She received her PhD and MA from Cronell University, was Joukowsky Fellow at Brown University in 1997-98, and a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford in 1995-96. She is completing a book on the genesis and genealogy of medieval romance, discussing medieval historiography, cutltural trauma, the crusades, race, and empire-formation, called Empire of magic: Medieval Romance and the Politics of Cultural Fantasy, and is co-editing a volume of essays, The Middle Ages on Film. Heng has published on medieval literature and culture in PMLA, Yale Journal of Criticism, differences, and various anthologies, and on Third World feminism and postcolonial Singapore in Genders, Nationalisms and Sexualities, and in Feminist Genealogies.