Professor Emerita
About
Fields of Study:
Atlantic studies, culture & citizenship, public engagement & community practice
Essays and book chapters in progress focus on: (i) Lyric citizenship: case studies on the connections among writing, the literary, and sites of conscience; (ii) Civic generations: alumni as allies in higher education's public mission; (iii) Best-selling poems in the age of the novel: popular verse tales of exile and trauma
PUBLICATIONS
Chicago University Press published my third book, Cato's Tears, in 1999. My earlier books were Emerson’s Romantic Style (Princeton, 1984) and Delicate Subjects (Cornell, 1990). Articles have appeared in American Literature, American Literary History, Studies in Romanticism, Critical Inquiry, ELH, and edited volumes, most recently “Lyric Citizenship in Post 9/11 Performance: Sekou Sundiata’sthe 51st (dream) state " in American Literature’s Aesthetic Dimensions (Columbia, 2012).
With Dr. Timothy K. Eatman, I co-authored Scholarship in Public: Knowledge Creation and Tenure Policy in the Engaged University(2008). In 2009 I published “This American Life: How are the Humanities Public?" one of five commissioned essays for the Humanities Indicators Prototype of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. My guest column, “The New Public Humanists,” appeared in the March 2013 issue of PMLA. I have recently received Kettering Foundation funding to support a framing paper and reports on the Citizen Alum initiative (www.citizenalum.org).
Research Area(s):
- In general, my work addresses literary and cultural history focusing on gender and genre in 18th- and 19th-century U.S. and Britain,
- emotion theory,
- civic engagement in higher education and cultural organizations, and,
- the public humanities
Affiliations:
Professor Ellison holds a joint appointment in the Departments of American Culture (AC) and English Language and Literature
