Ren Ellis Neyra
Associate Professor of English
Downey House, 294 High Street, 217860-685-3636
Associate Professor, African American Studies
BA Freed Hardeman CollegePHD SUNY at Stony Brook
Ren Ellis Neyra
Professor Ellis Neyra is a poetic theorist working in the fields of Caribbean, African diaspora, and Latinx Studies. Ellis Neyra's writing and teaching in these fields prioritize: Poetics; the relationships and zones of impossibility between Poetry, Music, Film, Performance, and Critical Theory; Aesthetics; Caribbean Art; Third Cinema; and Translation.
Ellis Neyra is the author of The Cry of the Senses: Listening to Latinx and Caribbean Poetics (Duke University Press, 2020). With a range of textual and aesthetic forms across the Caribbean archipelago and Sonoran desert, The Cry of the Senses theorizes and enacts its method of multisensorial, poetic listening, and critiques Latinx studies through readings of the Black radical tradition and Caribbean studies.
Two new book projects, and two different ways of getting at a poetics without humanism and against individuation and sovereignty, are underway: one provisionally titled "Abuse, Poetics, and the American Domestic"; the other, "Liquid: Unsovereign Caribbean Poetics and 'Chimerical Ecologies,"' theorizes unsovereignty and imagines a historical poetics from the ecosystems of unsovereign places in the Caribbean.
As a writer, Ellis Neyra thinks in the genres (and temporalities) of academic essays, as well as art and performance reviews, and poetry. Read their recent writing in: Small Axe sx salon ; Public Books; Radical History Review; ARTFORUM +; BOMB magazine; Journal of Popular Music Studies; The Cambridge Companion to Queer Studies; ASAP/Journal; Terremoto: Contemporary Art in the Americas; La Gaceta de Cuba; Sargasso: A Journal of Caribbean Literature, Language and Culture; Habana Elegante; Obsidian: Literature and Arts in the African Diaspora, and other venues. Ellis Neyra published their debut book of poetry, Meteor Shower/ Días Sin Shower (2017), and a co-edited, collaborative volume, Caribbean Cautionary Tales (2017), with La Impresora Press, San Juan, Puerto Rico.
C.V.
Recent talks and readings:
"Situating the Kardashians: Skin, Theft, Ops" at the Annenberg School of Communication, University of Pennslyvania, Philadelphia, PA, November 2020.
"The Quarantine Concerts", Experimental Sound Studio, Chicago, IL, June 2020.
Academic Affiliations
Office Hours
Office hour meetings may be scheduled here: https://calendly.com/rellisneyra/office-hours
Dear Students: Note, *I do not hold drop-in hours.* Please schedule and come prepared to discuss only topics relevant to course studies, writing assignments, and conceptual questions emergent from course readings.
Students who would like to discuss questions about graduate school and academic planning, please email me at rellisneyra [at] wesleyan.edu to schedule a time-appropriate meeting for these important intellectual matters.
The professor encourages students experiencing medical, psychological, and/or emotional events to use the appropriate resources (i.e., mutual aid, medical expertise, sensorial and spirtual guidance) on campus and in the world for such important, both political and very private matters. But please note that the professor is not trained to offer these resources in a professional capacity.
Courses
Spring 2021
ENGL 279 - 01
Intro to Latina/o/x Lit & Art
ENGL 328 - 01
Brown&Black Forms and Feelings