Dr. Geraldine Heng delivered the Krouse Family Visiting Scholar in Judaism and Western Culture Lecture, titled "Race Before the Modern Era: 'Presentism,' 'Intersectionality,' and the Politics of Keywords." Professor Heng's visit was co-sponsored by the Unit for Criticism & Interpretive Theory, the Program in Jewish Culture & Society, and the Program in Medieval Studies. 

Geraldine Heng holds an endowed chair at the University of Texas at Austin in English and Comparative Literature as well as holding appointments in Middle Eastern Studies, Women's Studies, Jewish Studies, and the Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Social Justice. She is a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America and the author of numerous books, among them The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages (2018), which won four book prizes. Subsequently, an excerpt of the book was adapted and published as England and the Jews: How Religion and Violence Created the First Racial State in the West (2019). Her most recent book is The Global Middle Ages: An Introduction (2021).