Titles

• Associate Professor, Department of English, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
• Affiliate Faculty, Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Barrett, the Honors College

Biography

Heather Maring is a medievalist and poet whose favorite undergraduate courses were Plant Taxonomy and Animal Behavior. She currently studies representations of birds, worms, and other animal species in medieval English poetry. Her book Signs that Sing: Hybrid Poetics in Old English Verse (2017) focused on the meaningful roles of oral-traditional poetics and ritual in a wide variety of early written genres. In 2006-2008 she was a contributing editor for UNESCO’s project to create a "Manual on Oral Traditions and Expressions." 

Research

Heather Maring is currently investigating the role of worms in medieval English poetry, ideas about the death of the body, and related interment practices. She is also interested in how premodern and modern cultural and artistic categories have been informed by colonization, racism, and the objectification of others. 

Education

• PhD, Literature and Creative Writing, University of Missouri-Columbia, 2005
• MFA, Poetry, University of Iowa, 1999
• MA, Literature and Creating Writing, University of Missouri-Columbia, 1997
• BA, English (creating writing) with minor in BIology, University of Missouri-Columbia, 1993

Expertise

• global oral traditions
• Premodern English literature
• Twentieth-century American poetry
• slam poetry
• creative writing
• ecopoetics
• animal studies