EMSI Distinguished Lecturers 2025
Katharine Park, Harvard University, & Lorraine Daston, University of Chicago
Public Lecture
Thursday, April 10, 2025
Huntington Library
Ahmanson Classroom
4:00 – 6:00 pm (PT)
Master Class
Friday, April 11, 2025
Huntington Library
9:00 am – 1:00 pm (PT)
Past Distinguished Lectures
Ada Ferrer, New York University
EMSI Distinguished Lecturer, 2024
Public Lecture: “Havana, 1812: Impossible & Necessary Histories”
April 19, 2024
The Huntington Library
Master Class: Cuba: An American History
April 18, 2024
The Huntington Library
Tiya Miles, Harvard University
EMSI Distinguished Lecturer, 2022
Public Lecture: “All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake”
April 12, 2022
Online Zoom Event
Jean E. Howard, Columbia University
EMSI Distinguished Lecturer, 2019
Public Lecture: “‘I was a stranger’: Hospitality in The Merry Wives of Windsor”
April 5, 2019
The Huntington Library
Master Class: “Communities of Practice and the Creation of Early Modern English Tragedy”
April 5, 2019
The Huntington Library
Annette Gordon-Reed, Harvard Law School
EMSI Distinguished Lecturer, 2018
Public Lecture: “American Democracy and its Discontents: History’s Hold on the Present Moment”
April 19, 2018
University of Southern California
Doheny Memorial Library
Master Class: “‘Most Blessed of the Patriarchs’: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination”
April 20, 2018
University of Southern California
Social Science Building
John Demos, Samuel Knight Professor Emeritus History, Yale University
EMSI Distinguished Lecturer, 2017
Public Lecture: “Travels with Satan: A Look Back at Fifty Years as a Witchcraft Historian”
March 2, 2017
University of Southern California
Doheny Memorial Library
Master Class: “The Rebirth of Narrative History: Review and Appraisal”
March 3, 2017
University of Southern California
Doheny Memorial Library
Bear McCreary, Composer
EMSI Distinguished Lecturer, 2015
Public Lecture: “Scoring the Past with Bear McCreary: The Alchemists Tell All”
November 18, 2015
University of Southern California
Doheny Memorial Library
Teofilo F. Ruiz, University of California, Los Angeles
EMSI Distinguished Lecturer, 2014
Public Lecture: “Protests against the Sea: Climate, Trade, and Languages in the Early Modern Mediterranean”
November 6, 2014
University of Southern California
Doheny Memorial Library
Master Class: “Deconstructing the Royal Entry: Festive Traditions in Early Modern Europe”
November 7, 2014
University of Southern California
History Conference Room
Alan Taylor, University of California, Davis
EMSI Distinguished Lecturer, 2013
Public Lecture: “Making and Unmaking Borders in the Misnamed War of 1812”
January 31, 2013
University of Southern California
Doheny Memorial Library
Master Class: “Virginia’s Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in the Early Republic”
February 1, 2013
University of Southern California
University Park Campus
John Brewer, CalTech
EMSI Distinguished Lecturer, 2011
Public Lecture: “The Spectacle of Vesuvius: Travel, Sentiment, and Science in the Age of Revolutions”
April 7, 2011
University of Southern California
Doheny Memorial Library
Master Class: “Microhistory: Problems of Scale, Distance, and Narrative”
April 8, 2011
University of Southern California
Social Science Building
Robert Darnton, Harvard University
EMSI Distinguished Lecturer, 2009
Public Lecture: “Old Books and E-Books”
November 10, 2009
Master class
November 11, 2009
Leonard Barkan, Princeton University
EMSI Distinguished Lecturer, 2008
Public Lecture: “Words on Pictures”
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Master class: “Making a Name”
Friday, October 17, 2018
Rolena Adorno, Yale University
EMSI Distinguished Lecturer, 2007
Public Lecture: “The Polemics of Possession in Early Latin American Narratives”
March 22, 2007
Master Class: “The Polemics of Possession: Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, and the Historians of Hernán Cortés”
March 23, 2007
Anthony Grafton, Princeton University
EMSI Distinguished Lecturer, 2006
Early Modern Lives: Writing Biography, Then and Now
Public Lecture: “The Many Lives of Johannes Trithemius (1462-1516)”
April 13, 2006
Master Class: “Writing Biography”
Catherine M. Soussloff, UC Santa Cruz
“Falling in Love: Early Modern Lives of Leonardo da Vinci”
Malcolm Baker, USC
“An Ivory Carver’s Life and Works: Illustrating Artistic Biography in 18th-Century Amsterdam”
Jonathan Lamb, Vanderbilt University
“Turning Lives into Things”
Greg Sullivan, Gunnis Dictionary of British Sculptors/Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford
“Writing the Lives of British Sculptors, 1660-1851 and Today”
April 14, 2006
Bernard Bailyn, Harvard University
EMSI Distinguished Lecturer, 2004
Public Lecture: “The New Contours of Atlantic History”
Master Class: “Dead Ends: The Dustbins of History”
