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ER E S E A R C H

Each year, hundreds of scholars visit The Huntington toresearch primary sourcematerial in English andAmericanliterature, history, science, and art.While each readermightwork in solitary splendor in theMunger Research Center,he or she simultaneously is part of a vibrant community thatincludes other researchers, Huntington staff, volunteers,and visitors.

The duration of any research project—from unprocessedarchive to published book or polished lecture—is rarelyconfined to one fiscal year or academic term. In November2007, historianDanielWalkerHowe published a book basedpartially on research he conducted in 2002–03, when hewas the R. Stanton Avery Distinguished Fellow. With therelease of the bookWhat Hath GodWrought: The Transfor-mation of America, 1815–1848, Howe gave a lecture in Friends’Hall on the period of American history between the Battleof New Orleans and theMexicanWar. In April 2008, hisbook was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in History, one ofmanyto be awarded to Huntington scholars over the years.

By the close of the fiscal year, Huntington catalogers hadensured that several prominent collections would be ac-cessible to scholars. Most of the books andmanuscriptsfrom theBurndy Library on theHistory of Science have beenprocessed, including all the works in the collection by IsaacNewton. Staff also began to catalog, rehouse, and digitizethe architectural negatives from theMaynard L. Parkercollection, an archive that includes more than 65,000images documenting the modern home and garden inmid-20th-century America. Parker (1900–1976) wasbased in Southern California from 1940 through 1965 andworked on assignments forHouse Beautiful, ArchitecturalDigest, and Better Homes and Gardens. Staff also continuedto catalog another large photo archive—the Edison Inter-national collectionofmore than40,000photographic prints,35,000negatives, 120photo albums, and450reels ofmotion-picture film that chronicles the development of SouthernCalifornia’s infrastructure.

Meanwhile, The Huntington’s two research institutes con-tinued to thrive. TheNational Endowment for theHumanitiesawarded a $350,000 challenge grant to the USC-HuntingtonEarlyModern Studies Institute (EMSI) and theHuntington-USC Institute on California and theWest (ICW) to endowprograms related to the American experience, with a par-ticular focus on issues of identity and citizenship. The grantwas awarded through the NEH’s “We the People” program,aimed at reinvigorating the teaching, study, and under-standing of American history and culture. This was onlythe third NEH Challenge Grant ever received by USC andthe largest award to any institution in the state of California.The initiatives supported by the NEH include summer fel-lowships forUSC graduate students to pursue research at TheHuntington; an annual workshop sponsored by the EMSIand theWilliam andMary Quarterly, one of the most presti-gious scholarly journals in thehumanities and social sciences;online publication of papers presented at institute seminars,working groups, and conferences; and facilitating researchat TheHuntington by graduate students or scholars holdingdoctoral degrees.

The John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundationfunded three years of short-term fellowships and threeyears of Haynes Foundation lectures. A new short-termfellowship—the San Andreas Fellowship Fund—was estab-lished to sponsor research in the field of natural history.LongtimeHuntington supporter Heather Haaga establishedthePaulG.Haaga Jr. Lecture onAmericanEntrepreneurship,in honor of her husband, a Huntington Trustee. The inau-gural talk slated for the 2008–09 year was “Sloan Rules:Alfred P. Sloan, General Motors, and the Challenges ofCorporate Capitalism” byDavid Farber, professor of history,Temple University.

The National Endowment for the Humanities renewed TheHuntington in its Fellowships Program at IndependentResearch Institutions. This enables the institution to con-tinue to offer threeNEH fellowships per year for three yearsstarting in 2009.

FELLOWSHIPSThe Huntington hosts many scholars each year, includingthe long-term fellows. These scholars, by their presencethroughout the academic year and their participation in avariety of events, contribute a great deal to the intellectuallife of TheHuntington. Among this group areDistinguishedFellows, invited for the academic year:• Judith Bennett, professor of history at the University ofSouthernCalifornia, writes on the history of women and thehistory of latemedieval England.While in residence as theR. Stanton Avery Distinguished Fellow, she researched thesubject of never-marriedwomen inEngland, ca. 1200–1550.• The research interests of Seth Lerer, professor of Englishat Stanford University and the Fletcher Jones FoundationDistinguished Fellow, includemedieval and Renaissancestudies, comparative philology, the history of scholarship,and children’s literature. His project was the social re-ception of medieval literature.

• Albert Hurtado, the Los Angeles Times DistinguishedFellow, is professor of history at the University of Okla-homa. His field of interest is the modern AmericanWest.He is working on a biography of Herbert Bolton.

U S E O F TH E L I B R ARY , 2 0 0 7 – 0 8

The Library was open to scholars, also known as Readers.

