Watch, Read, Listen

This conference investigates the nature and significance of the Protestant Reformation as a global phenomenon. Leading scholars from Europe and the United States offer fresh perspectives on the dynamics of religious change by examining the roles of institutions, interpretative communities, and communications media in advancing the globalization of the Protestant faith. The conference was held at The Huntington Dec. 8–9, 2017.

In the 16th century, the unified Latin Christianity of the Middle Ages broke apart. New Protestant churches and a reformed Catholic church created new theologies, new liturgies, and new ways of imagining what early Christian life and worship were like. Anthony Grafton, professor of history at Princeton University, discusses how the new histories were ideological in inspiration and controversial in style, but nonetheless represented a vital set of innovations in western ways of thinking about and representing the past. This talk is part of the Crotty Lecture Series at The Huntington.

The 16th-century ethnographic study known as the Florentine Codex included a richly detailed account of natural history of the New World. In this lecture, Alain Touwaide—historian of medicine, botany, and medicinal plants—compares the Codex and contemporary European herbal traditions. He suggests that they represent the opposition between unknown and known—a dynamic force that led to many discoveries in medicine through the centuries.

In his inaugural Huntington lecture, Phillip Bloom, The Huntington’s new director of the Center for East Asian Garden Studies and curator of the Chinese Garden, examines the history of Shizhuanshan, a hilltop Buddhist sanctuary in southwestern China constructed in the late 11th century. Bloom argues that, at Shizhuanshan, architecture, image, and text work together to transform the natural environment itself into a site for the eternal performance of Buddhist ritual.

Jointly presented by The Huntington and Carnegie Observatories, this conference marks the centennial of the completion of the 100-inch Hooker telescope on Mount Wilson, which saw “first light” in November 1917 and heralded the dawn of modern astronomy. Historians, scientists, and others explore the influence of big telescopes, the significance of discoveries at Mount Wilson, the gendered nature of astronomy, and other related issues in the history of Southern California as an arena for space exploration.