معرفی
Alexander Steele serves as a Teaching Assistant Professor of Humanities within the Honors College at Portland State University, operating from the University Honors Office (UHP UH 005) with Tuesday office hours from 9:00 am to 11:00 am.
His academic foundation includes:
- PhD from the University of Oregon
Steele specializes in 20th- and 21st-century literature and culture with deep expertise in Anglo-American modernism, actively contributing to the New Modernist Studies movement that expands traditional modernist frameworks. His research critically intersects literary history, intellectual history, and critical theory to examine aesthetics-politics relationships, while pioneering work on the "speculative turn" in multiethnic literature and sustained engagement with Disability Studies and Indigenous Modernism. This manifests in analyses of marginalized voices, spatial/temporal theory, and ethical representation across canonical and contemporary texts.
His publication trajectory reveals consistent thematic focus: recent works in Modernism/modernity and Disability Studies Quarterly dissect Carson McCullers' disability portrayals, John Joseph Mathews' Indigenous modernism, and metaphorical deafness through rigorous literary-critical lenses. This scholarship bridges modernist studies with contemporary social justice concerns, emphasizing underrepresented perspectives in American literary canon formation.
As an educator, Steele designs innovative seminars including "Being and Belonging in the Modern Woolfian Cityscape," "Normativity, Longing, and Literary Dissent," and "Theorizing Speculative Literature," while supervising Honors Theses. He actively mentors students through open dialogue about literature, film, and interdisciplinary inquiry, fostering critical engagement beyond the classroom.
