
Alex Brostoff joined the Kenyon community in 2022, and is a writer, translator, and Assistant Professor of English. Their research and pedagogy converge at the crossroads of cultural criticism, critical theory, and queer and transfeminist cultural production in twentieth and twenty-first century hemispheric American Studies. Brostoff’s current book project probes the political potentiality of genre-defying bodies of theory — from “theory in the flesh” to “autotheory” and beyond. The study compares the historically and culturally specific ways marginalized writers have reconceived the relationship between self-figuration and structural critique across the Americas.
They are the guest co-editor of a special issue of ASAP/Journal on “autotheory” and their scholarship, translations, and public writing have appeared in journals including Critical Times, Synthesis, Assay, and Hyperallergic, among others. At UC Berkeley, they were honored to receive the Professor Norman Jacobson Memorial Teaching Award, the Lili Fabilli and Eric Hoffer Essay Prize, and the Andrew W. Mellon-funded Cal Performances Grant in arts-integrated curricula.
Brostoff has taught at UC Berkeley, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Middlebury-Monterey Language Academy, as well as in bilingual education in New York City, Buenos Aires, and Salvador, Brazil.
Areas of Expertise
20th and 21st century hemispheric American studies; queer & transfeminist cultural production; autotheory.
Education
2021 — Doctor of Philosophy from Univ. of California Berkeley
2013 — Master of Arts from University of Alabama
2009 — Bachelor of Arts from Sarah Lawrence College