JOB TALK: Prof. Jonathan Alexander

Jonathan Alexander is Professor of English and Campus Writing Coordinator at the University of California, Irvine.  His research areas include Writing Studies, Composition/Rhetoric, New Media Studies, and Sexuality Studies. His scholarly work focuses primarily on the use of emerging communications technologies in the teaching of writing and in shifting conceptions of what writing, composing, and authoring mean. Jonathan also works at the intersection of the fields of writing studies and sexuality studies, where he explores what theories of sexuality, particularly queer theory, have to teach us about literacy and literate practice in pluralistic democracies.

In this presentation, Prof. Alexander examines the young adult (YA) publishing industry as a powerful contemporary sponsor of young adult literacy practices, particular multimedia literacies.  He asks, what kinds of literacies are modeled in YA fiction and media, and how do contemporary corporations "brand" literacy to orient young people's communication practices in particular ways?  He also examines college students' engagement with YA texts and media in the creation of their own media that, in some cases, reproduces the forms, genres, and ideas modeled in YA and, in other cases, challenges and resists corporate "branding" of literacy.