Elsa Julien Lora is a U.S. historian and interdisciplinary scholar whose research focuses on the history of American prisons and the texture and intimacy of family life. She holds a PhD in African and African American Studies from Harvard University and a JD from Yale Law School. Her current book project, "Life in Prison: An Intimate History of American Punishment," combines institutional, social, and legal history to explore the relationship between punishment and intimate life. The project uncovers the unexpected role American prisons have played in regulating and disciplining incarcerated people’s intimate lives, and also uplifts intimate life as a key terrain of resistance inside. This research has been supported by the Mellon Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Institute for Citizens and Scholars, and the American Society for Legal History. Elsa’s writing has appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review, Aperture, and Public Books. She is also co-editor of the forthcoming anthology Harm and Punishment: Incarcerated Writers on Violence and the U.S. Prison (Haymarket) and is at work on a documentary about her grandmother, boundary-breaking modern dancer Mary Hinkson.