Boston Flora

Tag: Yale

  • Thursday, February 26, 12:00 noon – 1:00 pm Eastern – The Maze: Jesuits, Emperors, and the Invention of the Western Style Gardens in China, Online

    In a special three-part virtual series for the Garden Conservancy this winter, Professor Andrew Hui explores fascinating yet overlooked history of the Western Gardens at the Chinese Emperor’s Summer Palace in the eighteenth century. Over the course of three episodes, he will explore the unexpected story of how these vast gardens came to be designed by Jesuit priests and how they influence the development of Europe’s own gardens.

    Part 2: The Maze: Jesuits, Emperors, and the Invention of the Western Style Gardens in China

    February 26, 2026 I 12 noon Eastern

    In the early eighteenth century, Jesuit missionaries astonished the Qing court by designing a European-style maze in the Summer Palace. What began as a playful mimicry soon expanded into an entire quarter of Western-style gardens: fountains, cabinets of curiosities, and perspective vistas unlike anything in China before. This lecture tells the story of how Jesuits, armed with mathematics, hydraulics, and the technique of linear perspectives, became imperial garden makers—and how their creations embodied wonder, diplomacy, and power at the meeting point of two civilizations.

    Andrew Hui teaches at National University of Singapore and is the author of three books: The Study: The Inner Life of Renaissance Libraries (2025), A Theory of the Aphorism from Confucius to Twitter (2019, translated into 4 languages), and The Poetics of Ruins in Renaissance Literature (2017). His newest project is The Emperor’s Maze: The Jesuits in China and the Making of a Global Age (under contract, Penguin Press).

    Andrew is an experienced public speaker who has lectured widely, including recent talks at Yale, Oxford, and Brown universities, as well as online for the Medici Archive Project, the Smithsonian, and the 92nd Street Y.

    You will receive the webinar link directly from Zoom. A recording of this webinar will be sent to all registrants a few days after the event. We encourage you to register, even if you cannot attend the live webinar. Register at https://www.gardenconservancy.org/events/web26-the-emperor-s-western-maze-and-the-making-of-a-global-garden

  • Thursday, October 9, 6:00 pm – Cooling the Tropics

    The Boston University Food Studies Program has announced its Fall 2025 Pépin Lecture Series. On Thursday, October 9 at 6:00 pm Hi’ilei Julia Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart will present a talk based on her new book Cooling the Tropics. Beginning in the mid-1800s, Americans hauled frozen pond water, then glacial ice, and then ice machines to Hawaiʻi—all in an effort to reshape the islands in the service of Western pleasure and profit. Marketed as “essential” for white occupants of the nineteenth-century Pacific, ice quickly permeated the foodscape through advancements in freezing and refrigeration technologies. In Cooling the Tropics Hiʻilei Julia Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart charts the social history of ice in Hawaiʻi to show how the interlinked concepts of freshness and refreshment mark colonial relationships to the tropics.

    From chilled drinks and sweets to machinery, she shows how ice and refrigeration underpinned settler colonial ideas about race, environment, and the senses. By outlining how ice shaped Hawaiʻi’s food system in accordance with racial and environmental imaginaries, Hobart demonstrates that thermal technologies can—and must—be attended to in struggles for food sovereignty and political self-determination in Hawaiʻi and beyond.

    Hiʻilei Julia Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart (Kanaka Maoli) is Assistant Professor of Native and Indigenous Studies at Yale University. An interdisciplinary scholar, she researches and teaches on issues of settler colonialism, environment, and Indigenous sovereignty. This first book, Cooling the Tropics: Ice, Indigeneity, and Hawaiian Refreshment (Duke University Press, 2022) is a recipient of the press’s Scholars of Color First Book Award. It will be available for purchase on October 9.

    Her articles have appeared in refereed journals such as NAIS, Media+Environment, Food, Culture, and Society, and The Journal of Transnational American Studies, among others. She is the co-editor of the special issue “Radical Care,” for Social Text (2020), and the editor of Foodways of Hawaiʻi (Routledge, 2018). She is currently working on a project about cultural memory, commemoration, and hauntings in Hawaii State Parks. Professor Hobart holds a PhD in Food Studies from New York University, an MA in Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture from the Bard Graduate Center, and an MLS in Rare Books Librarianship and Archives Management from the Pratt Institute.

    The event will take place at 808 Commonwealth Avenue, in Fuller 124, and is free, but registration is recommended through Eventbrite HERE.

