Historian Amy Remensnyder of Brown University will deliver the ninth annual Riggsby Lecture on medieval Mediterranean history and culture at 4:00 p.m., Friday, October 26. The event will be held at the Lindsay Young Auditorium in Hodges Library at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
Remensnyder’s lecture is titled “La Conquistadora: A Tale of Two Seas, The Virgin Mary, Muslims, Christians, Jews, and Indians,” and is presented by UT’s Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.
The event is free and open to the public, with a reception after the lecture in the Hodges Library galleria.
The lecture examines the Virgin Mary as a prominent icon of military conquest and spiritual conversion in ways that shaped—and continue to shape—religious, political, and ethnic identity on both sides of the Atlantic.
“We are excited to be hosting a scholar of Dr. Remensnyder’s stature, with her wide range of expertise in the religions and cultures of the medieval Mediterranean and her interests in studying the effects of early transatlantic contact,” said Heather Hirschfeld, Riggsby director of the Marco Institute.
Remensnyder specializes in the cultural and religious history of medieval Europe. Her books include the forthcoming La Conquistadora: The Virgin Mary at War and Peace in the Old World and Remembering Kings Past: Monastic Foundations Legends in Medieval Southern France. She also coedited Why the Middle Ages Matter: Medieval Light on Modern Injustice.
The Marco Institute’s annual Riggsby Lecture is made possible by a gift from Stuart and Kate Riggsby. Stuart Riggsby was formerly dean of UT’s College of Arts and Sciences.
For more information on the Marco Institute, visit the website.
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C O N T A C T :
Heather Hirschfeld (865-974-6961, hhirschf@utk.edu)