The University of Michigan Department of English Language and Literature presents the Heberle Lecture on Wednesday, October 18 from 4-6PM in Angell Hall Room 3222. The lecture, titled 'Reading the World in Deep Time' will be delivered by Professor Geraldine Heng.

Professor Heng is Perceval Fellow and Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature, with a joint appointment in Middle Eastern studies and Women’s Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Her work focuses on literary, cultural and social encounters between worlds, webs of exchange and negotiation between communities and cultures, particularly when transacted through issues of gender, race, sexuality and religion. Her teaching focuses on early global literatures, the literatures and political cultures of the Crusades, holy war, the genealogies and texts of medieval romance, the literatures of medieval England, Chaucer/s, medieval biography, transcultural travel narratives, premodern race, race theory, feminist theory, and transnational feminisms.

Professor Heng has two books that will be published in 2017-18. The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages will be published by Cambridge University Press, as will her short work, England and the Jews: How Religion and Violence Created the First Racial State in the West. Her most recent book project is entitled Early Globalities: The Interconnected World, 500-1500.

Professor Heng's lecture will be preceded by the presentation of the Lora Hutchins Heberle Award for Outstanding Achievement in Critical Writing to a graduate student. The lecture will be followed by a reception. The event is open to the public and all are welcome.