Alexandra Kingston-Reese

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Profile

Biography

Alexandra Kingston-Reese is a Senior Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Literature. Alexandra has particular interests in aesthetic and political theory, form (specifically the novel and the essay), the histories of secularism and postsecularism, critical theory, and the history of ideas. Her books include Contemporary Novelists and the Aesthetics of Twenty-First Century American Life (Iowa, 2020) and Art Essays (Iowa, 2021, as editor).

Her scholarly work has been published in a number of venues including New Literary History, ASAP/Journal, Art History, and Mosaic, as well as the Times Literary Supplement and the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Research

Overview

Alexandra’s research has primarily been concerned with contemporary literary engagements with the history of aesthetics, with a secondary focus on the history of emotions and affect.

She is currently at work on two books. Her next monograph is concerned with postsecular allegory, aesthetic judgment, and speculative thought, spanning from Hegel, Walter Benjamin, and Gillian Rose to Ebecho Muslimova and Sheila Heti.

A collaborative second project is constructing a defense of essayism as a style of political thinking. Displaying an unique ability to move fluidly between political experience or the politically pregnant moment and the bigger picture, the essay emerges as a form ideally suited for performing political thinking through examination, free-association, and transformation.

Supervision

Enquiries from prospective research students interested in the connections between post45 American or comparative literature and intellectual history would be warmly welcome, particularly on topics related to form (the novel and the essay); theories of secularism and postsecularism; Marxist thought and contemporary culture; aesthetics and moral philosophy; interdisciplinary projects on the visual arts and music; and cross-period studies.

Teaching

Undergraduate

Alexandra teaches and lectures broadly across the department, but mostly on modern and contemporary literature and critical theory. Specialist modules include ‘Art in the Present’, and ‘21st Century American Literature’.

Postgraduate

At MA level, Alexandra runs the module ‘Bad Feelings’, on the affects of contemporary literature, and contributes to a range of MA modules, including ‘Framing the Contemporary’, ‘Reading Modernity’, ‘Queer Encounters’, and ‘Debating Global Literary Culture’.

In 2021, Alexandra was awarded a Vice-Chancellor's Teaching Award for recognition of excellence in teaching. She is the co-founder and co-organiser, with Dr Shazia Jagot and Dr Lola Boorman, of UoY English’s Decolonizing Network.