Deborah L. Nelson

Deborah L. Nelson (born 14 December 1962) is an American academic.

Nelson earned her doctorate from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and joined the University of Chicago faculty in 1996. She was appointed the Helen B. and Frank L. Sulzberger Professor of English in 2018. Her 2017 book, Tough Enough: Arbus, Arendt, Didion, McCarthy, Sontag, Weil won the 2018 James Russell Lowell Prize awarded by the Modern Language Association, and the 2019 Gordon J. Laing Award.

In 2023, Professor Deborah L. Nelson was appointed dean of the University of Chicago Division of the Humanities.

Early life and education
Nelson graduated from Simsbury High School. She graduated from Yale College with a bachelor of arts in English in 1985. She graduated from Columbia University with a masters in English in 1990.