Deborah L. Nelson

Deborah L. Nelson is Dean of the Division of the Humanities and the Helen B. and Frank L. Sulzberger Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature and the College. She is a renowned scholar whose research focuses on late 20th-century U.S. culture and politics.

Nelson’s research interests include American literature and plays, gender and sexuality studies, photography, and Cold War history. Her book, Tough Enough: Arbus, Arendt, Didion, McCarthy, Sontag, Weil, (2017) won the Modern Language Association’s James Russell Lowell Prize for Best Books of 2017 and Gordon J. Laing Award in 2019 from the University of Chicago Press. She is also the author of Pursuing Privacy in Cold War America (2001) and articles published in PMLA, American Literary History, Contemporary Literature, Feminist Studies and in several edited collections.

Nelson joined the University of Chicago faculty in 1996. She attained her Ph.D. in English from City University of New York, a master’s degree in English from Columbia University, and a bachelor’s degree in English from Yale University. Nelson is a founding member of the research collective, Post45. She has served as chair of the department of English Language and Literature, Deputy Provost for Graduate Education and Director of the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality. Nelson has advanced her scholarship through grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Mellon Foundation.