Welcome to the EMSI!
The USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute (EMSI) explores the history, literature, art, and science of the Early Modern period (c. 1450-1850). The institute’s range is global – instead of focusing on a particular region, EMSI aims to advance knowledge of the diverse societies in and around the Atlantic and Pacific basins. Researchers nourish diverse perspectives, advance interdisciplinary perspectives, and share discoveries about the Early Modern period with the goal of informing the ways we approach problems today as well as keeping us in touch with the sources of our common humanity.
Check out the 2025- 2026 EMSI Seminar Series.
See the full calendar of EMSI events.
Introducing Laura Dominguez
EMSI National Endowment for the Humanities Postdoctoral Scholar & Research Associate, LA2026
Dr. Laura Dominguez is a historian of race, heritage, and place-keeping. She specializes in co-creating partnerships and projects in California and the West, with expertise in culturally relevant collaborations with women, Latinx, LGBTQ+, immigrant, and Tribal communities. From 2023 to 2025, she served as a Mellon Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow with the National Park Service. She previously worked in advocacy and education for the Los Angeles Conservancy and San Francisco Heritage. In 2014, she co-founded Latinos in Heritage Conservation and continues to serve on its Board of Directors. She is also a Trustee of the California Preservation Foundation and a former member of the Los Angeles Mayor’s Office Civic Memory Working Group.
Dr. Dominguez earned her Ph.D. in History (2023) and her Master of Historic Preservation (2012) from USC. She also holds a bachelor’s degree from Columbia University (2010). Her award-winning dissertation studied the historical power of repair and cultural memory in Los Angeles from the eighteenth through the twenty-first centuries.
EMSI Awarded Major Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for LA2026
For LA2026, EMSI will coordinate humanities discussions related to the 250th anniversary of 1776 and the West for public audiences.
The discussions will take place at our partnering institutions:
▪ Autry Museum of the American West.
▪ Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.
▪ USC Special Collections and USC Fisher Museum of Art.
▪ Mission San Gabriel Arcángel.
▪ The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino.
▪ El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument.
You can find our award listed on the NEH Press Release for grants awarded in August 2024.
We look forward to sharing more soon!
Recent Events
Upcoming Events
Vera Keller, University of Oregon
“Curating the Enlightenment: Agency and the Museum in the History of Knowledge”
Eran A. Zelnik, California State University, Chico
American Laughter, American Fury: Humor and the Making of a White Man’s Democracy, 1750-1850
Katarzyna Lecky, Loyola University, Chicago
“‘Blotted Out’: Defacing Archives in London and Providence Island”
Image: Detail from “Vallard Atlas,” (1547) HM 29 f.1, chart 9, North America, east coast. Portolan atlas. Courtesy of the Huntington Library.
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