Ian J.听Alexander

  • Assistant Professor
  • MEDIA STUDIES
ian Alexander
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Armory 1B27

Assistant Professor Ian J. Alexander studies media, technology, and political struggle, especially in the context of US prisons and jails. His interests (scholarly and otherwise) include: histories and theories of media, technology, revolutionary social movements, capitalism, and counterinsurgency; Appalachian string band music; and baseball.
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Drawing on media history, science and technology studies, critical prison studies, the Black Radical Tradition, and theories and histories of various revolutionary movements, Alexander鈥檚 work looks at media technologies deployed in US prisons as terrains of struggle and weapons for both repression and liberation. His first book, The Carceral Media Regime: Technologies of Disaggregation, Pacification, and Rebellion in US Prisons, consists of a series of histories of media technologies鈥 adaptations behind the prison wall, and provides a theoretical structure for grasping media technologies as indispensable for prison operations and carceral counterinsurgency in and beyond the prison. The book will appear on Duke University Press in 2026. He has published several articles on carceral media technologies, including 鈥鈥 (Media Fields Journal, 2021), 鈥鈥 (International Journal of Communication, 2020), and 鈥鈥 (Against Catastrophe, 2023).
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Alexander completed his PhD in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University and his MA in the Media Studies program at Pratt Institute. Before joining CU-Boulder, he held visiting positions at Carnegie Mellon University and Wellesley College. Alexander grew up in Clarion County, PA, where he began his college education at Clarion University of Pennsylvania.

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