar, USC
Nicole LaBouff, LACMA
Presenters
Elaine M. Ayers, New York University
Janet Browne, Harvard University
Margaret Carlyle, The University of British Columbia, Okanagan
Jessica C. Linker, Northeastern University
Laura Mitchell, University of California, Irvine
Carole Nataf, Courtauld Institute of Art
Sarah Waheed, University of South Carolina
Winnie Wong, University of California, Berkeley
November 29 & 30, 2018
“Libertine Botany”
USC
Conference Co-organizers
Natania Meeker, USC French
Antónia Szabani, USC Comparative Literature
Presenters
Justin Begley, University of Helsinki
Sarah Benharrech, University of Maryland
Dominique Brancher, University of Basel
Amanda Jo Goldstein, UC Berkeley
Pauline Goul, Vassar College
Devin Griffiths, USC
Blanca Missé, San Francisco State University
Vin Nardizzi, The University of British Columbia
Jessica Rath, Art Center College of Design
Jessica Rosenberg, University of Miami
Sherry Velasco, USC
December 2, 2016
“Paper in the Early Modern Atlantic World”
Huntington Library
Colloquium organizer: Nathan Perl-Rosenthal, USC
Participants
Daniela Bleichmar, USC
Jana Dambrogio, MIT
Alejandra Dubcovsky, UC Riverside
Deborah Harkness, USC
Patricia Seed, UC Irvine
Sylvia Sellers-García, Boston College
Asheesh Siddique, USC
Katherine Smoak, Johns Hopkins University
May 11, 2012
“Portraits of the Traveler: The Art of Mediating Between East & West”
Huntington Library
Michèle Longino, Duke University
“Jean de Thévonot: Travels, Adventures, and Observations of a Voyager to the Levant”
Faith Beasley, Dartmouth College
“The Wordly Traveler: Salons and Les Indes orientales in 17th-Century France”
Amy Landau, The Walters Art Museum
“The Bashi in Breeches: Portrayals of Cosmopolitan Communities in 17th-Century Safavid Oil Painting”
Margaret Rosenthal, USC
“The Serenissima and Sublime Porte: Cesare Vecellio’s Admiration of the Ottoman Empire”
Ann R. Jones, Smith College
“Pietro della Valle in the East: Dressing Up for Egypt, Persia, and India”
February 8, 2011
Deborah Harkness, USC
A Discovery of Witches, A Novel
USC
September 17, 2010
“Alchemy and Economy Workshop: Circulations of Value in Early Modern Europe”
Huntington Library
Vera Keller, USC
“Perfecting the State: Alchemical Views of Progress in Politics, 1575–1625”
Carl Wennerlind, Barnard College
“Alchemy and Credit: The Quest for Infinite Improvement”
Ted McCormick, Concordia University
“The Economics of Alchemy and the Alchemy of Economics”
Margaret Garber, CSU Fullerton
“Curious Commodities: Routes of chymical exchange in the Holy Roman Empire, 1670–1700”
Lydia Barnett, Stanford University
“The Theology of Improvement: Natural and Sacred Histories of the Earth”
Andre Wakefield, Pitzer College
“Matter, Mechanism and Monads: The Leibnizian Challenge”
April 10, 2008
“The Spiritual Life of Plants”
Huntington Library
Organizers:
Natania Meeker, USC
Antonia Szabari, USC
Dominique Brancher, University of Geneva
Tom Conley, Harvard University
Françoise Delaporte, Université de Picardie
Eleanor Kaufman, UCLA
Pierre Saint-Armand, Brown University
February 28, 2006
“Veronica Franco’s Renaissance from Honest Courtesan to Dangerous Beauty”
USC
Margaret Rosenthal, USC
Randolph Starn, UC Berkeley
Marshall Herskovitz, Director and Producer
Jeannine Dominy, Screenwriter
Suzi Dietz, Musical producer
February 10, 2006
“Different Natures: Hermaphrodites & Pregnant Men in the Early Modern World”
USC
Tamer El-Leithy, Harvard Society of Fellows
“Transgender, Transgenre: Anomalous Sexuality in the Medieval Middle East”
Sherry Velasco, University of Kentucky
“The Politics of Male Pregnancy in Early Modern Spain”
Leah M. Devun, Texas A&M University
“Jesus as Hermaphrodite: Alchemy & Sex Difference in Pre-Modern Europe”
Kathleen Perry Long, Cornell University
“The Hermaphrodite & the Sexual Politics of Alchemy in Early Modern France”
October 8, 2005
“The Body’s Secrets Unlocked: Early Modern Anatomy and Anatomies”
Huntington Library
Mary Fissel, Johns Hopkins University
Anita Guerrini, UC Santa Barbara
Cindy Klestinec, Georgia Institute of Technology
Katherine Park, Harvard University
Charlotte Furth, USC
May 28, 2005
“Family Matters: Geneaology & History in the Early Modern World”
Huntington Library
Organizer: Karen Halttunen, USC
Andres Resendez, UC Davis
“Genetics, Population Movements, and Family Matters in Mexico and the American Southwest”
Michael Szonyi, University of Toronto
“The Multiple Uses of Chinese Genealogy, or, How to Dodge the Draft, Cheat on Your Taxes, and Forge a New Identity in Sixteenth-Century South China”
Deborah Harkness, USC
“Scientific Dynasties in Early Modern England”
Karin Wulf, College of William and Mary
“The Practice of Identity in Eighteenth-Century Anglo-America”
May 21, 2005
“Visibility and Genre in the Americas”
Huntington Library
Thomas Cummins, Harvard University
Sabine MacCormack, University of Notre Dame
April 16, 2005
“Cartography and Empire”
USC
Richard Kagan, Johns Hopkins University
Barbara Mundy, Fordham University
Ricardo Padron, University of Virginia
Nicolas Wey-Gomez, Brown University
March 19, 2005
“Beasts of Land and Sea in the Early Modern Atlantic World”
Huntington Library
Virginia Dejohn Anderson, University of Colorado
“Animals and Empire in Seventeenth-Century English America”
Jon T. Coleman, University of Notre Dame
“Angry Farmers and Cringing Wolves: Brutality, Biology, and the American Conquest of the Northeastern Woods”
D. Graham Burnett, Princeton University
“Is a Whale a Fish? Cetaceans and the Order of Nature”
Peter C. Mancall, USC
“Monsters of the Atlantic World”
May 8, 2004
The Institute Seminar
David Goldstein, Stanford University
“The Cook and the Carib: Cannibal Travel Narratives in Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus“
Image: Detail from “Vallard Atlas,” (1547) HM 29 f.1, chart 9, North America, east coast. Portolan atlas. Courtesy of the Huntington Library.
