RESEARCH NEWS | JUNE 2026
RESEARCH NEWS | JUNE 2026
We’ve just wrapped up an exceptionally busy season of programs. In a short span, we hosted five major conferences and symposia and seven public lectures! During this time, our audiences learned about Making the Body in Renaissance Italy through art, literature, and medicine; United Queendom: Legacies of Gendered Power in the Early Modern British World which explored the fabled Tudor-era regnant queens and their continued hold over contemporary pop culture; Old Women, Race, and Power throughout American history; Disability and Care in Medieval and Early Modern France, which took an approach to premodern embodiment, disability, affect, and care; and Perspective on Gardens in the American Context. This garden symposium was part of The Huntington’s This Land Is… initiative in honor of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and included a tour of the new Oak Meadow in front of the Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art. This floriferous meadow showcases California native plants alongside iconic American trees – especially oaks, the national tree. Stop by and see a new garden take shape before your very eyes!
Meanwhile, several current and former Research Fellows shared their research with our wider Huntington audience. In December, Devoney Looser, author of Wild for Austen and former long-term Fellow, headlined a screening and discussion of the 2005 film adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice for a sold-out audience in Rothenberg Hall. In March, Wendy Cheng (Simon and June Li Fellow) led a tour of our flowering camellias and shared her knowledge of the Japanese cultivators who helped introduce the camellia to southern California in a talk on “What Camellias Have Seen.” In April Cathy Ceniza Choy, the LA Times Distinguished Fellow, hosted a Second Sunday event on Filipino Food Magic, in which participants of all ages planted garlic and onions and learned about classic dishes from the Philippines in honor of Maria Ylagan Orosa, a famous Filipina food scientist. And Craig Santos Perez, this year’s Avery Distinguished Fellow and winner of the 2025 National Book Award for poetry, shared his poetry at sunset in front of the Rose Garden, in an event titled Ecopoetry in a Time of Climate Change.
We will shortly be announcing the 2026-27 cohort of Long-Term Fellows. We received nearly 600 applications this year, divided among long- and short-term fellowships and travel grants. As happens every year, four committees, each with five external scholars, are commissioned to read and rate applicants. While the external reviewers are reading files, our internal team of library, art, and (occasionally) botanical curators are reading the fellowship proposals as well to assess the fit with our collections. It’s a big investment of labor by all parties, and I’m grateful to our reviewers for their time and expertise. The Huntington’s is the largest humanities fellowship program in the country, and with the building of Scholars Grove now underway (hoorah!) we expect the program to continue to be the envy of our peers. It’s very exciting to see the construction site at the north end of the property come to life with large machines and large piles of dirt!