Elleza Kelley

Elleza Kelley is an Assistant Professor of African American Studies and English. 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. The project contends that black geographies both demand and usher forth specific and unconventional methods and reading practices. As such, Kelley’s work is also concerned with methodology—how we read, how we engage with archives, and how we do literary study. 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, and elsewhere.