Shannon Forest

I am a Doctoral Candidate in the English Department at UCLA, where I primarily study early modern literature. My dissertation project traces the entangled history of the early modern revival of Epicureanism and constructions of space and the nonhuman other. My methods are often comparative, and draw upon discourses in art history, critical theory, and philosophy. The project follows a doubled itinerary of both scholarly explorations of the likes of Margaret Cavendish and Thomas Browne and autotheoretical encounters with, for example, the marginal late drawings of Peter Paul Rubens and the still-life portraits of Giuseppe Arcimboldo.

Link to CV

“Pregnant Poems: Margaret Cavendish and the Immanence of Form.” English Literary History, Winter 2025.

“The Untimely Brilliance of Siemon Scamell-Katz.” Artforum.com, June 2023.

“Challenging Secularity's Posthistorical ‘Destination,’” Journal of Modern Literature, 2019.

sforest [at] ucla [dot] edu