Shannen Escote

Education and Degree(s)

• Ph.D. in Literature, University of California, Davis. In progress.

• M.A. in English, Graduate Certificate in Medieval and Renaissance Studies, CSU Long Beach, 2024.

• B.A. in English, Minor in Peace and Conflicts Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 2018.

Biography

My research explores gender and sexuality in the Middle Ages, queer and postcolonial approaches to medieval literature, medieval saints' lives and devotional culture, and mysticism and anchoritic literature. I am interested in medieval corporeality with attention to anxieties surrounding non-normative medieval bodies that have been othered along spatial, racial, gendered, and religious categories, as well as the significance of violence and acts of erasure employed against these peripheral identities.

My most recent work has examined medieval haptic engagement with body-part relics, necropolitics in The Canterbury Tales, and affective piety and trans embodiment in The Schewings of Julian of Norwich. 

Presentations

• “The Blood that Won’t Obey: Contagion and Cannibalism in The Letter of Alexander to Aristotle and The Wonders of the East.” Forthcoming presentation at the “Old English Literature” Panel, Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association Annual Conference 2025, San Francisco, Nov. 20, 2025.

• “Love in the Time of Pestilence: Necropolitics in the Knight’s and Pardoner’s Tales.” Presented at the “Corporeality and Incorporation: The Body in Literature and Culture Pre-1800” 2025 Conference, UC Irvine, Feb. 14, 2025.

• “Queering Vengeance & Translating ‘Bodies that Splatter’ in Beowulf.” Presented at the “Bodies in Translation” Panel, Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association Annual Conference 2024, Palm Springs, Nov. 7, 2024.

• “Love Bites: La Bête Feminine, Metamorphosis, and Rabid Gender in Bisclavret.” Presented at the Medieval Association of the Pacific Annual Conference 2024, Pepperdine University, June 7, 2024.

• “The Word Became ‘Flesch’—Reading the Sacrificial Body in Saint Margaret.” Presented at the Medieval and Renaissance Student Association Symposium, CSU Long Beach, April 7, 2023.

Publication

• Escote, Shannen. “Silenced Literacies and Surviving Languages: Print in Early 16th and 17th Century Philippines.” Watermark, vol. 17, 2023. pp. 1-8. 

Academic Services and Other Projects

• Co-Executive Editor, Watermark, vol. 18, 2024, CSU Long Beach.
• Director, "Medieval Queer and Trans Scholarship Database Project," CSU Long Beach. In progress.

Honors

• Award “For Outstanding Research on Language, Literacy, and Archival Studies,” Watermark Journal, English Department, CSU Long Beach, June 2023. 

Teaching

• TA - ENL10A (Literatures in English I: to 1700), UC Davis Fall 2025 - Present.