Alexandra Chasin

chasina@newschool.edu

Assistant Professor, Literary Studies, Eugene Lang College, The New School

Before I became a full-time creative writer, I trained as a scholar in 20th Century U.S. literature and culture, and then taught in those fields for many years (focusing on gender, race, sexuality, and popular culture). Then I shifted fields to become a full-time writer and teacher of writing, but I brought my scholarly training and my scholarly interests with me, which explains my preoccupation with representations of history in creative writing. I am engaged with the infinite ways that historical events, people, and artifacts can and do represent themselves across genres and even across media. I tend to see literature as a set of artifacts constructed in and through a broad network of social practices. I tend to see language as replete, with enough possibilities, lithe, versatile, extensive enough, and worth all the compromise, even if beauty did not sneak in and steal the show. I tend to anaphora.

Books

Kissed By. Fiction Collective 2, 2007

Selling Out: The Gay and Lesbian Movement Goes to Market. New York: St. Martin’s, 2000

Brief. Jaded Ibis Press. Forthcoming, 2012. Brief is prepared as an app that randomly locates images from a cache and the wraps the text around the images. This design is integrally related to the content of the text.

Short Creative Work

“A White of Many Colors,” New Orleans Review 37.1, 2011

“Savvy Cremains,” in Moon Milk Review Anthology 2011, ed. Rae Bryant (Moon Milk Review, 2011)

“Second Look, Second Thought,” in The Official Catalog of the Library of Potential Literature, eds. Ben Segal and Erinrose Mager (Cow Heavy Books, 2011)

You Loved the Morphine,failbetter 37, November 2010 [online]

He Her Heck,jmww, Fall 2010 [online]

“No.pArt,” Unsaid Five, 2010

“The New Chain-Reference Bible, Fourth Improved Edition,” with Teresa Carmody and Davis Schneiderman, Mandorla: New Writing from the Americas/Nueva escritura de las Américas, 13, 2010

A Sentence About A Sentence I Love,” guest post, bigother.com [posted May 10, 2010]

“Recall, Cipher, Their Fragmentation, and Then,” Hotel Amerika, Spring 2010

“By ’M Bye,” Post Road 18, January 2010

“LOVE, DISAPPEAR,” WhatPeach, September 2009

“Two Alphabets,” anthologized in Forms at War: FC2 1999-2009, ed. R.M. Berry (Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 2009)

“Further From Unusual,” H.O.W. 4, May 2009

Details,Word Spaces (9), HTMLGIANT [posted March 29, 2009]

“They Come From Mars,” anthologized in Wreckage of Reason: An Anthology of Contemporary XXperimental Prose by Women Writers, ed. Nava Renek (Brooklyn: Spuyten Duyvil, 2008)

“Two Alphabets,” Denver Quarterly, 41:4, 2007

Potatoes, You Ask,elimae, 2006:12 [online]

“The Clawed Claims of Bear Love,” AGNI 63, Spring 2006

“all kinds of people on the Q train,” sleepingfish .825, May 2006

“Drug War//Facts,” with Hugh Sansom, Chain 12, Fall 2005

Kant Get Enough,Exquisite Corpse, Winter 2004

“The Mystery of Which Mystery,” Phoebe, 32:2, Autumn 2003

“Why I'm Jealous,” West Branch 52, Spring 2003

ELENA=AGAIN,DIAGRAM 2.6, Winter 2003

“Toward A Grammar of Guilt,” The Capilano Review, Series 2, No. 36, Winter 2002

Creative Work in Other Media

Brief, Jaded Ibis Press. Forthcoming, 2012.

Composer and I.” [Screenplay, co-adapted with Cathy Lee Crane, from a published short story of mine.] Premiere: Athens Film Festival, April 2012.

pro fo rma talk about nothing.” [three-minute video, made with Cathy Lee Crane, posted on the Rubin Museum of Art website November 2010]

Guest Posts and Interviews in Blogs

2011 “What is Experimental Literature? Five Questions,htmlgiant [posted March 28, 2011]

2011 “Gender and Writing,Her Circle Ezine [posted March 15, 2011]

2010 “No News Today,” kambybolongomeanriver.blogspot.com [posted Sept. 16, 2010]

2008 “Interview with Alexandra Chasin,The Short Review

2008 “Wreckage of Reason: Interview

2007 Fiction Collective 2: Interview

Selected Reviews

The Village Voice

The Quarterly Conversation

The Short Review

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Education

2002 M.F.A. Vermont College, in Fiction Writing

1993 Ph.D. Stanford University, in Modern Thought and Literature

1984 B.A. Brandeis University, summa cum laude, with Highest Honors in European Cultural Studies

Awards and Honors

2012 Residency, The MacDowell Colony, March-April 2012

2011 Residency, Yaddo Artist Colony, November 2011

2011 Finalist in the Black River Chapbook Competition (Fall 2010) for Under the Susurrus

2010 Semi-finalist in the novella category of the William Faulkner-William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition for “Brief”

2010 2nd place, Rubin Museum “Talk About Nothing” video competition, for “pro fo rma talk about nothing,” with Cathy Lee Crane

1996-97 Bunting Institute Fellowship, Radcliffe College

1996-97 Radcliffe Research Partnership Grant and Presidential Discretionary Fund Award

1994 Research Incentive Grant, Boston College

1990-91 Whiting Foundation Fellowship

Scholarly Articles and Chapters in Books

“Selling Out,” in Rethinking Commodification: Cases and Readings in Law and Culture, eds. Martha M. Ertman and Joan C. Williams. (New York: NYU P, 2005)

“Interpenetrations: A Cultural Study of The Relationship Between the Gay/Lesbian Niche Market and the Gay/Lesbian Political Movement.” Cultural Critique 44, Winter 2000, 145-168

Book Review of Homo Economicus: Capitalism, Community, and Lesbian and Gay Life, eds. Amy Gluckman and Betsy Reed. Sojourner: The Women’s Forum, v. 22, n. 12, August 1997, 21

“Selling Out: The Gay/Lesbian Market and the Construction of Gender.” Sojourner: The Women’s Forum, v. 22, n. 10, June 1997, 14-15

“Class and Its Close Relations: Identities Among Women, Servants and Machines,” in Posthuman Bodies, eds. J. Halberstam and I. Livingston (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1995)