#  Elsa Julien Lora 

African American Studies, with a primary field in History

 

 

 



   ![Elsa in front of blue background](/sites/g/files/omnuum8896/files/styles/hwp_4_5__480x600/public/2025-11/Elsa.jpg?itok=1ZFHZ6dK) 

 



 





 

Elsa Julien Lora is a PhD candidate in the Department of African and African American Studies with a primary field in History. Her dissertation, *Life in Prison: An Intimate History of American Punishment,* untangles the relationship between punishment and intimate life in the modern American prison. More broadly, her research interests include carceral history, micro- and family history, and legal history. Elsa holds a JD from Yale Law School, where she was a student in the Challenging Mass Incarceration Clinic, and a BA from Wesleyan University. Her published writing can be found in the *Virginia Quarterly Review, Synapsis, Public Books,* and *Aperture.* Along with Professor Elizabeth Hinton, she co-edited *Harm and Punishment: Incarcerated Writers on Violence and the U.S. Prison,* forthcoming from Haymarket Press.



 

 

 





 

 

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