Profile for

Debbie Lelekis, Ph.D.

Associate Dean of CHSSA; Acting Department Head, Literature and Languages

Educational Background

• Ph.D., University of Missouri-Columbia
• M.A., University of South Florida
• B.A., University of South Florida

Research Interests

• American Literature
• Literature and Film

Selected Publications

• Lelekis, Debbie. “Postbellum Travel Literature: Stowe and the Sunshine State.” Lamar Journal of the Humanities. 2025
• Lelekis, Debbie. “‘Pretty Maids All in a Row”: Power and the Female Child in Frances Hodgson Burnett's ‘The Secret Garden.'” Anglica (Warsaw, Poland), vol. 23, no. 1, 2014, pp. 63–71.
• Lelekis, Debbie. “The ‘Girl Reporter' Confronts the Lynch Mob: Miriam Michelson's A Yellow Journalist” and “Depictions of Racial Violence in the Work of Paul Laurence Dunbar.” Lynching in American Literature and Journalism. Ed. Yoshinobu Hakutani. Lexington Books, 2022.
• Lelekis, Debbie and John F. Lavelle, eds. The Working Class in American Literature: Essays on Blue Collar Identity. McFarland Press, 2021.
• Lelekis, Debbie. “Experimenting with Poverty & Performing Benevolence: Morality and Social Reform in Stephen Crane's New York City Sketches and Maggie, A Girl of the Streets.” Humanities Bulletin, vol. 3, no. 2, 2020, pp. 157-172.
• Lelekis, Debbie, and Madelaine Elam. “Blurring Fantasy and Reality: Disney’s EPCOT Dream and Tomorrowland.” Americana : The Journal of American Popular Culture, 1900 to Present, vol. 16, no. 1, 2017.
• Lelekis, Debbie. American Literature, Lynching, and the Spectator in the Crowd : Spectacular Violence. 1st ed., Lexington Books, 2015.
• Lelekis, Debbie. “Transposing Themes: Teaching Students to Connect to Literature Through Music.” The Atrium: A Journal of Academic Voices, vol. 5, no. 2, 2014.
• Lelekis, Debbie. “Women as Healers: Restoring and Preserving Community in Sarah Orne Jewett's The Country of the Pointed Firs.” The Quint, vol. 5, no. 4, 2013, pp. 49-60.