Geraldine Heng

Biography

Geraldine Heng is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Director of Medieval Studies and the holder of the Perceval endowment for Medieval Romance, Historiography, and Culture, an endowment created to support her research and teaching.

She is also Founder and Co-director of the Global Middle Ages Project (G-MAP), the Mappamundi cybernetic initiatives, and the Scholarly Community for the Globalization of the Middle Ages (SCGMA):http://www.laits.utexas.edu.ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/gma/portal/

Heng's teaching has included courses on the literatures and political cultures of the crusades, the genealogies and texts of medieval romance, the literatures of medieval England, Chaucer, medieval biography, premodern race and race theory, transcultural medieval travel narratives, and feminist theory and third world feminisms.

In 2004, she designed, coordinated, and taught in “Global Interconnections: Imagining the World 500-1500 CE,” an experimental interdisciplinary graduate seminar collaboratively taught by seven faculty to introduce an interconnected premodern world spanning Europe, Islamic civilizations, Mahgrebi  and SubSaharan Africa, India, China, and the Eurasian continent.

Heng’s research focuses on literary, cultural, and social encounters between worlds, and webs of exchange and negotiation between communities and cultures, particularly when transacted through issues of gender, race, sexuality, and religion.  She is especially interested in medieval Europe’s discoveries and rediscoveries of Asia and Africa.  Her book, Empire of Magic, traces the development of a medieval  literary genre—European romance, and, in particular, the King Arthur legend—in response to the traumas of the crusades and crusading history, and Europe’s myriad encounters with the East.  She is completing two books: a book theorizing premodern race and racial-religious difference, and a book on medieval England as a global site, traced through its literature.