Introduction
Teaching Interests
Research Interests
Educational Background


 

College of Arts and Letters

Department of Communication Studies

Bryant Keith Alexander
Professor

Associate Dean


Office: MUSIC 228                                                         E-Mail:  abryant@calstatela.edu
Phone: (323) 343-4004
FAX: (323) 343-6440



INTRODUCTION

Bryant Keith Alexander, Ph.D. is the Associate Dean in the College of Arts and Letters at California State University Los Angeles. His faculty appointment is in the Department of Communication Studies. His research and teaching interests are in performance studies, instructional communication, cultural studies, qualitative methodologies, gender studies, intercultural and interracial studies, and identity politics.


TEACHING INTERESTS

His teaching interests are in pedagogical studies, cultural studies, and performance studies. His academic background is in Performance Studies, Pedagogical Studies/Instructional Communication, Critical Pedagogy, Interpersonal, Intercultural, and Public Communication. He teaches classes in all of these areas bridging them with his interests in the performative nature of human communication. As a teacher-performer-scholar his interests are intricately interwoven with my practices.


RESEARCH INTERESTS

His research is grounded in the social and performative construction of identity as related to issues of race, culture, sex, sexuality, gender, and nationality—often placing these concerns within the broad context of education and citizenship. His work uses qualitative, critical, and performative methodologies including what is constructed as performative writing, ethnography, interpretive ethnography, and autoethnography. Most recently his work has specifically turned to cultural geography, studies in which he focuses on the spatial constitution of society through the mediating effects of culture.
 



Representative Publications

 

Books:
Performing Black Masculinity: Race, Gender, and Queer Identity. AltaMira Press, 2006.

 

Performance Theories in Education: Power, Pedagogy, and the Politics of Identity. Co-edited with Gary Anderson and Bernardo Gallegos. Lawrence Erlbaum Press, 2005 (out October 2004).

Refereed/Peer Reviewed Journal Articles


“Bu(o)ying Condoms: A Prophylactic Performance of Sexuality (or Performance as Prophylactic Agency),” Cultural Studies/ Critical Methodologies, 4.4(2004): 501-525.


"Black Skin/White Masks: The Performative Sustainability of Whiteness (with
Apologies to Frantz Fanon)," Qualitative Inquiry, 10.5 (2004): 647-672.


“Passing, Cultural Performance, and Individual Agency: Performative Reflections on Black Masculine Identity,” Cultural Studies/Critical Methodologies 4.3 (February 2004), 377-404.

 

“Racializing Identity: Performance, Pedagogy and Regret.” Cultural Studies
/ Critical Methodologies, 4.1 (February 2003): 12-27.

"Querying Queer Theory Again (Or Queer Theory as Drag Performance)”, The
Journal of Homosexuality, vol. 2/3/4 (2003): pp. 349-352.


“(Re)Visioning the Ethnographic Site: Interpretive Ethnography as a Method
of Pedagogical Reflexivity and Scholarly Production.” Qualitative Inquiry, 9.3 (June 2003): 416-441.

 

"Fading, Twisting and Weaving: An Interpretive Ethnography of the Black
Barbershop as Cultural Space." Qualitative Inquiry. 9.1 (February 2003):
101-128.

Sample Book Chapters/Proceedings/Reviews


“Performing Culture in the Classroom: An Instructional (Auto) Ethnography.”
Originally published in Text and Performance Quarterly 19 (October 1999): 271-306. The essay is republished in Jim L. Paul (2005) (Ed.). Philosophies of Research and Criticism in Education and the Social Sciences, Prentice Hall: New Jersey (pp. 171-188).

“Negotiating Cultural Identity in the Classroom.” In Mary Fong and Rueyling
Chuang (Eds.). Communicating Ethnic and Cultural Identity, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, (November 2003): 329-343.

“Cooking Gumbo—Examining Cultural Dialogue About Family: A Black/White
Narrativization of Lived Experience in Southern Louisiana” with Paul Leblanc. In Thomas Socha and Rhunette C. Diggs (Eds.). Communication, Race, and Family: Exploring Communication in Black, White, and Biracial Families. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 1999, 181-208.


"The Outsider (or Invisible Man all Over Again): Contesting The Absented Black
Gay Body in Queer Theory (with apologies to Ralph Ellison)." The Image of the Outsider: Proceedings of the 2002 Society for the Interdisciplinary Study of Social Imagery Conference. (Eds.). Will Wright and Steven Kaplan. The Society for the Interdisciplinary Study of Social Imagery-- Pueblo, CO: University of Southern Colorado, 308-315.


“Betwixt & Between: The Liminal Space of the Graduate Student as Administrative Assistant (An Autobiographical Narrative),” Ready to Teach: Graduate Teaching Assistants Prepare for Today and for Tomorrow. Refereed Proceedings from the Sixth National Conference on the Education and Employment of Graduate Teaching Assistants. (Ed). Will Davis, Jan Smith, & Rosslyn Smith. Still Water, OK: New Forums Press, 2002, 16-20.

 

"Reflections, Riffs and Remembrances: The Black Queer Studies in the Millennium Conference (2000)." Callaloo: A Journal of African-American and African Arts and Letters, 23. 4, (Fall 2001): 1283-1305.






EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND

Ph.D. Performance Studies and Pedagogical Studies Sept 1998
Southern Illinois University at Carbondale

M.S. Interpersonal Communication May 1987
University of Southwestern Louisiana recently renamed the University of Louisiana, Lafayette.

B. A. Interpersonal and Public Communication December 1985
University of Southwestern Louisiana—U. of L. -Lafayette



 

     

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