Videos and Recorded Programs

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.

David Mas Masumoto, organic farmer and acclaimed author of Epitaph for a Peach and Harvest Son, is joined by his wife, Marcy Masumoto, for a lively talk about life on their Central California farm. Through stories that offer a personal perspective on growing organic crops, the Masumotos share their reflections on the vision required of artisan farmers in today’s food world.

Johanna Teske, Carnegie Origins Postdoctoral Fellow, will highlight new discoveries about exoplanets including how their composition is “inherited” from their host star.

“The sun is but a morning star.” Walden’s famous last line points eastward to the sunrise; but Henry David Thoreau also wrote of the west, the sunset, and day’s end. To mark Thoreau’s bicentennial year, this conference poses the question: How can we read Thoreau from the sundown side, the far west of his imagination?