305 days of the year. Daily scholar visits averaged 67.

Scholars in Residence 1,437

Total Number of Reader Visits 20,510

Amount of Rare Material Used 309,866

Collection Development in the Library

Rare Books, New Acquisitions 3,443

Reference Books, New Acquisitions 4,490

The family papers of Looe and Eliza Baker and their descendents.

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This year The Huntington received 309 fellowship applica-tions for the academic year 2008–09. Of the total number ofapplicants, 75 competed for 11 long-term awards, three ofwhich are for the inaugural Dibner Research Fellows in theHistory of Science andTechnology. Therewere 234 appli-cants for short-term fellowships and a total of 123 awardswere made. Twenty-three scholars from Australia, Canada,France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, and the United Kingdomwere among those awarded fellowships.

CONFERENCE AND LECTURE HIGHLIGHTSThe fiscal year saw a record number of major conferences,11 in all, with more than 800 in attendance. Three of theconferences were held in conjunction with exhibitions,and several others were hosted or cosponsored by one ofthe two research institutes:

• “Rocket Science and Region: The Rise, Fall, and Rise ofthe Aerospace Industry in Southern California” featured

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aerospace pioneers and high-rankingmilitary officers aswell as writers, historians, and other commentators, whodiscussed the industry that helped to define life in South-ern California during themid- to late 20th century.Hosted by theHuntington-USC Institute onCalifornia andtheWest and supported by the John Randolph Haynes andDora Haynes Foundation.• “Jamestown at 400: Natives and Newcomers in EarlyVirginia” explored how the English settlement was createdand how it survived a turbulent era before becoming asettled community. Funded by theWilliam French SmithEndowment and the USC-Huntington Early ModernStudies Institute.• “Lawrence of Arabia” included historians and scholarswho talked about the life and influence of T. E. Lawrence.Cosponsored by theWestern States T. E. Lawrence Society.• “American Literature’s Aesthetic Dimensions” discussedthe topic from a variety of disciplinary perspectives—arthistory, cultural studies, political theory, and literature.Funded by theWilliam French Smith Endowment.• “Pressed in Time: American Prints 1905–1950” broughttogether noted art historians to explore various aspects ofthe fine art of printmaking in the United States during thefirst half of the 20th century. Funded by theWilliamFrenchSmith Endowment.• “TheAbolitions of 1807–08 and theAtlanticWorld”markedthe 200th anniversary of the ending of the British andAmerican Atlantic slave trade by exploring the results ofthose decisive changes of direction by both countries.

Funded by theWilliam French Smith Endowment and theUSC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute.• “Politics and Letters in 18th-Century England and Ireland:The World of Jonathan Swift” examined the versatilewriter’s intimate and powerful involvement for morethan half a century in both literary and political life.Funded by the Dorothy Collins Brown Endowment andthe USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute.• “Pacific Passages: Reconnecting East, West, and Center inthe Pacific Basin” explored historical perspectives on thePacific Basin, integrating different Pacific histories andgeographies that typically do not intersect and spotlightingindigenous histories, contact relations, transnationalism,and oceanic history as a whole. Funded by the JohnHaskellKemble Endowment.• “Medieval Peasants Revisited” brought together an inter-national group of scholars to examine the peasant experi-ence—agrarian, economic, and social—from a wide varietyof perspectives. Funded with the support of the Caltechdivision of the humanities and social sciences and thedepartment of history, University of California, Riverside.• “Moguls,Millionaires, andMovie Stars:HollywoodBetweentheWars, 1920–1940” illuminated the rise of Hollywoodagainst the backdrop of the equally dramatic rise of LosAngeles in the critical period between the two world wars.Hosted by the Huntington-USC Institute on Californiaand theWest, in partnership with the Academy of MotionPicture Arts and Sciences.

LONG - TERM RESEARCH FEL LOWS , 2 00 7 –08

MELLON POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCH FELLOWSMalcolm Baker, University of Southern CaliforniaProject: “The Marble Index: Roubiliac and Sculptural Portraiture in18th-Century Britain”

Peter Nabokov, University of California, Los AngelesProject: “A Myth and its Narrator: The Acoma Origin Myth and EdwardProctor Hunt”

NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES FELLOWSTony Brown, University of MinnesotaProject: “Beside History: Rethinking the Primitive in 18th-Century Aesthetics”

Luis Corteguera, University of KansasProject: “Talking Images in the Spanish Empire”

Sarah Rivett, Washington UniversityProject: “The Science of the Soul in Colonial New England”

