Videos and Recorded Programs

Richard Pegg, Asian art curator of the private MacLean Collection in Chicago, discusses the similarities and differences in representations of space, both real and imagined, in early modern maps created in China, Korea, and Japan. He also examines the introduction of European map-making techniques into Asian cartographic traditions.

Based on the acclaimed science fiction novel Kindred by Octavia E. Butler, a new graphic adaptation by Damian Duffy and illustrator John Jennings gives fresh form to Butler’s powerful tale of slavery, time travel, and the inexorable pull of the past. Duffy and Jennings discuss the continuing relevance of Butler’s writings and how it has influenced their own work.

Inspired by the award-winning speculative fiction author Octavia E. Butler (1947–2006), leading experts in the field will explore the expansive ways Butler’s writing, research, and life foster deeper understanding of the past, present, and possible futures.

The exhibition “Octavia E. Butler: Telling My Stories” examines the life and work of celebrated author Octavia E. Butler (1947-2006), the first science fiction writer to receive a prestigious MacArthur “genius” award and the first African American woman to win widespread recognition writing in that genre.

The Los Angeles Service Academy provides an intensive introduction to the infrastructure and institutions of greater Los Angeles for high school juniors. The Huntington documented LASA’s investigation of the Los Angeles River and the Port of Los Angeles.

Jennifer van Saders, Carnegie-Princeton Fellow, discusses how the technique of astroseismology has revolutionized scientists’ view of the internal workings of stars.

This interdisciplinary conference takes the recent popularity of the historical novel as a starting point to explore the relationship between history and fiction. The plenary speaker, Booker Prize-winning author Hilary Mantel (“Wolf Hall”), will appear in conversation with Mary Robertson, former Huntington chief curator of British historical manuscripts.

The Tudor statesman Thomas Cromwell was described by an eminent historian as “not biographable.” Novelist Hilary Mantel describes her 10-year effort to pin her compelling and elusive subject to the page.