St. Cloud State University is proud to have Dr. Pelaez as a faculty member. She is a Professor of English and holds degrees from Princeton and Brown. Her primary field is nineteenth-century American poetry, and she has published on the work of Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allan Poe, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Published Books

Lyrical Liberators documents the work of abolitionist poets who spoke out against slavery during an era when it could mean risking one’s life. It draws on archival research to recover their poems from the periodicals where they originally appeared, and considers how they succeeded in rallying public opinion by relying on a genre that was in many respects more influential than any other at this time. This collection illustrates the numerous intersections across mid-nineteenth-century American literature, history, politics, religion, and media to offer an overview of the various discourses that shaped the seminal period leading up to the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery in 1865.

Consider supporting Dr. Pelaez by purchasing Lyrical Liberators here!

Courses Taught

Dr. Pelaez shares her expertise with undergraduate and graduate students through the various classes she teaches. She brings a breadth of knowledge to our students!

Her courses include

1. Early American Literature through 1830 (ENGL 310) Considers the work of adventurers and colonists who wrote to edify and instruct English and American readers. Focuses on how Puritan divines directed their constituents in the ways of the godly. Includes readings in captivity narratives that detail local interactions with Native Americans, and addresses the role of slavery in early America. Examines the circumstances and texts that were integral to the American Revolution. The goal is to comprehend how the American literary tradition was initiated and what this tells us about the foundations of American culture.
2. American Literature 1830-1900 (ENGL 311) Covers a range of 19^th-century American texts, focusing in particular on how the literary formation and representation of self-reliance assumed importance in the face of rapid social and economic change. Considers how introspection and transcendentalism became dominant concerns in response to the destabilizing effects of secularization and industrialization. Addresses the sociocultural impact of the Civil War. Authors include Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, Edgar Allan Poe, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Walt Whitman, and Emily Dickinson. Readings in various genres will offer a range of perspectives on a seminal period in American literary history.
3. African American Literature (ENGL 216) Selections of literature by African American authors ranging from the 18^th to the 20^th century. Readings include lyrics, memoirs, essays, poems, short stories, and novels covering key movements in this literary tradition. Traces how the African American voice developed through different eras to build an awareness of the influences and motivations that informed these texts.
4. Introduction to English Studies (ENGL 300) Selections of literary criticism, poetry, and fiction introducing key movements and genres in English Studies. Texts include essays by Michel Foucault and Virginia Woolf, fiction by James Joyce and Raymond Carver, and poetry by Robert Frost and Sylvia Plath. Traces the development of distinct literary movements and builds an awareness of the terminology that is used in the discipline.
5. Literary Theory and Criticism (ENGL 402/502/602) Focuses on the concepts that apply to the writer’s creative process, the various purposes of literary art, form, and technique, and the responses that literature elicits. Selections cover key movements in the field.
6. Introduction to Poetry (ENGL 481/581) Introductory survey of poetry ranging from the Elizabethan to the modern era. Develops an understanding of how and what poetry communicates by exploring distinct poetic movements and their corresponding terminology. Looks closely at formal elements of poetry, including meter and rhyme. Focus on poetic language and its thematic and structural evolution through the centuries in both England and America.
7. Introduction to Graduate Studies in English (ENGL 606) Focuses on English research methods and the application of theories in the fields of literature, language, and writing. Selections of literary criticism, poetry, and fiction introduce key movements and genres.
8. Seminar in American Literature of the Later Nineteenth Century (ENGL 611) Addresses the causes and repercussions of the American Civil War as reflected in literature of the era. Readings in a variety of genres that responded to wartime issues, including poems, short stories, speeches, and a novel. Covers sentimental and realist perspectives. Explores how some writers served political rhetoric while others challenged the status quo. Authors include Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, Stephen Crane, and Ambrose Bierce.

For more information about any of these courses, please see the SCSU University Catalog.

List of Publications

• Lyrical Liberators: The American Antislavery Movement in Verse, 1831-1865, Ohio University Press, 2018.
• “‘A Love of Heaven and Virtue’: Why Longfellow Sentimentalizes Death,” Reconsidering Longfellow, ed. Christoph Irmscher and Robert Arbour, Farleigh-Dickinson University Press, 2014.
• “The Sentimental Poe,” The Edgar Allan Poe Review 8.2, fall 2007.
• “Reversing the Irreversible: Dickinson and the Sentimental Culture of Death,” Studies in Irreversibility: Texts and Contexts, ed. Benjamin Schreier, Cambridge Scholars Press, 2007.

“A significant contribution to the scholarship on antislavery.”

SCSU Professor Monica Pelaez has authored a new anthology entitled Lyrical Liberators: The American Antislavery Movement in Verse, 1831–1865. Published by Ohio University Press, this book explores abolitionist poetry and “stands as a testimony to the power of a free press in the face of injustice.” From the publisher:

In Lyrical Liberators, Monica Pelaez draws on unprecedented archival research to recover these poems from the periodicals—Garrison’s Liberator, Frederick Douglass’s North Star, and six others—in which they originally appeared. The poems are arranged by theme over thirteen chapters, a number that represents the amendment that finally abolished slavery in 1865. The book collects and annotates works by critically acclaimed writers, commercially successful scribes, and minority voices including those of African Americans and women.

You can read more about the book at Ohio University Press.