About
Holly Nelson is a doctoral candidate, Rackham Merit Fellow, and World Performance Studies Fellow pursuing a dual-degree Ph.D. in History and English. Her research explores the transnational Harlem Renaissance in conversation with dance, performance studies, and the modernist literary tradition.
She received her B.A. in 2023 from Johns Hopkins University, where she was a Woodrow Wilson Research Fellow mentored by The Addams Family’s John Astin. There, she won the Department of History's Arthur Kouguell Thesis Prize and the Department of Anthropology's Michel-Rolph Trouillot Essay Prize. In 2023, she won the Dante Society of America’s annual Dante Prize for the best undergraduate essay in North America in Dante Studies.
Holly’s research at U-M has been generously funded by the Rackham Graduate School, the Center for World Performance Studies, and the Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia. She has presented papers at conferences including Modernist Studies Association and Dance Studies Association. Her writing appears in Choreographic Practices and James Joyce Quarterly.
