Geraldine Heng

Geraldine Heng is Perceval Professor of English & Comparative Literature at the University of Texas, Austin. Her work focuses on literary, cultural, & social encounters between worlds, in the period 500-1500 CE, & webs of exchange among communities & cultures, especially when transacted through gender, race, sexuality, & religion. Her first book, EMPIRE OF MAGIC: MEDIEVAL ROMANCE & THE POLITICS OF CULTURAL FANTASY, traces the development of European romance, & the King Arthur legend, in response to the the crusades, & Europe's myriad encounters with the Middle East, Asia, & Africa. Her second book, THE INVENTION OF RACE IN THE EUROPEAN MIDDLE AGES, examines Europe's encounters with Jews, Muslims, Africans, Native Americans, Mongols, & the Romani ('Gypsies'), from the 12th through 15th centuries, to show how racial thinking, racial law, racial practices, & racial phenomena existed in medieval Europe before a recognizable vocabulary of race emerged in the West. The book analyzes sources in stories, maps, statuary, illustrations, architectural features, history, saints' lives, religious commentary, laws, political and social institutions, economic relations, & literature. Heng is also the author of ENGLAND & THE JEWS: HOW RELIGION & VIOLENCE CREATED THE FIRST RACIAL STATE IN THE WEST, in the Cambridge University Press Elements series on Religion & Violence. She is the editor of an MLA Options for Teaching volume on the Global Middle Ages, and co-editor, with Susan Noakes, of the Cambridge University Press Elements series of 40 volumes on the Global Middle Ages, as well as co-editor, with Ayanna Thompson, of a Penn University Press series on early critical race studies. Geraldine Heng is founder & director of the Global Middle Ages Project (G-MAP): www.globalmiddleages.org