Videos and Recorded Programs

Karen Lawrence, president of The Huntington and a James Joyce scholar, delivers the annual Founder’s Day Lecture on the subject of Joyce’s novel Ulysses. Lawrence’s lecture examines what makes Joyce one of the greatest writers, and how he created one of the most original novels by stealing from everybody else.

Shigehisa Kuriyama, professor of cultural history at Harvard University, discusses the Inshoku yōjō kagami (Rules of Dietary Life), a Japanese woodblock print produced around 1850. The image appears to whimsically depict the traditional East Asian view of the body, but it in fact reflects the transformative impact of Western medicine and the rise of the money economy.

Author Icy Smith and illustrator Gayle Garner Roski discuss their book Mei Ling in China City, based on a true story set in Los Angeles during World War II. The story revolves around the friendship between a Chinese American girl named Mei Ling Lee and her Japanese American friend, Yayeko Akiyama, who was interned with her family in the Manzanar War Relocation Center.

This symposium investigates the history of garden plant domestication in China, focusing on such topics as horticultural techniques, the origins and distribution of important species, and the knowledge gained from literary records to DNA analysis.

William Deverell, professor of history at USC, explores the regional dimensions of American entrepreneurialism; what special features or challenges found in the American West helped drive entrepreneurs and stimulate original thinking, and how and why did the West inhibit breakthroughs or pioneer innovations?

Fara Dabhoiwala, professor of history at Princeton University, explores why speech, before the 18th century, was continually monitored and policed in every sphere of life across the Western world; no one believed speech should be free. This program is a Crotty Lecture.

Susan Burns, professor of history at the University of Chicago, explores the incorporation of saffron into Japanese pharmacology, a complex process that involved the rise of natural science and a “productive confusion” that linked saffron with other botanicals. This program is part of the East Asian Garden Lecture series.

Benjamin Madley, associate professor of history at UCLA, discusses the near-annihilation and survival of California’s indigenous population under United States rule in this Billington Lecture