Hi. I'm Ley. It's pronounced "Lee."

When I'm feeling fancy, I go by Ley David Elliette Cray, PhD. I have other names, too.

I'm a scholar working in ontology, aesthetics, comics studies, and gender studies. I currently teach at New Mexico State University and Doña Ana Community College, and have previously taught at Texas Christian University, Grand Valley State University, and an Ohio State University.

Beyond all that, I'm a public and clinical educator and consultant specializing in gender, sexuality, and relationship diversity in a neuroinclusive framework. I've collaborated with Plume, Growth Thru Change, Sexual Health Alliance, Charlie Health, MŌN, Plura, and more.

My Erdös-Bacon-Sabbath Number is 18.

CV available upon request. You can email me at leydavidelliette[at]gmail[dot]com.

Philosophy of Comics: An Introduction (with Sam Cowling). 2022. Bloomsbury Press

Painful Games: BDSM, Identity, and the Aesthetics of Gameplay. Under contract. Rowman & Littlefield.

Picture-Reading the Complexities of Transgender Experience. 2024. Canadian Journal of Philosophy. doi:10.1017/can.2024.29

LGBTQIA+ Adapted Telehealth Intensive Outpatient Program for Youth and Young Adults: Subgroup Analysis of Acuity and Improvement Following Treatment (with Kate Gliske, Katie Berry, Claire Schmidt, Michael Killian, and Caroline Fenkel). 2023. JMIR Formative Research. doi: 10.2196/45796

Some Considerations Regarding Adornment, the Gender "Binary," and Gender Expression. 2021. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 79(4): 488-492

Some Ideas About the Metaphysics of Stories. 2019. British Journal of Aesthetics 59(2): 147-160

Transparent and Opaque Performance Personas. 2019. Journal of Aesthetics of Art Criticism 77(2): 181-191

Psychologism about Artistic Plans: A Response to Rohrbaugh. 2018. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 76(1): 101-104

How to Be Omnipresent (with Sam Cowling). 2017. American Philosophical Quarterly 54(3): 223-234

Abstract Generationism: A Response to Friedell. 2017. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 75(3): 289-292

A Return to Musical Idealism (with Carl Matheson). 2017. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 95(3): 702-715

Unperformable Works and the Ontology of Music. 2016. British Journal of Aesthetics 56(1): 67-81

An Ontology of Ideas (with Timothy Schroeder). 2015. Journal of the American Philosophical Association 1(4): 757-775

Yellowism and Ontology: A Skeptical Analysis. 2015. Contemporary Aesthetics 13

Conceptual Art, Ideas, and Ontology. 2014. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 72(3): 235-245

Team-Teaching the Atheism-Theism Debate (with Steven Brown). 2014. Teaching Philosophy 37(4): 465-480

Inconstancy and Content. 2014. Dialectica 68(3): 337-353

Omniscience and Worthiness of Worship. 2011. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 70(2): 147-153

The Role of Performance Personae in Black Metal Aesthetics. Forthcoming. In The Heaviest Ideas in the Universe: A Philosophy of Heavy Metal. McCraw and Simmons, eds. Wiley-Blackwell.

Omnipresence and Mathematical Reality (with Sam Cowling). 2025. In The Oxford Handbook of Omnipresence. Marmodoro and Migliorini, eds.. Oxford University Press

Taylor's Versions and Versions of Taylor. 2025. In Taylor Swift and the Philosophy of Re-Recording: The Art of Taylor's Versions. Polite, ed. Bloomsbury Press

Bands, Personas, and the Evaluative Import of (Some) Social Ontology. 2024. In The Ontology of Music Groups: Identity, Persistence, and Agency of Creative Groups. Peterson and Janson, eds. Routledge

Batman: A Case Study in Ontology and Appreciation. 2022. Bloomsbury Contemporary Aesthetics

The Karmic Tragedy of Bruce Wayne: Batman as Anti-Buddha. 2022. In Theology and Batman: Examining the Religious World of the Dark Knight. Brake and Robertson, eds. Lexington Press 

Sabbath Doesn't Need the Ozzman. 2012. In Black Sabbath and Philosophy: Mastering Reality. Irwin, ed. Wiley-Blackwell

Review of Why It's OK to Not Be Monogamous. 2023. Teaching Philosophy 46(4): 576-570

Review of Uncommon Sense: Jeremy Bentham, Queer Aesthetics, and the Politics of Taste. 2023. British Journal of Aesthetics 63(4): 608-611.

Review of Sonic Flux: Sound, Art, and Metaphysics. 2020. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 78(1): 126-129

Review of The Aesthetics of Videogames. 2018. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

Review of The Aesthetics and Ethics of Copying. 2017. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

Aesthetics from the Closet. 2021. American Society for Aesthetics Newsletter 41(1): 1-3

Minimizing Misgendering: A Plea for Better Pronoun Practices. 2021. Aesthetics for Birds

Why Genderfucking is Awesome. 2021. Aesthetics for Birds