Elleza Kelley

Elleza Kelley joins Yale as an Assistant Professor in the Departments of English and African American Studies. She earned her Ph.D. in English from Columbia University and her B.A. from Wesleyan University. Kelley works on African American literature, with an emphasis on black geographies and radical spatial practice in the United States. Her current research traces how black spatial knowledge and practice appear in literature and art, particularly through experimentations with form, genre, and media. Her first book project looks at practices of inscription and mark-making as modes of spatial production, representation, and reinvention. Kelley’s second project explores Toni Morrison’s theories of place and geography, which she has written about in Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography. Her other writing can be found in The New Inquiry, Cabinet Magazine, Deem Journal, and elsewhere.