Elleza Kelley

I am interested in space, form, visual art, and black aesthetics. I specialize in African American literature, with an emphasis on black geographies and radical spatial practice in the United States. My research traces how black spatial knowledge and practice appear in literature and art, particularly through experimentations with form, genre and media. My current 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, my work is also concerned with methodology—how we read, how we engage with archives, and how we do literary study. I have published work in Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography on Toni Morrison’s theories of place and geography, which is the subject of my next project. My other writing can be found in The New Inquiry, Deem Journal, Cabinet Magazine, and elsewhere. 

Selected Publications:

- “Follow the Tree Flowers”: Fugitive Mapping in Beloved, Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography (2020)