Elizabeth Hayton Liendo

Fields of Interest:

Comparative medieval literatures (primary areas of research: English, French, Italian, Latin, Spanish)
Violence, gender, and the law
Depictions of erotic violence
Codes of grief and intersections with ideals of masculinity/femininity

PhD: 2019, Pennsylvania State University, USA (Comparative Literature)

Bio: Elizabeth Liendo is a comparative medievalist, specializing in depictions of desire and erotic violence. Her research focuses on the intersections between depictions of erotic violence, women’s grief, and conceptions of authorship and poetic mastery. Some of her recent publications include an article on penetration and violence in Marie de France’s Lais, an essay on the suffering of Hecuba in Shakespeare’s Rape of Lucrece, and an article on how depictions of masculine grief are evoked and obscured by imagery of nakedness in Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess. She has secondary interests in global pedagogies of the medieval period and has recently contributed a podcast episode on teaching medieval studies in Asia to the Medieval Academy of America podcast series.

While Elizabeth’s research portfolio focuses on medieval and early modern literature, her teaching experience is broad. She has taught literature from ancient to modern in various contexts, holding positions at Guilford College, NYU Shanghai, at Shanghai High School International Division.

Select Publications:

“’The painter was no god’: Rewriting Hecuba and speaking violence in Shakespeare’s Rape of Lucrece.” Under review.
“’And live ye on the border?’: Imagined boundaries and shifting space in medieval Scottish literature.” In Medieval Borders and the Environment. Edited by Elisa Ramazzina. Brill: Leiden, Netherlands. Forthcoming 2025.
“The Wound that Bleeds: Feminization and Violence in Marie de France’s Lais.” Neophilologus 104.1 (Spring 2020): 19-32.
“’In hir bed al naked’: Nakedness and Male Grief in Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess.” Philological Quarterly 96.4 (Fall 2017): 405-24.
“Reading Chaucer in Mandarin: how we teach the global Middle Ages abroad.” The Multicultural Middle Ages Podcast. Medieval Academy of America. Published 25 July 2022.