Reckford Lecture
The Institute hosts the annual Mary Stevens Reckford Memorial Lecture in European Studies, established in 1990 by UNC Classics Professor Kenneth J. Reckford to honor his wife, Mary Stevens Reckford (February 25, 1934 – November 12, 1987).
The lecture is designed to appeal to the public, rather than specialists. Speakers are asked to provide “pleasure, instruction, an interdisciplinary approach and a sense of shared humanity.” Because Mary Reckford’s birthday is Feb. 25, the Institute hosts the lecture within the month of February.
A graduate of Lesley College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Mary Reckford took graduate courses at UNC through the Evening College (now known as The William and Ida Friday Center for Continuing Education) for five years, studying such topics as Renaissance intellectual history, St. Augustine, sixteenth-century English literature, Arthurian literature, the Mediterranean world in the sixteenth century, and the history of science from the late-medieval period through the eighteenth century. She was mother to the Reckfords’ five children, Rachel, Joseph, Jonathan, Sam and Sarah.
Reckford Lecturers
2024 – Christine Poggi, professor of fine arts and the Judy and Michael Steinhardt Director, New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts. “From Primal Matter to Surrogate Veneer: Wood and Faux Bois in Picasso’s Cubism.”
2023 – Ana Lucia Araujo, Professor of History at Howard University. “Slavery as History and Memory.”
2022 – Magdalena J. Zaborowska, Professor of African America and American literacy and cultural studies at the University of Michigan. “‘Between Home, Blackness, and Me’: Unsettling Locations, Lives, and Archives in American Literary Studies.”
2021 – Catherine Woollard, Director of the European Council on Refugees and Exiles
2020 – Ronald “R.A.” Judy, Professor of English, University of Pittsburgh
2019 – Stefani Engelstein, Professor and Chair of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literature at Duke University
2018 – Zia Haider Rahman, Author, In the Light of What We Know (2014)
2017 – Leon Botstein, President, Bard College and Music Director, American Symphony Orchestra
2016 – Stephanie Schrader, Curator, J. Paul Getty Museum
2015 – Modris Eksteins, Professor Emeritus of History at University of Toronto
2014 – Michael Geyer, Samuel N. Harper Professor of German and European History at the University of Chicago
2013 – Martin Puchner, Professor of Drama and English and Comparative Literature
2012 – Mark Mazower, Professor of World Order Studies, Columbia University
2011 – Chantal Mouffe, Professor of Political Theory, the University of Westminster, London
2010 – Catherine Hall, Professor of Modern British Social and Cultural History, University College London
2008 – Joan W. Scott, Harold F. Lindner Professor of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study
2007 – Caroline Walker Bynum, Professor of Western European Middle Ages, Institute for Advanced Study
2003 – Kenneth J. Reckford, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Department of Classics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
2001 – Jaquelin T. Robertson, Professor of History, Johns Hopkins University
2000 – Robert Pinsky, Poet Laureate of the United States, Professor, Graduate Writing Program, Boston University
1999 – Peter Burke, Professor of Cultural History and Fellow, Emmanuel College, Cambridge University
1998 – Natalie Zemon Davis, Henry Charles Lea Professor Emeritus, Department of History, Princeton University
1997 – Lynn Hunt, Annenberg Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania
1996 – Peter Brown, Philip and Beulah Rollins Professor of History, Princeton University
1995 – Carlo Ginzburg, Franklin D. Murphy Professor of Italian Renaissance Studies, University of California
1994 – Peter Paret, Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities, School of Historical Studies, Institute for Advanced Study
1993 – Robert Darnton, Professor of European History and Director of The Program in European Cultural Studies, Princeton University
1992 – Alvatore I. Camporeale, Professor at the Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies and Johns Hopkins University
1991 – Rona Goffen, Professor of Art History, Rutgers University
1990 – Nancy S. Streuver, Professor of History, Johns Hopkins University