I am a doctoral candidate in English literature at Cornell University and the 2019 Mellon Editorial Fellow at Northwestern University Press. My research centers on the relationships between black women and somatic data, at the intersection of black women’s art practice, emergent recording technology, and literary theory.
I am currently at work on my dissertation, which explores singer and actor Janelle Monáe’s 2018 emotion picture Dirty Computer as a theory of somatic capture and self-creation under a data surveillant state, considering the film within a literary and cultural history of black women theorizing their own legibility. This dissertation work led to riversides2106, a workgroup exploring black women’s self-narrativization through VR-based choreography.
Learn more about me and my work at lizmuricealexander.com