Ren Ellis Neyra
Associate Professor, African American Studies
Downey House Room 217, 294 High Street860-685-3636
Associate Professor of English
Downey House Room 217, 294 High Street860-685-3636
Coordinator, Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory
Downey House Room 217, 294 High Street860-685-3636
Co-Coordinator, Caribbean Studies
Downey House Room 217, 294 High Street860-685-3636
BA Freed Hardeman College
PHD SUNY at Stony Brook
Ren Ellis Neyra
Professor Ellis Neyra writes about and teaches Caribbean and African diaspora literary studies and literary theory, with particular attention to poetry, cinema, music, and philosophy. 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). Two new book manuscripts are underway: one currently entitled "Rereading: The Violence of Relation"; and the other about representations of (non)sovereignty in Caribbean literature, for which Ellis Neyra began doing archival research as a John Carter Brown fellow at Brown University in 2020.
Ellis Neyra is as interested in the possibilities for thought that emerge when reading texts closely, slowly, and resistantly as in quandaries, impasses, and impossibilities that emerge at the limits of reading. Ellis Neyra has devotions to deconstruction, Third Cinema, and questions of 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.
Recent publications include:
""I'm sorry about the poem": Narcissi and Incommensurability in Jamaica Kincaid's Lucy" (in Radical Formalisms: Reading, Theory, and the Boundaries of the Classical )(Bloomsbury 2024);
"White Mythologies" (Small Axe Journal 2022);
"The Question of Ethics in the Semiotics of Brownness" (sx salon 2020);
and an interview in Black Agenda Report's Book Forum (2022).
Scholarly publications have appeared or are forthcoming in: differences, Radical History Review's online organ The Abusable Past, Small Axe, sx salon, Obsidian: Literature and Arts in the African Diaspora, Journal of Popular Music Studies, The Cambridge Companion to Queer Studies, Habana Elegante, Sargasso: A Journal of Caribbean Literature and Culture, and elsewhere. "Public facing" criticism, art writing, interviews, and poetry have appeared in: Public Books, ARTFORUM, BOMB magazine, ASAP/Journal, Terremoto Magazine, Sargasso, and La Gaceta de Cuba. Ellis Neyra's debut book of poetry, Meteor Shower/ Días Sin Shower (2017), and a co-edited, collaborative volume of text and images, Caribbean Cautionary Tales (2017), were both edited by and published with La Impresora Press, San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Academic Affiliations
Office Hours
SOCIAL, CULTURAL AND CRITICAL THEORY CERTIFICATE STUDENTS, AND STUDENTS INTERESTED IN THE CERTIFICATE: You are very welcome to email me to set up a meeting to discuss any questions about your declaration or completion of the Certificate.
More information about the SCCT Certificate is on its website. You do not have to "apply" but can declare the Certificate via Wesportal. The SCCTC gives a name to one of the University's greatest strengths: its faculty's coursework and scholarly committments to theory--to the how, why, and whither of phenomena and language. Some Wesleyan students take theory courses given the disciplinary formation(s) that ground their major and/or minor (e.g., CSS, GOV, ENGL, COL, FILM, ROML, PHIL, ANTH, FGSS, and SOC students tend to also fulfill the SCCTC reqs). Other students, and sometimes regardless of major or minor, find themselves driven toward theory courses across several disciplines and fields. In these and other cases, students who study theory enjoy one of the virtues of the liberal arts curriculum: an attentive, critical errancy that reveals not just "the what" of an X but how X has come to be in the world and in language; which forces are scored in that X; how to think about and represent that coming-to-be; and what possibilities show themselves only to those who theorize.
Practically speaking, pre-approved courses for the SCCTC offered across the three divisions are updated each academic year (see here), and sometimes a course eludes pre-approval. Students can appeal for a course that was not pre-approved to count for the SCCTC. Courses on literary theory, black critical theory, political theory, social and cultural theory, philosophy of history, aesthetics, film theory, queer theory, and so on (this is not an exhaustive list), can potentially satisfy the requirements. Courses need to have been theory 'through and through', meaning, theory is structurally necessary for a given course to be what it is, to count. Note, certain disciplinary and/or field formations by (self)definition are NOT theoretical (there are little disagreements about empiricism, epistemology, materialism, speculation, cognition and mediation, etc.). If a student would like to discuss whether or not a course qualifies, email to set a meeting.
Courses
Spring 2025
ENGL 245 - 01
Intro to Literary Theory
ENGL 301 - 01
1492: States of War
Fall 2025
ENGL 201R - 01
Strange Inheritance
ENGL 301 - 01
1492: States of War