Helen Ann Mins Robbins endowed a series of annual lectures on medieval studies. Speakers are chosen each year by a committee of faculty and the Robbins Library Director.

Helen Ann Mins Robbins Lecture Series Speakers

1993/94 Kathleen Ashley (University of Southern Maine)
"Sponsorship, Reflexivity, and Resistance: A Cultural Reading of the York Cycle"
and
Pamela Sheingorn (Baruch College)
"The Bodily Embrace, or Embracing the Body: Gesture in Medieval Drama"
1994/95 Susan Crane (Rutgers)
"Knights in Disguise: Identity and Incognito in Fourteenth-Century Chivalry"
1995/96 Stephen Knight (University of Wales, Cardiff)
"Which Way to the Forest?: Directions in Robin Hood Studies"
1996/97 Peggy Knapp (Carnegie Mellon University)
"Words and their Work: Providence in Early Modern England"
1997/98 R. B. Dobson (Cambridge University)
"Robin Hood: The Genesis of a Popular Hero"
1998/99 Jill Mann (University of Notre Dame)
"The Canterbury Tales and the Myth of the Ellesmere Editor"
1999/00 Caroline Walker Bynum (Columbia University)
"Miracles and Marvels: How 'Other' was the Middle Ages?"
2000/01 P. J. C. Field (University of Wales, Bangor)
"Malory and his Audience"
2001/02

Joan M. Ferrante (Columbia University)
"Women in the Shadows of the Divine Comedy and the Spotlight of Medieval History"

(A revised version of this lecture is printed in Reading Medieval Culture: Essays in Honor of Robert W. Hanning.

Ed. Robert M. Stein and Sandra Pierson Prior. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005.)
2002/03 Richard Firth Green (Ohio State University)
"The Medieval Witch"
2003/04 Anna-Marie Ferguson
"Dancing with a Giant: Illustrating Malory's Morte d'Arthur"
2004/05

Michael Murrin (University of Chicago)
"A Paradise for Killers: Marco Polo and the Garden of the Assassins"
2005/06 Geraldine Heng (University of Texas at Austin)
"The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages"
2006/07

Theresa Coletti (University of Maryland)
"Mary Magdalene: Medieval Saint / Pop-Culture Icon"
2007/08 Bonnie Wheeler (Southern Methodist University)
"Absorbing Rumors: Malory's Sir Lancelot"
2008/09

Norris Lacy (Pennsylvania State University)
"Parallax and Paradox in Arthurian Romance"
2009/10

Helen Phillips (Cardiff University, Wales)
"Robin Hood Tales and the Church, 1370-1630"
2010/11

Corinne Saunders (Durham University)
"The Imagination of Their Hearts": Mind, Body and Affect in Medieval English Romance"
2011/12

Dorsey Armstrong (Purdue University)

"Malory's Questing Beast and the Geography of the Arthurian World"
2012/13

Ruth Karras (University of Minnesota)

"Beyond Women:  David and Jonathan in the Christian and Jewish Middle Ages"
2013/14

Ardis Butterfield (Yale University)

"Gower, in Other Words" (part of the John Gower Society Conference)
2014/15

Miri Rubin (Queen Mary University of London)

"How Emotions and Things are Shaping the Study of Medieval Cultures"
2015/16

Rhiannon Purdie (University of St. Andrews)

"Lyndsay's Historie of Squyer Meldrum and Hary's Wallace: The Artistry of Allusion"
2018/19

Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski (University of Pittsburgh)

"Visions of the Crusades: Saint Birgitta of Sweden and Saint Catherine of Siena"