Rate My Professor Tina Boyer

Tina Boyer is Associate Professor of German and Chair of the Department of German and Russian at Wake Forest University. She earned her BA and MA degrees from the University of New Mexico and her PhD in medieval German Literature and Linguistics from the University of California, Davis in 2010. Following her doctoral studies, she joined Wake Forest University, advancing from Assistant Professor to her current position. Boyer also coordinates the Self-Instructional Languages program and holds affiliations with the Linguistics program, where her areas include second language acquisition, TESOL, and psycholinguistics; Jewish Studies; and the Center for Literacy Education.

Her specialties encompass medieval German literature—with a focus on giants and monsters—second language acquisition, technology in the classroom, historical linguistics, Germanic philology, monster theory, folklore, and fairy tales. Key publications include the monograph The Giant Hero in Medieval Literature (Brill, 2016), analyzing giants' roles in works such as the Dietrich cycle, Orendel, Daniel von dem Blühenden Tal, Virginal, Herzog Ernst, Fierabras, and Eckenlied; and co-edited volume Germanic Philology: Perspectives in Linguistics and Literature (Vernon Press, 2024) with Heiko Wiggers. Additional contributions feature chapters like "The Headless Giant: The Function of Severed Heads in the Ahistorical (Aventiurehafte) Dietrich Epics" in Heads Will Roll: Decapitation in the Medieval and Early Modern Imagination (Brill, 2012), and entries in American/Medieval volumes (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016 and 2019). Articles include "The Anatomy of a Monster: The Case of Slender Man" (Preternature, 2013) and "Murder and Morality in Salman und Morolf." She serves on the editorial board of Explorations in Medieval Culture and received the Reid-Doyle Prize for Excellence in Teaching in 2016. Boyer has presented lectures such as "The Antichrist and the Fifteen Signs of Doomsday" and organized sessions on Old High German literature.