Rate My Professor Anita Obermeier

Anita Obermeier is Professor of British and Irish Literary Studies, Chair of the Department of English Language and Literature, and Director of Medieval Studies at the University of New Mexico. She joined UNM in 2001 as Assistant Professor of Middle English and Medieval Studies, advancing to Associate Professor in 2004 and full Professor in 2010. Previously, she served as Senior Lecturer and Lecturer in British Literature at Arizona State University from 1993 to 2001, Faculty Associate there from 1992 to 1993, and Visiting Lecturer in Medieval Literature at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1992. Obermeier earned her PhD in English with a medieval focus from Arizona State University in 1992, where she was named Outstanding Graduate Student of the Year for her dissertation on Auctorial Self-Criticism in the European Middle Ages. She holds an MA in English from Eastern Illinois University (1985), conducted graduate studies in medieval literature at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich (1985-1986), and received a BA in English and History from the same institution (1984).

Obermeier has received extensive recognition for teaching excellence, including UNM Outstanding Teacher of the Year (2005), Alumni Association Faculty Award for Outstanding Teaching and Service to Students (2010), Office of Graduate Studies Graduate Student Faculty Mentor Award (2012), and numerous student nominations and departmental honors. Her research interests include authorial self-representations and intertextuality, feminist, gender, disability, and queer studies, medieval medical writing, medievalism, mystics, saints, and women. Key publications comprise her monograph The History and Anatomy of Auctorial Self-Criticism in the European Middle Ages (Rodopi, 1999); co-edited volume Romance and Rhetoric: In Honour of Dhira B. Mahoney (Brepols, 2010); and articles such as “The Censorship Trope in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Manciple’s Tale as Ovidian Metaphor in a Gowerian and Ricardian Context” in Author, Reader, Book: Medieval Authorship in Theory and Practice (University of Toronto Press, 2012), “Merlin’s Conception by Devil in William Rowley’s Play The Birth of Merlin” in Arthuriana (2014), and “Maximum Humor: Sir Dinadan’s Post-Medieval Capers” in The Year’s Work in Medievalism 31 (2016). Her current project is Human, Divine, and Demonic Conception in Medieval Art, Culture, and Literature. She has taught over thirty undergraduate and graduate courses in medieval language and literature, British literature, and world literature topics. Research support includes an NEH Summer Stipend (2008) and various UNM grants.