American History

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A Neglected Document (Really!) of the Salem Witch Trials Nov 19, 2015

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Clive Holmes, emeritus fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, will provide a context for the 1692 determination by the Puritan clergymen of the Cambridge Association concerning spectral evidence in witchcraft trials. This talk is part of the Crotty Lecture series at The Huntington.

Mark Twain Imagined the Raft and Henry Huntington Built It Nov 03, 2015

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Laura Skandera Trombley became the eighth president of The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens in July 2015. However, her history with the institution began much earlier. A specialist on Mark Twain, Trombley began conducting research at The Huntington as a young scholar, using rare materials in the Library to help shape her doctoral thesis.

She is the author of five books. Her most recent, “Mark Twain’s Other Woman: The Hidden Story of His Final Years,” was published in 2010. As a graduate student, she discovered the largest known cache of Mark Twain’s letters, which ultimately became the primary source material for her dissertation and her 1994 book, “Mark Twain in the Company of Women.” Her other books include “Constructing Mark Twain: New Directions in Scholarship (2002)”, “Critical Essays on Maxine Hong Kingston (1998)”, and “Epistemology: Turning Points in the History of Poetic Knowledge (1986)."

Mexicans in the Making of America Nov 02, 2015

Show notes

Neil Foley of the Southern Methodist University, discusses how this demographic shift is reshaping politics, culture, and fundamental ideas about American identity. By mid-century nearly one in three U.S. residents will be Latino, with most being of Mexican descent. This talk was part of the Billington Lecture series.

Loren Miller: Civil Rights Attorney and Journalist Oct 29, 2015

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Amina Hassan, biographer and award-winning public radio documentarian discusses her new book, “Loren Miller: Civil Rights Attorney and Journalist.” Miller, one of the nation’s most prominent civil rights attorneys from the 1940s through the early 1960, argued two landmark housing cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. This biography—based extensively on research from the Loren Miller Papers at The Huntington—recovers this remarkable figure from the margins of history and reveals how he changed American law forever.

In Conversation with Liz Goldwyn Oct 14, 2015

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Author and filmmaker Liz Goldwyn discusses her book "Sporting Guide", a series of interlinked stories that evoke a lost world on the margins of Los Angeles society in the 1890s.

The Invisible Infrastructure of the Grid Oct 14, 2015

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William Rankin, assistant professor of the history of science at Yale University, explores the links between roadside surveying markers, nuclear missile targeting, and new forms of mapping in the twentieth century. His talk will focus on the grid-like alternatives to latitude and longitude that were created during and after the World Wars, especially the global system installed by the US Army. For soldiers, engineers, and homeowners alike, these invisible but now ubiquitous technologies blurred the line between the paper map and the real world and made it possible to treat the spherical earth as perfectly flat. This was part of the Trent Dames Lecture series.

Paul Theroux Oct 14, 2015

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Paul Theroux, one of the most acclaimed travel writers of our time, turns his unflinching eye on an American South too often overlooked. Theroux also discusses his recently published book, “Deep South”.

The Chinese and the Construction of the Iron Road Oct 12, 2015

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Gordon H. Chang, professor of history at Stanford University and co-director of the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project, examines the central role Chinese workers played in the construction of the first transcontinental rail line across the United States and about the challenges to recovering their long-lost history.

Ellis Island on the Land: Gardens of Migration Sep 30, 2015

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Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, professor of sociology at the University of Southern California, discusses the important role of immigrants and migration in the making of California gardens. This talk was part of the Haynes Foundation Lecture Series.

The Court and the World: The Court and the World: American Law and the New Global Realities Sep 23, 2015

Show notes

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer speaks about the many ways in which American judges, when interpreting American law, must take ever greater account of foreign events, law and practices—the subject of his new book, "The Court and the World: American Law and the New Global Realities."

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