  • Friday, May 12, 12:30 pm Eastern – Compassing the Heavens and Earth: Early Scientific Instruments at Yale, Online

    Join the American Decorative Arts Department at the Yale University Art Gallery online on Friday, May 12 for a live conversation exploring the intersections among science, craftsmanship, and colonialism in the early transatlantic world. Elizabeth Fox, the Marcia Brady Tucker Fellow in American Decorative Arts at the Yale University Art Gallery, and Alexi Baker, who operates the History of Science and Technology collection at the Yale Peabody Museum, discuss a variety of centuries-old objects that experimented with and represented land and sky. In the 1700s and early 1800s, such instruments were finely crafted in America and Europe for use in scientific discovery, everyday life, and colonial enterprises. Some of these are on view in the Gallery’s current exhibition Crafting Worldviews: Art and Science in Europe, 1500-1800. The conversation is moderated by Jessie Park, the Gallery’s Nina and Lee Griggs Assistant Curator of European Art. Closed captions will be available in English. Registration required. To register, visit https://yale.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_BHm1H6bqQcCzfOlHKfLQww

  • Wednesday, April 12, 2023 – Tuesday, April 25, 2023 – Total Solar Eclipse in Australia

    Harvard Alumni Travel, in conjunction with Carleton College, will sponsor a trip to view the next total solar eclipse on April 12 – 23, 2023.

    • Experience the riveting cosmic event of a rare total solar eclipse from the best possible vantage point, directly on the centerline, as the brilliance of the Coral Coast is plunged into darkness. 
    • Cruise for 10 nights down the coast of Western Australia, home to some of the darkest skies in the world, allowing for incredible stargazing of the Southern Skies from the ease and comfort of the ship’s top deck. 
    • Witness a variety of dazzling landscapes of Western Australia’s colorful Coral Coast, home to white sand beaches, oceans painted with azure blue hues, rugged red outback desert and the world’s longest fringing reef.
    • Snorkel pristine reefs and coral gardens including the World Heritage Sites of Ningaloo Reef and Shark Bay.
    • Encounter an abundance of wildlife – rare birds, land animals and marine life – including a chance to swim with mighty whale sharks and manta rays, two of the world’s largest harmless fish.
    • Engage with Indigenous Australians and learn about the world’s oldest living culture during visits to sacred Aboriginal sites.

    The study leader is Joseph Henrich, Professor of Human Evolutionary Biology and Chair of the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard, along with Meg Urry, Israel Munson professor of Physics & Astronomy at Yale, and Joel Weisberg, Herman and Gertrude Mosier Stark Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Carlton College. The intimate Caledonian Sky will be your mode of transport, following one night at the Shangri-La Hotel in Sydney. Activity level 3. For pricing and more information visit https://alumni.harvard.edu/travel/trips/australia-eclipse-2023 For more information please email haatravels@harvard.edu or call our office at 800-422-1636 or 617-496-0806.

  • Tuesday, May 18, 11:00 am – 12:00 noon – Medicine, Knowledge, and Power in the Atlantic Slave Trade, Online

    Even as they were brutally forced from their homelands, enslaved Africans brought valuable medical and botanical knowledge with them to the Americas. Professor Carolyn Roberts highlights how African plant expertise was incorporated into 18th-century science and used to sustain the largest forced oceanic migration ever to occur in human history. She will discuss which plants enslaved Africans used, how they made medicines, and what present-day phytochemical research reveals about why these medicines were so effective. This New York Botanical Garden online lecture will take place May 18 at 11 am, and is $18. Register HERE.

    Carolyn Roberts, Ph.D., is a historian of medicine and acclaimed educator with a joint appointment in the departments of History/History of Science and Medicine and African American Studies at Yale. Her current book project, To Heal and To Harm: Medicine, Knowledge, and Power in the Atlantic Slave Trade, will be the first full-length study of the history of medicine in the British slave trade.

  • Friday, February 9 – Thursday, February 22 – New England Wild Flower Society Trip to Sri Lanka

    New England Wild Flower Society and Betchart Expeditions invites you to join this botanical and cultural adventure of discovery to the lush tropical isle of Sri Lanka (formerly called Ceylon), situated like a tear drop in the Indian Ocean, just south of India, February 9 – 22, 2018.

    Explore this fascinating jewel of a country, led by Neela de Zoysa, an outstanding botanist and naturalist from Sri Lanka, who has been a popular instructor for the Society since 2011.

    Discover many of the scenic, natural and botanic wonders of Sri Lanka, including:

    Sigiriya, the dramatic rock fortress and World Heritage Site, renowned worldwide.
    Peradeniya Royal Botanical Gardens (pictured), with a splendid avenue of palms and renowned for its orchids and fruit bats.
    Sinharaja World Heritage Site, a global biodiversity hot spot with virgin rain forest and an abundance of endemic flora, birds, and butterflies.
    Yala and Horton Plains National Parks, with a profusion of elephants and possibly a leopard strolling along the track!

