Watch, Read, Listen

Sean Bradley, Ph.D. candidate at the University of Washington, explores the history and development of an early text on emergency Chinese medicine, the Zhouhou beiji fang 肘後備急方 (Emergency Medicines to Keep on Hand), by the 4th-century alchemist and scholar, Ge Hong 葛洪.

The use and abuse of stereotypes is not limited to present-day politics. In this conference, experts in British and American history examine stereotypes related to such vital issues as race, religion, gender, nationality, and occupation. The program explores how stereotyping then, as now, persisted across different spheres of life; how individuals and groups responded; and with what consequences.

Sue Fawn Chung, professor emerita at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, presents facts and fictions about late 19th-century Chinese railroad workers, introducing newly published work on the subject: The Chinese and the Iron Road.

Larry Nittler, Department of Terrestrial Magnetism at the Carnegie Institution for Science, discusses how he uses microscopic analyses to understand what “presolar” stellar fossils - tiny grains of dust in meteorites - tell us about the evolution and inner workings of stars and the chemical history of the matter that became the sun and planets.

One of the most iconic paintings in British and American history, The Blue Boy, made around 1770 by English painter Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788), is undergoing its first major conservation treatment since its acquisition in 1921.

Catherine Hess, chief curator of European art, explains how the work of these two British artists resonates across centuries.