Dr. Anita Obermeier
Professor and Chair, Department of English
Faculty Advisor, Medieval Studies Student Association
Anita Obermeier has taught over thirty different undergraduate and graduate courses in medieval language and literature as well as other British and world literature topics since 1992 when she earned her PhD as Arizona State University’s Outstanding Graduate Student of the Year. UNM has decorated her with the honors of Teacher of the Year, the Alumni Association Faculty Award, and the OGS Graduate Student Faculty Mentor Award. Anita Obermeier has written on Arthurian literature, Beowulf, Chaucer, Susan Faludi, Hildegard von Bingen, Jean de Meun, Marguerite de Navarre, Petrarch, Naomi Mitchison, Braveheart, Twain, as well as saints Anne and Joachim. Her research interests include authorial self-representations and intertextuality, feminist, gender, disability and queer studies, medieval medical writing, medievalism, mystics, saints, and women––some of which culminated in her comparative book, The History and Anatomy of Auctorial Self-Criticism in the European Middle Ages (Rodopi 1999) and her co-edited volume, Romance and Rhetoric (Brepols 2010). Her new book project is a medical, historical, theological, and literary study titled, Human, Divine, and Demonic Conception in Medieval Art, Culture, and Literature. Her most recent major articles “The Censorship Trope in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Manciple’s Tale as Ovidian Metaphor in a Gowerian and Ricardian Context” appeared in Author, Reader, Book: Medieval Authorship in Theory and Practice (U of Toronto P, 2012), “Merlin’s Conception by Devil in William Rowley’s Play The Birth of Merlin” in Arthuriana’s special volume on Arthurian Drama (2014), and “Maximum Humor: Sir Dinadan’s Post-Medieval Capers. ”Gwen to the Max: A Festschrift for Gwendolyn Morgan. The Year’s Work in Medievalism 31 (2016). Since 2015, Anita Obermeier is serving as Chair of the Department.
