Biography

Alexandria Smith (she/her) is Assistant Professor of Gender and Sexuality in the Department of African American and African Studies. She works in the areas of Black feminist and queer literature and theory, writing and thinking about the roles of embodiment in life writing and theory, the ways that Blackness interacts with and disrupts conceptions of gender and sexuality, and how gendered discourses are constructed in Black cultural work. Alexandria is at work on her first book project, an exploration of the distinct and sometimes competing conceptions of Black womanhood produced within Black feminist, queer, and trans studies. 

Alexandria earned a PhD in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Rutgers University and a BA in Comparative Women’s Studies and International Studies from Spelman College. She was a 2021 - 2023 Postdoctoral Fellow in the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies.

Her writing has been published or is forthcoming in Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal, The Journal of Feminist Scholarship, Cultural Studies, Black Perspectives, The New Inquiry, and elsewhere. 

Photo credit: Melody Robbins