BARBARA THOM POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWSAdria Imada, University of California, San DiegoProject: “Aloha America: Hula and Hawaiian Performance in the U.S. Empire”

Carolyn Sale, University of AlbertaProject: “Common Properties: The Early Modern Writer and the Law,1546–1628”

FLETCHER JONES FOUNDATION FELLOWWilliam Deverell, University of Southern CaliforniaProject: “The Redemptive West”

ELEANOR SEARLE VISITING PROFESSOR IN THE HISTORY OF SCIENCEAT CALTECH AND THE HUNTINGTONWilliam Sherman, University of YorkProject: “Scientific Culture and Book Culture in Early Modern Europe”

USC POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWSPolly Ha, University of Southern CaliforniaProject: “English Presbyterianism, ca. 1590–1640”

Volker Janssen, University of Southern CaliforniaProject: “California Prison System”

CALTECH POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWSGreg O’Malley, CaltechProject: “Final Passages: The British Inter-Colonial Slave Trade in theLong 18th Century”

Richard Squibbs, CaltechProject: “Alternative Worlds: The 18th-Century British Periodical Essayand Washington Irving’s America”

SCHOLARS IN RESIDENCERichard Bushman, Professor Emeritus, Columbia UniversityProject: “Farmers in the Production of the Nation: American Agriculturein the 18th Century”

Gary Gallagher, University of VirginiaProject: “The American War”

LONG-TERM PEER REVIEW COMMITTEE MEMBERSJohn Brewer, CaltechBernard Herman, University of DelawareJean Howard, Columbia UniversityMary Beth Norton, Cornell UniversityKenneth Warren, University of Chicago

SHORT-TERM PEER REVIEW COMMITTEE MEMBERSDavid Blight, Yale UniversityLinda Colley, Princeton UniversityPeter Holland, University of Notre DameCaroline Levander, Rice UniversityBarbara Lynes, Georgia O’Keeffe MuseumPhilip Morgan, Johns Hopkins UniversityLena Orlin, University of Maryland-Baltimore CountySteven Pincus, Yale UniversityBruce Robertson, University of California, Santa BarbaraDavid Shields, University of South Carolina

COMMITTEE FOR SELECTING DIBNER SHORT- AND LONG-TERM FELLOWSKenneth Alder, Northwestern UniversityPaula Findlen, Stanford UniversityWilliam Newman, Indiana UniversityCharles Rosenberg, Harvard UniversityPamela Smith, Columbia University

Left: Some of the notable participants in the conference “Rocket Science and Region”(l–r): Lt. Gen. John L. “Jack” Hudson; Daniel Lewis, The Huntington’s Dibner SeniorCurator for the History of Science and Technology; Maj. Gen. Philip J. Conley Jr. (Ret.);William Deverell, director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West;and Maj. Gen. Curtis M. Bedke. Right: Harry Shokler, Coney Island, ca. 1940, colorscreenprint, collection of Hannah S. Kully.

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• “This Side of Paradise: Body and Landscape in Los AngelesPhotographs” featured artists, writers, curators, and aca-demics who discussed the exhibition themes of landscape,the humanbody, and regional artistic practice as they relateto the history of Los Angeles photography. Funded by theWilliam French Smith Endowment and the John RandolphHaynes and Dora Haynes Foundation.

Huntington lectures continued to explore a wide range oftopics and were well attended by students, scholars, and thegeneral public. The three Distinguished Fellows—JudithBennett, Albert Hurtado, and Seth Lerer—gave talks on,respectively, never-married women in Chaucer’s England;Henry E. Huntington’s book collecting; and Aesop’s Fables.

Shakespeare and Lewis and Clark were the topics of lecturesby, respectively, James Shapiro (Martin Ridge Lecture)and Frederick Hoxie (Billington Lecture). Helen Horowitz(Nevins Lecture) spoke about the sexual underworld of1840s New York City in her talk “The Flash Press,” whileDaniel Hurewitz (Haynes Lecture) talked about “BohemianLos Angeles.” Robert Darnton gave the inaugural ZamoranoLecture on the “History of the Book.” Lectures also includedGary Gallagher discussing Hollywood and the Civil War andRobert C. Ritchie speaking on 19th-century beach culture.Daniel Walker Howe, recipient of the 2008 Pulitzer Prizein History for his bookWhat Hath God Wrought, spokeabout the transformative era of American history between1815 and 1848.

Lecturers during the year also includedDavid Kiehl, curatorof prints at theWhitneyMuseum of American Art, who de-livered the Robert Wark Lecture, titled “Printmaking Now:Cycles of Tradition, Innovation, and Change.” Diane Keatonand D. J. Waldie presented their book California Romantica.Their talk was part of the “In Conversation” series hosted bythe Institute on California and theWest. “Tales of a Colum-nist’s Life” was the subject of AlMartinez’s talk; the popularcolumnist for the Los Angeles Times talked about the life ofhis colleague Jack Smith.

