Profile
Biography
Alexandra Kingston-Reese is a Senior Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Literature and the Co-Director of the Modern Research School. She specializes in 21st century literature, with a particular interest in the novel and essay after 1945, theory of the novel, literary institutions, the practices and politics of reading, and the history of the humanities.
Alexandra Kingston-Reese joined the department in 2016 as a Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Literature. Before arriving at York, she completed her PhD, funded by the Australian Government, at the University of Sydney in December 2015.
She is the Co-Director of the Modern Research School and the department's Chair of Admissions.
Research
Overview
Alexandra Kingston-Reese is the author of Contemporary Novelists and the Aesthetics of Twenty-First Century American Life (University of Iowa Press, 2020), and the editor of Art Essays (University of Iowa Press, 2021), an edited collection of essays by contemporary novelists on art, including Zadie Smith, Chris Kraus, Orhan Pamuk, Geoff Dyer, Teju Cole, and Jhumpa Lahiri.
Her essays and criticism have appeared in publications ranging from the Los Angeles Review of Books, Literary Hub, and the Times Literary Supplement to MFS, Critique, Mosaic, Post45, and ASAP Journal. She is currently working on her second monograph on allegory, the novel and novel theory, and cultural adjudication. Also in the works is a project on the political essay.
She was the co-organiser of The Contemporary Essay, a CModS research strand (2020–22), the co-investigator on Affects in History, with Mary Fairclough (2020–2021), and the co-organiser of Creative Dissonance, a CModS research strand (2017–19).
Supervision
Alexandra would welcome proposals for doctoral research on post-45 literature, literary institutions, literary form (especially the novel and the essay), theory of the novel, critical theory, and the politics and practices of reading.
Teaching
Undergraduate
Alexandra teaches and lectures broadly across the department, but mostly on modern and contemporary literature and critical theory.
At MA level, Alexandra teaches on the core modules for the MA in Modern and Contemporary Literature and the MA in Culture and Thought after 1945.
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.
External activities
Overview
Alexandra Kingston-Reese is the editor of ASAP/J, the open-access platform of ASAP/Journal, the scholarly publication of the Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present. In this role, she also sits on the Association's Motherboard.
