Elissa Zellinger

Dr. Elissa Zellinger is Associate Professor of English and Associate Chair in the Department of English at Texas Tech University. Her research focuses on 19th-century American women's poetry, professionalism in literature, and the politics of memorialization. She is the author of Lyrical Strains: Liberalism and Women's Poetry in Nineteenth-Century America, which examines how women poets engaged with and shaped liberal thought.

Her current book project investigates public poetry, US monuments, and racialized narratives in memorial culture. Recognized with teaching and service awards, Dr. Zellinger explores poetic professionalism in authors like Elizabeth Akers Allen and E. Pauline Johnson, tracing connections between poetic form and cultural authority.

She has published extensively on nostalgia in Stephen Crane's work and the poetess tradition's influence on Edna St. Vincent Millay, contributing to scholarly discussions of gender and literary form.