Elizabeth Johnston Ambrose (PhD, 2005) is a multi-genre writer noted for her cross-disciplinary contributions to the fields of Eighteenth-Century Studies, Gender Studies, and Popular Culture. Her work on literary, mythological, and cultural representations of female rivalry, maternity, monstrosity, and gender-based violence appear widely.  A recipient of two SUNY Chancellor’s Awards, one for Excellence in Teaching (2014) and another for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities (2024), she teaches courses in Women in Literature, Women in Popular Culture, Female Iconicity, and Girls Studies. In 2017, she received the SUNY Traveling Lecturer Award and traveled to Russia to lecture on Barbie and Medusa at St. Petersburg State University and Novgorod State University.
 
Elizabeth's creative writing is featured in journals like Clockhouse, Descant, Cleaver, Women Studies Quarterly, Feminist Formations, Room, and McSweeney’s, as well as edited collections such as Veils, Halos, and Shackles: International Poetry on the Oppression and Empowerment of Women (Kasva Press, 2016) and Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Collection of Subversive Verse (Lost Horse Press, 2017). In 2021, she won the prestigious Rattle Chapbook Poetry Prize for her book, Imago, Dei, a poetic exploration of the difficulties navigating female adolescence and sexuality within an evangelical upbringing. Her chapbook Wild Things, an eclectic collection of persona poems from the perspectives of mythological female characters like Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, Tennyson’s The Lady of Shalott, and Persephone, as well as feminist commentary on media representations of women like Renee Zellweger and Natalee Holloway, was a finalist for the Mary Ballard Chapbook Prize Casey Shay Press and the Cathy Smith Bowers Prize and was published by Main Street Rag in 2021. She is currently completing a full-length poetry collection entitled Divination Ritual. A four-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Elizabeth is co-founder of the Rochester-based writing group Straw Mat Writers. She also facilitates a writing-as-therapy group at the Rochester Breast Cancer Coalition, out of which grew an anthology of writing by survivors of breast cancer which she co-edited (Foothills Press, 2018).