In Conversation: Professor Elisabeth Frost on Cultural Production and Political Witness

Photo Credit: Elisabeth Frost

By Yev Gelman

“I have books for you, if you want them.”

That was the first thing that Professor Elisabeth Frost said to me when I walked into her office on the fourth floor of Lowenstein at Fordham University’s Lincoln Center campus. Soon, I was trying to stuff her not-so-small pile of books into my backpack –– books ranging from literary theory tomes to the pocket edition of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, which I had actually already owned (“So give it to a friend,” Prof. Frost told me, “Everybody needs a copy of Howl.”) 

If you, like me, haven’t had the chance to take a class from Professor Frost, you might not know much about her, and as I’ve discovered, that’s a great loss. Both a poet and an educator, Elisabeth Frost is the author of a full-length collection of poetry, All of Us, two chapbooks, and a critical study on feminism in American poetry. At Fordham, she teaches courses in English, Disability Studies, and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, with a focus on female and feminist representations in art and literature. When not at work, she lives with her husband in a Washington Heights apartment they’ve been in since 1997. In my short interview with her, I wanted to explore the beginnings of her creative life, and the path she took to get to the teaching position here at Fordham. 

Elisabeth Frost has always been a writer. Growing up in a household of artists, creative practice was her family’s defining identity for as long as she can remember. Though both her parents and older brother were classical musicians, they were happy that Frost expressed a broad range of interests throughout her adolescence –– in her teenage years, Frost had already dabbled in astronomy and classical violin, and she thought about becoming a lawyer. Still, writing was the throughline: from an early-childhood rhyme comparing winter snow to rice (‘nice’ being the rhyming connector) to more mature expressions of craft as she grew older, she found herself clinging to words as a tool of expression. “I found that I could use this thing that I was learning how to do to transform what was happening inside me into language,” Frost told me. By the time she graduated high school in 1981, she was prepared to embark on the writing path for the long haul. 

At Harvard, where she received her B.A., Frost found herself in the epicenter of student political life, most of her peers having been influenced by the Civil Rights and Women’s movements in the ‘70s, as well as the anti-apartheid movement that had emerged out of struggles in South Africa, which Frost was connected to personally through a close friend who had become a refugee in the U.S. because of apartheid. She lived in a housing co-op with numerous student activists, previously home to Harvard’s nationally famous branch of Students for a Democratic Society. She fit in well among her radical peers, partly due to being brought up in a politically progressive household. A daughter of Holocaust refugees, Frost was exposed to social and international politics from an early age. Like many of her generation, she was hopeful for the future, and confident in the social change spearheaded by her activist peers. 

After graduating, Frost went straight into her master’s degree at Stanford University, where she was mentored by acclaimed poet Denise Levertov, but emerged feeling not-quite-ready to go straight into her PhD. For a while, she taught at a private school in New York City –– a job that paid the bills, but left her dissatisfied at the privileged nature of her students and the institution itself. However, it was there that she completely understood that teaching was to become a lifelong pursuit, one that enabled her to process and fill out her creative life, as well as to give back to younger generations while continuing to remain in touch with the cultural zeitgeist. She knew she wanted to teach, but not quite in a high school, so she became a PhD candidate at UCLA, preparing for full professorship. 

Through our conversation, I was quickly beginning to see the outlines of Frost’s life through the lens of politics; what I knew about her as a teacher was proved accurate by her narrative of her own life: that she sees herself as an artist shaped by the cultural and political movements surrounding her, that she produces out of a landscape that is not amorphously universal, but specific to the present moment. When I asked her how she saw her politics reflected in her work, however, the answer was not as clear:  

“I continue to struggle with what it means to be present for the current moment, as any kind of ‘cultural producer.’ That’s one reason why I keep teaching in this area –– I don’t entirely know how to. For me, it’s an ongoing process.”

The past two decades of teaching at Fordham have been a continuation of this process. The constant of the University student body, Frost observed, was its strong creative identity, particularly at the Lincoln Center campus. In recent years, she has also been in awe of the ways that “the revolution in gender and sexuality has shown how openness and resistance can thrive. That has been an education.” When speaking about the growth of the trans* and genderqueer community at Fordham despite growing national repression, she said: “As the country goes to hell, this is one little bright light for me, because there is joy in the world now for so many people who didn’t have it before. So many people are alive now that wouldn’t have been.” 

“You seem to love your students so much –– do you ever write about them?” I asked her. 

Laughing, Frost told me, beautifully: “I am a magpie of people’s sentences, their stories, images. It all gets cycled in somewhere!”  

As I packed up my notebook, I couldn’t help but ask Frost one last, selfish question: if she had any advice for graduating seniors who, like me, were preparing to embark on their creative life in full.

“Keep doing it,” she said after a pause. “Don’t let anything shut you up. Look out. Look in. Find the people to make for, and make with. That’s all I’ve got.”

Yev Gelman (he/him) is a writer and theatre artist currently working out of a small apartment in Crown Heights. He enjoys walks of all varieties, the ocean, and the tomatoes that grow in his garden — things that will probably still be true in a few months, once he graduates from Fordham with a B.A. in Creative Writing and Theatre Directing.