Helen Damico is a scholar of Old English and Old English literature. She received her Ph.D. from New York University in 1980, and is a professor emerita at the University of New Mexico, where she began teaching in 1981 and founded the Institute for Medieval Studies. The author of Beowulf's Wealhtheow and the Valkyrie Tradition, Damico has made important contributions to the study of women in Old English and Old Norse literature, and her work on Wealhþeow is frequently cited. She saw representations of the valkyrie in both Wealhþeow and Grendel's Mother Damico sees in the Old English poem Beowulf (c. 700–1000 AD).
Beowulf's Wealhtheow and the Valkyrie Tradition (1984)
Beowulf and the Grendel-kin: Politics and Poetry in Eleventh-Century England (2015)
Karkov, Catherine E. & Damico, Helen, eds. (2008). Aedificia Nova: Studies in Honor of Rosemary Cramp. Publications of the Richard Rawlinson Center. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University. ISBN 978-1-58044-110-0.
Medieval Scholarship: Biographical Studies on the Formation of a Discipline (3 vols)
Heroic Poetry in the Anglo-Saxon Period: Studies in Honor of Jess B. Bessinger, Jr. (with John Leyerle; Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 1993)
New Readings on Women in Old English Literature. Eds. Helen Damico and Alexandra Hennessey Olsen. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990. 176–89
"The Valkyrie Reflex in Old English Literature." In New Readings on Women in Old English Literature. Eds. Helen Damico and Alexandra Hennessey Olsen. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990. 176–89
