Professor Ellis Neyra writes and teaches in the fields of Caribbean, African diaspora, and Latinx literary studies (focusing especially on poetry, music, and cinema), as well as literary and critical theory. Ellis Neyra is as interested in the possibilities for thought that emerge when reading texts closely and slowly as in quandaries, impasses, and impossibilities that emerge at the limits of reading. Ellis Neyra has additional interests in deconstruction, Third Cinema, Cine Imperfecto, "ethics of reading," and translation. At Wesleyan, Ellis Neyra is currently the Coordinator of the Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory Certificate and hosts scholarly talks and events in its name, relevant to questions of theory today. In 2021, Ellis Neyra co-organized the Earth, World, Ethics serial symposium hosted by the Center for the Humanities.

Ellis Neyra is the author of The Cry of the Senses: Listening to Latinx and Caribbean Poetics (Duke University Press, 2020), which was awarded Honorable Mention for the 2022 Outstanding Book Award of the Latinx Studies Section of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA). Some recent publications include: "The Question of Ethics in the Semiotics of Brownness" (sx salon); "White Mythologies," a response essay to the the special book forum in Small Axe Journal about The Cry of the Senses; and an interview with Black Agenda Report's Book Forum editor.

Three new book projects are underway: a manuscript currently titled "Re-reading: The Violence of Relation"; another about the long and violent history of representations of sovereignty in Caribbean literature, for which Ellis Neyra began doing archival research as a John Carter Brown fellow at Brown University in 2020; and a third project about representations of the Kardashians, the Bobbitts, and American domesticity. As a writer, Ellis Neyra publishes peer-reviewed and scholarly essays, as well as art reviews, and poetry, and has published or has work forthcoming in: differences; Small Axe Journal; sx salon; Radical History Review; Habana Elegante; La Gaceta de Cuba; Sargasso: A Journal of Caribbean Literature, Language and Culture; Journal of Popular Music Studies; The Cambridge Companion to Queer Studies; ASAP/Journal; ARTFORUM; BOMB magazine; Obsidian: Literature and Arts in the African Diaspora; and Public Books. Ellis Neyra published their debut book of poetry, Meteor Shower/ Días Sin Shower (2017), and a co-edited, collaborative volume of text and images, Caribbean Cautionary Tales (2017), both with La Impresora Press, San Juan, Puerto Rico.