The Marco Institute for Medieval & Renaissance Studies

A man giving a lecture

Annual Riggsby Lecture

The Riggsby Lecture is the Marco Institute’s premier annual lecture, held each year in the Fall semester thanks to the generous support of Stuart and Kate Riggsby. The lecture brings a prestigious scholar of the medieval Mediterranean to the University of Tennessee to give a public talk on a topic of their choosing.

Previous Riggsby Lectures

  • 2025: Bissera V. Pentcheva (Stanford), “Icons of Sound: Chant and Recitation in Hagia Sofia” 
  • 2024: Anthony Kaldellis (Chicago), “Constantinople 1453: Romans, Latins, and Turks at the End of the Middle Ages” 
  • 2023: Suzanne Conklin Akbari (Institute for Advanced Studies), “Byzantine Purple, Purple Wampum: Mediterranean Studies on Turtle Island” 
  • 2022: Monica H. Green (Independent Scholar), “A Mediterranean Divide: Christian versus Islamic Experiences of the Black Death” 
  • 2021: Marina Rustow (Princeton), “The India Trade, the Global Middle Ages, and the Cairo Geniza” 
  • 2020: Samantha Kelly (Rutgers), “The Other Christians of the Late Medieval Mediterranean: Ethiopian Settlement and Exchange with Latin Europe, c. 1200 – c. 1550” 
  • 2019: Maureen Miller (UC Berkeley), “Medieval Italy’s Bishops: A Mediterranean Episcopate in its European Context, c. 1050-1300” 
  • 2018: Hussein Fancy (Michigan), “The Impostor Sea: The Making of the Medieval Mediterranean” 
  • 2017: Nuria Silleras-Fernandez (University of Colorado Boulder), “The Crown of Aragon and the Mediterranean: Politics, Gender, and Culture” 
  • 2016: Karla Mallette (Michigan), “Cosmopolitan Languages, Lingua Franca, and Linguistic Frontiers in the Medieval Mediterranean” 
  • 2015: Paul M. Cobb (Pennsylvania), “Charlemagne’s Muslim Elephant: Kingship, Nature, and Monotheism in the Early Middle Ages” 
  • 2014: Jonathan P. Phillips (Royal Holloway, University of London), “Saladin: Life and Legend” 
  • 2013: Catherine Brown (Michigan), “Traveling Hands: Mobile Manuscript in the Early Medieval Mediterranean” 
  • 2012: Amy Remensnyder (Brown), “La Conquistadora: A Tale of Two Seas, the Virgin Mary, Muslims, Christians, Jews, and Indians” 
  • 2011: Paul H. Freedman (Yale University), “A Phantom Spanish Archive: The Past Slips Through Our Fingers” 
  • 2010: Cynthia Robinson (Cornell), “Who’s that Girl?: Cross-cultural Narrative, Mysticism and the Lady on the Alhambra Ceilings” 
  • 2009: Sharon Kinoshita (UC Santa Cruz), “How To Do Things in the Medieval Mediterranean” 
  • 2008: Michelle Hamilton (UC Irvine), “The Fall of ‘Spain’: The Problem of Muslims in Medieval Iberia” 
  • 2007: Joel Cohen (Boston Camerata), “Music of the Three Religions in Medieval Spain” 
  • 2006: Timothy Barnes (Toronto), “What is the Theodosian Code?” 
  • 2005: David Nirenberg (Johns Hopkins), “King Alfonso VIII and the Jewess of Toledo: A Love Story” 
  • 2004: Olivia Remie Constable (Notre Dame), “A Game for Everybody: Chess and Society at the Court of Alfonso X of Castile”