Videos and Recorded Programs

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

The death of Queen Elizabeth I in 1603 marked not only the succession of James VI of Scotland to the English throne but also a change of dynasty from Tudor to Stuart. This conference explains how, in a world of weak bureaucracy that depended on the willingness of powerful people to govern, a change of dynasty influenced the governance of the realm.

Rose hybridizer Tom Carruth, the E. L. and Ruth B. Shannon Curator of the Rose Collections at The Huntington, introduces his newest floribunda, ‘Huntington’s Hundredth’, developed to commemorate the institution’s upcoming centennial. The old-fashioned rose is a soft pastel yellow touched with a blush of orchid pink and cream, with a powerful fragrance reminiscent of citrus blossoms and sweet fruit.

Award-winning horticulturist Chris Woods describes the most arresting features in public parks, botanic gardens, and private estates in locations ranging from New Delhi and Dubai to Chile and Australia from his book GardenLust. Throughout, he reveals the fascinating people, plants, and stories that make these gardens so lust-worthy.

Mary Sarah Bilder, Founders Professor at Boston College Law School, discusses the responses of George Washington and Benjamin Rush to Eliza Harriot O’Connor’s remarkable university lectures in 1787 and their implications for female political status under the Constitution. O’Connor was the first American female lecturer and principal of a female academy. This program is a Nevins Lecture.

Focusing on the imagination and creation of gardens in the disparate geographies of 18th-century Europe, the Caribbean, and North America, this conference explores transatlantic ideas of nation, location, and self, and asks how the experience of gardens might be shared across nations, oceans, and cultures.

This conference brings together a range of perspectives on medical texts that emphasize their lives as books, bringing together the disciplines of the history of medicine and of book history. Speakers will explore a wide variety of medical genres in diverse chronological contexts, posing questions about change and continuity in the nature of the medical book.