Michael Nylan, History professor at the University of California, Berkeley, will present the annual Ridington Lecture, “Beliefs about Seeing: Optics and Theories about Misperception in Early China,” at 8 p.m. Feb. 12 in McDaniel Lounge.

The lecture is free and open to the public. For more information, call 410-857-2294.

The talk will begin with a summary of the current brain science regarding the precise mechanisms that propel seeing, thinking, and visualizing. It will then look at optics in early China, drawing contrasts with optics in classical Greece.

Nylan is an expert in ancient China with a focus on the Han and Warring States dynasties. Her work questions traditional notions of Han Confucianism and has challenged conventional wisdom on Chinese political culture from antiquity to the present.

She is the author of the upcoming book, “Lives of Confucius,” as well as “Recarving China's Past: Art, Archaeology, and Architecture of the Wu Family Shrines,” “The Five ‘Confucian’ Classics,” “The Shifting Center: The Original ‘Great Plan’ and Later Readings,” and “The Canon of Supreme Mystery.”

She earned her Ph.D. from Princeton, her M.A. from the State University of New York at Buffalo, and her B.A. from the University of California Berkeley.

The William and Edith Ridington Annual Lectureship honors two long-time teachers at the College and friends of the campus.

William Ridington joined the full-time faculty in 1938 and retired in 1973, while Edith began a 20-year career as an adjunct lecturer in 1957. After the Ridingtons’ deaths, their family endowed the series, which began in 1991.