Dr. Sandy Alexandre

Biography

Sandy Alexandre is an Associate Professor and Head whose research spans late nineteenth-century to present-day black American literature and culture. Her book, 'Properties of Violence: Claims of Ownership and Representations of Lynching' (Mississippi, 2012), employs the history of American lynching and violence to examine themes of displacement and property ownership within a literary context. For example, a chapter on Toni Morrison’s 'Beloved' dissects the gendered implications of lynching iconography and its relational context of ownership. Alexandre is currently engaged in a writing project titled 'Chattels: Thinghood Ethics of Black Curation,' which departs from the premise that enforced conditions render black Americans as fungible merchandise, thereby shaping their relationships with material objects. Her explorations include the practices of black Americans that create significant cultural meanings for these objects. Through literary analysis, studies of material artifacts, and the work of black collectors, she argues that the curated culture of subject-object relations presents an immanent critique of consumer capitalism. Her academic inquiries insistently consider the ecological connections between people, places, and objects, particularly in the context of racial violence throughout U.S. history.

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