Phi Beta Kappa Distinguished Lecture

Monday, September 29, at 4:00 pm

Halton Reading Room

“Slavery in Two Worlds: East Africans in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans”

Dr. Kristina Richardson

John L. Nau III Professor of the History and Principles of Democracy

Professor of History and Middle Eastern & South Asian Languages and Cultures

University of Virginia

Professor Richardson specializes in histories of nonelite groups in the Middle East. She is the author of two monographs: Difference and Disability in the Medieval Islamic World (2012) and Roma in the Medieval Islamic World: Literacy, Culture, and Migration (2022). The latter was awarded the Dan David Prize, the largest history prize in the world, the Monica H. Green Prize for Distinguished Medieval Research from the Medieval Academy of America, and Honorable Mention for the Middle East Medievalists Book Prize. She also coedited the Notebook of Kamāl al-Dīn the Weaver in 2021. She is currently writing a book on free and unfree South Asian and East African agricultural laborers in early Islamic Iraq. Her work has been supported by the National Endowment of the Humanities, the Marie Curie Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the City University of New York.