The Lewis Walpole Library

Programs & Exhibitions

The Lewis Walpole Library Past Lectures

2012: Nineteenth Lewis Walpole Library Lecture

"Robert Burns and Scottish Independence"

Robert Crawford, Professor of Modern Scottish Literature, University of St. Andrews

September 20, 2012
5:30 p.m.

Yale Center for British Art Lecture Hall

1080 Chapel Street
New Haven, Connecticut

Scotland's greatest poet, Robert Burns, championed the value of the "independent mind." In this public lecture, poet and Burns biographer Robert Crawford asks whether Burns also supported Scottish political independence.

2011: Eighteenth Lewis Walpole Library Lecture

"Family Life Makes Tories of Us All": Love and Power at Home in Georgian England

Amanda Vickery, Professor of Early Modern History, Queen Mary, University of London

October 21, 2011

2010: Seventeenth Lewis Walpole Library Lecture

"Romantic Science"

Richard Holmes
Author of The Age of Wonder

October 29, 2010

2009: Sixteenth Lewis Walpole Library Lecture

"Visualizing Religious Difference: Picart's Religious Ceremonies and Customs of All the Peoples of the World (1723-1737)"

Lynn Hunt
Eugen Weber Professor of History, UCLA

May 8, 2009

2008: Fifteenth Lewis Walpole Library Lecture

"Feeling Free in the Enlightenment: Diderot versus Rousseau, or, Philosophy versus Lived Experience"

by Leo Damrosch
the Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Literature at Harvard University

April 18, 2008

2007: Fourteenth Lewis Walpole Library Lecture

"Observation in the Enlightenment"

by Lorraine Daston
Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, and The University of Chicago

April 27, 2007

2006: Thirteenth Lewis Walpole Library Lecture

"Slander: The Art and Politics of Slinging Mud, Paris and London, 1770-1795"

by Robert Darnton
Shelby Cullom Davis '30 Professor of European History, Princeton University

April 7, 2006

2005: Twelfth Lewis Walpole Library Lecture

"Thomas Paine and the Intellectual Underpinnings of American Democracy"

by Joyce Appleby
Professor Emerita of History, UCLA

April 22, 2005

2004: Eleventh Lewis Walpole Library Lecture

"'The Faithless Column and the Crumbling Bust': Alexander Pope and Sculptural Portraiture"

by Malcolm Baker
Professorial Research Fellow, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and Professor, Art History and The History of Collecting, University of Southern California

April 23, 2004

2003: Tenth Lewis Walpole Library Lecture

"Mr. Handel Puts on an Opera"

by Nicholas McGegan
Music Director, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, San Francisco

April 8, 2003

2002: Ninth Lewis Walpole Library Lecture

"Love and Madness in Eighteenth-Century Britain"

by John Brewer
John and Marion Sullivan University Professor, The University of Chicago

March 1, 2002

Country House weekend held in conjunction with the Lecture
March 1-3, 2002, Farmington

2001: Eighth Lewis Walpole Library Lecture

"Et in Arcadia ego: The Eighteenth Century of the 1920s"

by Terry Castle
Walter A. Haas Professor in the Humanities, Stanford University

February 16, 2001

1999: Lectures

"Origins of the Gothic Revival Revisited"

by Michael McCarthy
Professor of the History of Art, University College Dublin

October 20, 1999

"Some Thoughts on Hogarth's Jew: Issues in Current Hogarth Scholarship"

by Ronald Paulson
Professor of English, The Johns Hopkins University

October 19, 1999

1999: Seventh Lewis Walpole Library Lecture

"Britain and Islam, 1650-1750: Different Perspectives on Difference"

by Linda Colley
Leverhulme Research Professor of History, London School of Economics

October 15, 1999

1998: Sixth Lewis Walpole Library Lecture

"Exposures: Sex, Privacy and Sensibility"

by Patricia Meyer Spacks
Edgar F. Shannon Professor of Eighteenth-Century Literature, The University of Virginia

April 9, 1998

1997: Fifth Lewis Walpole Library Lecture

"Walpole's Hogarth"

by David Bindman
Professor of the History of Art, University College London

February 5, 1997

1995: Fourth Lewis Walpole Library Lecture

"Horace Walpole's Gout: The Politics of Physic"

by Roy Porter
Professor, The Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine

April 5, 1995

1994: Third Lewis Walpole Library Lecture

"Tombs That Tell Tales: the Romance Revival and Modern Nationalism"

by Marilyn Butler
Rector, Exeter College, Oxford University

March 24, 1994

1993: Second Lewis Walpole Library Lecture

"Sexualities in Eighteenth-Century England"

by Lawrence Stone
Professor Emeritus, Department of History, Princeton University

April 15, 1993

1992: First Lewis Walpole Library Lecture

"The Scourge of the Eighteenth Century: Thomas Carlyle"

by Noel Annan
author of Our Age: English Intellectuals between the World Wars

April 8, 1992