This fiscal year also included a lecture series in conjunctionwith the release of the book French Art of the Eighteenth Centuryat The Huntington, as well as a series on the Chinese garden.

Rosalind Savill, director of theWallace Collection in London,discussed the English passion for French porcelain in“Patrons and Collectors of Sèvres Porcelain in England andAmerica.” Other lectures in the French art series includedtalks by Anne Poulet, director of the Frick Collection; AlistairLaing, head of collections at the National Trust for EnglandandWales; and Shelley Bennett, editor of the new Frenchart catalog and former European art curator. The Chinesegarden series included talks on “Yin Yu Tang, the Voices andSpaces of a Chinese Home,” by Nancy Berliner, curator ofChinese art, Peabody EssexMuseum, Salem,Mass.; “Poetryand Calligraphy in the Garden,” by Yang Ye, professor ofcomparative literature, University of California, Riverside;“AnotherWorld Lies Beyond: Visual Allusions in the ChineseGarden,” by Louise Yuhas, professor of art history and Asianstudies at Occidental College; and “Architecture and Fur-niture in a Chinese Garden,” by Sarah Handler, author ofthe bookMing Furniture in the Light of Chinese Architecture.

RESEARCH INSTITUTESThrough a partnership with the University of SouthernCalifornia, The Huntington sponsors two research centers:the USC-Huntington EarlyModern Studies Institute (EMSI)supports advanced research and scholarship on human so-cieties between 1450 and 1850; theHuntington-USC Instituteon California and theWest (ICW) brings together historiansand other scholars, students, writers, journalists, and policy-makers to investigate anddebate the richhistory of Californiaand the AmericanWest, with full access to TheHuntington’srarematerials. Each institute awards fellowships to scholarsandpresents adiverse array ofprogramming that is frequentlyopen to the public.

USC-HUNTINGTON EARLY MODERN STUDIES

INSTITUTE

During the 2007–08 academic year, the institute sponsored11 regular seminars: American origins; colonial LatinAmerica; early modern British history; early modernSpanish world; East Asia; law, history, and culture; thelong 18th century; material and visual culture; past tense;pre-modernMediterranean; and Renaissance literature.Each groupmeets on a regular basis and invites a visitingscholar to present a paper for discussion, usually material

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from a book or journal article in progress. The seminarsdrew a large audience over the course of the year, consistingprimarily of faculty members and graduate students fromcolleges and universities in the Los Angeles area while alsoattracting scholars from themost prestigious universities inthe world. The institute’s annual conference, titled “Toler-ance and Intolerance from the Inquisition to the Present,”was cosponsored by the USC College Shoah FoundationInstitute for Visual History and had approximately 80 regis-trants. It featured speakers fromFrance, England, Germany,Brazil, and across the United States. The year concludedwith “Writing Early American History,” the institute’sthird annual workshop cosponsored with theWilliam andMary Quarterly.

HUNTINGTON-USC INSTITUTE ON CALIFORNIA

AND THE WEST

The institute’s series of scholarly working groups pulls to-gether experts from across fields to examine California andWestern history in thematic settings. The working groupsfocus on such rich topics as early California; the Pacific Rim(cosponsored with EMSI); the built environment; NorthAmerican ecology; native peoples and the new world(cosponsored with EMSI); public health and the history of

Lectures touched on the plight of women in the age of Chaucer as well as the literature ofthe imagination. Above: John Lydgate’s Fall of Princes, 1527. Right: Aesop’s Fables, 1687.

medicine; science and technology; and the history of LosAngeles. One working group draws together scholars andjournalists who write on California and theWest to buildlines of mutual benefit across fields.

Theworking groups generate an array of collaborative teach-ing arrangements, scholarly publications, and public sym-posia and conferences. One such conference, “RocketScience and Region,” led to the Aerospace Project, amulti-faceted research and archival effort focusedon collecting,studying, and popularizing the remarkable history of thiskey industry sinceWorldWar II. The institute continues itsongoing partnership with Zócalo Los Angeles, sponsoringlectures and interviews with authors at the Los AngelesPublic Library, the Skirball Center, and other area venues.