    Delight in the lush slopes covered with tea plantations as you traverse the cool mountainous highlands. Also learn about the rich cultural heritage of this land of serendipity, from early Buddhist times to its Portuguese, Dutch, and British influences! $4,995, plus air. Access complete brochure at http://www.betchartexpeditions.com/pdf_files/1485.NEWFS.Sri%20Lanka.2018B.pdf

  • Monday, April 18, 7:00 pm – Brilliant Beacons: A History of the American Lighthouse

    In a work rich in maritime lore and brimming with original historical detail, Eric Jay Dolin, the best-selling author of Leviathan, presents the most comprehensive history of American lighthouses ever written, telling the story of America through the prism of its beloved coastal sentinels. Set against the backdrop of an expanding nation, Brilliant Beacons traces the evolution of America’s lighthouse system, highlighting the political, military, and technological battles fought to illuminate the nation’s hardscrabble coastlines. In rollicking detail, Dolin treats readers to a memorable cast of characters including the penny-pinching Treasury official Stephen Pleasonton, who hamstrung the country’s efforts to adopt the revolutionary Fresnel Lens, and presents tales both humorous and harrowing of soldiers, saboteurs, ruthless egg collectors, and most importantly, the light-keepers themselves. Richly supplemented with over 100 photographs and illustrations throughout, Brilliant Beacons is the most original history of American lighthouses in many decades. Mr. Dolin will speak at Porter Square Books, 25 White Street in Cambridge, on Monday, April 18 at 7 pm, followed by a book signing.

    Eric Jay Dolin is the author of Leviathan: The History of Whaling In America, which was chosen as one of the best nonfiction books of 2007 by the Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe, and also won the 2007 John Lyman Award for U. S. Maritime History; and Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America. He is also the author of When America First Met China: An Exotic History of Tea, Drugs, and Money in the Age of Sail. A graduate of Brown, Yale, and MIT, where he received his Ph.D. in environmental policy, he lives in Marblehead, Massachusetts, with his wife and two children.

  • Saturday, May 30, 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm – Green Spaces: Paintings from Olmsted’s Parks

    The Emerald Necklace Conservancy will present an exhibit of watercolor and gouache paintings by artist Lynette Lombard titled Green Spaces: Paintings from Olmsted’s Parks.  The exhibit will be mounted in the Shattuck Visitor Center, 125 The Fenway, and will be on view Saturdays and Sundays beginning May 3 from 11 – 4.  An artist reception and talk will be held on Saturday, May 30, from 2 – 4, and is free and open to the public.  In her artist statement, Lynette writes that, while painting on site during the summer of 2014, “I was struck by the variety of Olmsted’s visual rhythms and serpentine movements to create paths of light and dark, which weave a drama in my work.” She received her MFA from Yale University School of Art and is a Professor of Art at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois.  For more information contact info@emeraldnecklace.org, or call 617-522-2700.

  • Sunday, August 17, 9:30 am – 1:00 pm – One Day University at Heritage Museum & Gardens

    One Day University returns to Heritage Museum & Gardens in East Sandwich on Sunday, August 17th (9:30am -1:00pm.) This unique event features three award-winning professors from three top-tier schools. Each one is renowned for their teaching ability, and each will give a fascinating 60-minute lecture – LIVE!

    Every school has a few professors who are wildly popular . . . the professors listed below have won dozens of teaching awards and earned the highest possible ratings from their students on campus. Now they’re coming to Heritage for a truly unique and exhilarating morning. There are no grades, no tests, and no homework – just the joy of lifelong learning.

    This year’s program:

    What Makes Mozart Great?

    Craig Wright/Yale University

    Why Public Opinion Polls Are So Often Wrong

    Jennifer Lawless/American University

    What Makes Shakespeare Great?

    Joseph Luzzi/Bard College

    To register for this Sunday, August 17th event, visit https://www.onedayu.com/events/detail/89 or call 1-800-300-3438.

    The fee is $159. Plus, your registration for One Day University includes admission to the museums and gardens, which you can enjoy after the program. This is a remarkable one-of-a-kind learning opportunity.

     

  • Thursday, April 17, 6:00 pm – How Natural Selection Shapes Contemporary Homo Sapiens

    Stephen C. Stearns, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University, will speak at the Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street, at the Harvard Museum of Natural History on Thursday, April 17, beginning at 6 pm, as part of the Evolution Matters Lecture Series. Have modern sanitation and medicine stopped human evolution, as some claim? Does the pressure for sexual selection of males constrain the evolution of females, and vice versa? Does having children shorten or extend life? Analyzing the data from the renowned Framingham Heart Study, a long-term study initiated in 1948 that continues to this day, evolutionary biologist Stephen Stearns will explore how natural selection has shaped women’s bodies and physical health, and how reproduction has affected women’s average lifespan.

    The Evolution Matters Lecture Series is supported by a generous gift from Drs. Herman and Joan Suit. Free and open to the public, with free event parking at the 52 Oxford Street Garage.  For more information visit www.hmnh.harvard.edu.

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