Melissa Heide

I am a scholar of medieval and early modern British literature, art, and culture. I teach medieval literatures with particular foci in environmental humanities, gender studies, and queer theory. My current book project, The Natural Order: Ecologies of Social Class in Medieval British Literature examines the ways in which the "renaissance" of the twelfth century generated new modes of ecological thought that underwrite the vocabularies and iconographies of social class in creative works of the centuries that followed. This project considers a range of texts from patristic and Scholastic commentary-traditions to late-medieval border narratives in order to demonstrate the many ways in which medieval social class is understood, explored, and mediated through ecopoetics. 

As an educator, I am deeply committed to providing access to information, regardless of educational standing or socioeconomics. Through my pedagogy, I hope to paint a detailed portrait of the European Middle Ages as far more intersectional, cosmopolitan, and diverse than they are traditionally thought to be. Through this commitment, I endeavor to introduce students to a premodern past that is still very much proximal to their own lives and experiences.