HUNTINGTON LIBRARY PRESSBooks released by the Huntington Library Press in fiscalyear 2008 included:

• Pressed in Time: American Prints 1905–1950, by Jessica ToddSmith and KevinM.Murphy, chronicles the developmentof printmaking inAmerica through the first half of the 20thcentury. Fifty-nine images from theHuntington’s “Pressedin Time” exhibition are reproduced, including the work

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of such artists as Thomas Hart Benton, Childe Hassam,Edward Hopper, John Sloan, and Grant Wood. Essays bySmith andMurphy explore the artistic innovation of thispivotal era and the themes these artists addressed, fromurbanization to agrarian life, from the Great DepressiontoWorldWar II.• The Huntington for Kids: A Kaleidoscope of Books, Art, andNature, by Kathleen Thorne-Thomsen, teaches youngreaders about the workings of amuseum through hands-onactivities that range from designing a bookplate tomakinga leaf quilt to organizing a collection of family photographs.• Songs of Innocence and of Experience, by William Blake,celebrates one of the Library’s greatest treasures with asumptuous full-color reproduction of all 54 plates in TheHuntington’s copy of Songs. RobertN. Essick, distinguishedprofessor emeritus of English at theUniversity of California,Riverside, provides insightful plate-by-plate commentaryas well as a brief biography of Blake and an exploration ofthe political and historical context of the poems.

This year’s books reflect, in varied ways, the chief goal ofthe Huntington Library Press: making the holdings of theinstitution known to a wide audience. Pressed in Time was asellout in the Bookstore &More. Through the Press’s part-nership with University of California Press for distribution,a second printing as large as the first—1,500 copies—has soldnationally and internationally.

Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience, groundbreakingin its own time, inspired an innovative partnership betweenthe Press and the Library’s Imaging Services department.The color pigments of Blake’s illuminated books have longeluded the attempts of modern publishers and printers torepresent them accurately. This year Huntington staffmade use of new computer software, purchased through agift from Robert N. Essick, to produce customized profilesfor digital files of Blake’s images to control the way that aprinting press blends colored inks. The final result in thisnew edition of the work is remarkably close to the original.

HUNTINGTON LIBRARY QUARTERLY

As an interdisciplinary journal, theHuntington LibraryQuarterly reflects the wide range of the institution’s collec-tions. It currently counts among its subscribers themajorlibraries in theUnited States andGreat Britain, and anumberof other important libraries around the world. It is avail-

able both in paper and online to all subscribers. This year,all issues of the journal from 1937 to 2004 (recent volumeyears are available to subscribers only) became available inan online searchable format through JSTOR, the largestonline archive of academic journals in the humanities.

The journal, now in its 71st year of publication, began2008 with a special issue, “The Places and Spaces of EarlyModern London,” guest edited by Deborah Harkness andJean Howard. In combination, the essays create a vivid andsometimes harrowing picture of what daily life was like inLondon from the late medieval period through the 17thcentury, ranging from the provision of necessities, includ-ing housing and food, to the pursuit of leisure activities,including dining out and attending the theater.

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EE D U C A T I O N

Education staff worked closely with art curators and docentsto provide visitors with innovative ways to experience therenewed Huntington Art Gallery. These included down-loadablematerials for school groups and sophisticated audiotours with two different narratives, one for adult visitors,the other for children; the audio tours were made possiblethrough a gift from Lisa and Tim Sloan. Thanks to the gen-erous support of Charmean and Rob Neithart, two roomsthat focus on silver and ceramics were equippedwith touch-screen computer stations that allow visitors to explore howsuch coveted items weremade and used in the 18th century.New docent training tools and a revised school tour programwere made possible through a gift from docent MaryHeartfield and her husband, Randy. As a result of that gift,classroom teachers will be able to prepare students for aHuntington visit by viewing an introductory DVD anddownloadingmaterials from The Huntington’s Web site.

Preparations for the opening of the Chinese garden includedan ambitious 15-week training program for docents. Fifty-nine candidates attended courses in the new VolunteerAcademy; 117 docents completed training for theHuntingtonArt Gallery. The numbers are a true testament to the strengthof the docent program.

In a year that witnessed remarkable activity among volun-teers, TheHuntington also expanded its Internet resourcesdevoted to educating youngsters with a newWeb site.“ArtWonders,” designed for K–6 teachers and their students,presents interactive curricula on landscapes, portraits, anddecorative arts from the Huntington collections. It wasfunded by a $10,000 grant from the National Endowmentfor the Arts.

SCHOOL PROGRAMS“Discovering Art in the Gardens,” a new school-tourprogram, launched in the fall. Created for children in gradesK–3, the program provides children with the opportunity toexplore the elements of art in nature as well as selectedworksfrom The Huntington’s art collections. This addition

William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience.

Docent and Overseer Joan Caillouette leading a group of youngsters in the ScottGallery. She celebrates 45 years of service!