Mary Depew is an associate professor emerita in the Department of Classics, and taught at the University of Iowa from 1990 to 2015. She taught courses in the Classical and Hellenistic periods, Greek religion and society, and Greek literature. Her research interests include Hellenistic poetry, Greek poetry, and Greek religion.

Professor Depew is the co-editor (with Dirk Obbink) of Matrices of Genre: Authors, Society, and Canons, and is in the process of authoring Myth, Mimesis and Innovation in Callimachus' Hymns.

She holds a B.A. in Philosophy from California State University, Fullerton; a B.A. in Classics from the University of California, Irvine; and a Ph.D. in Classics from the University of California, Los Angeles.