Travis Alexander

Travis Alexander is an Assistant Professor at Old Dominion University. His writing focuses most broadly on biopolitics and the health humanities. More precisely, it examines relationships among health, race, sexuality, and government in the Post-WWII era. He most frequently turns to American fiction and film to examine these dynamics, embracing critical tools borrowed from psychoanalysis and deconstruction. His book project, The Birth of Viropolitics, looks to the HIV/AIDS epidemic as a case study in this long history. It examines a diversity of texts and media—from the fiction of Bret Easton Ellis, Sapphire, and Octavia Butler, to the cinema of John Carpenter, and the X Files. Through these objects, the book theorizes evolving fantasies and anxieties around immunity and autoimmunity in late-20th century American culture. His publications on these and related topics appear or are forthcoming in a range of scholarly journals, including American Literature, Criticism, Discourse, Public Culture, and elsewhere.