Bryant Keith Alexander

Dean, College of Communication and Fine Arts | Loyola Marymount University

Los Angeles, CA, UNITED STATES

Dean, College of Communication and Fine Arts

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Biography

Bryant Keith Alexander, Ph.D. is dean of the LMU College of Communication and Fine Arts. He is professor of Communication, Performance and Cultural Studies. He is an Affiliate Faculty of Educational Leadership for Social Justice, Doctoral Program at LMU’s School of Education, and Affiliate/Adjunct Faculty in the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music, Monash University, Melbourne Australia. Alexander is an active scholar with a distinguished record of teaching, service, and professional activity.

His nearly 200 scholarly publications appear in leading journals, edited volumes, and major handbooks that evidence the broad interdisciplinary and intellectual curiosity of his engagement including: “The Handbook of Qualitative Inquiry 4th , 5th, and 6th editions, “The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication,” “The Handbook of Autoethnography, 1st edition” “The Blackwell Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication,” “The Handbook of Communication and Instruction,” “The Handbook of Critical and Indigenous Methodologies,”  “The Handbook of Qualitative Research,”  “The Handbook of Performance Studies,” “Men and  Masculinities: Critical Concepts in Sociology,” “The Routledge Companion to Masculinity in American Literature and Culture,” along with the forthcoming “Advancing Culturally Responsive Research and Researchers: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods” (Routledge).

Alexander has seven books. He is co-editor of “Performance Theories in Education: Power, Pedagogy, and the Politics of Identity” (Erlbaum, 2005); author of “Performing Black Masculinity: Race, Culture, and Queer Identity” (Alta Mira, 2006),  author of “The Performative Sustainability of Race: Reflections on Black Culture and the Politics of Identity” (Peter Lang, 2012), co-editor of the “Routledge Handbook of  Gender and Communication” (2021), co-author “Still Hanging: Using Performance Texts to Deconstruct Racism” (Brill | Sense, 2021), co-author of “Collaborative Spirit-Writing and Performance in Everyday Black Lives” (Routledge, 2021), and “Intergenerational Dialogues of a Black Quartet: Qualitative Inquiries on Race, Gender, Sexualities, and Culture” (Routledge, 2022).

Education (3)

Southern Illinois University at Carbondale: Ph.D., Communication, Performance & Pedagogical Studies

University of Southwestern Louisiana: M.S., Communication

University of Southwestern Louisiana: B.A., Communication

Areas of Expertise (11)

Race Gender & Sexuality

Communication & Culture

Performance & Culture

Higher Education

Speech Communication

Interpersonal & Public Communication

Fine Art

Public Speaking

Communication

Leadership

Diversity

Articles (6)

"Hands Up! Don't Shoot!": Policing Race in America

Cultural Studies, Critical Methodologies

2016-06-01

This essay serves as the introduction to a Special Issue on “policing race in America.” It was initiated on the occasion of the Michael Brown case in Ferguson Missouri as endemic of a nation-wide epidemic of police attacks on unarmed African Americans in the United States of America...

From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin

Cultural Studies, Critical Methodologies

2015-08-01

The call for this Special Issue was simple yet poignant. It read, On February 26, 2012 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot dead by 28-year-old George Zimmerman, as he walked home through the gated community neighborhood in which he was visiting his father’s fiancé. Invoking Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, Zimmerman claimed he was threatened by the presence of the unarmed African-American high school student wearing a hooded sweatshirt. News of the shooting, and the racially charged court case and media coverage that ensued— in which Zimmerman was acquitted of charges of second- degree murder and manslaughter charges—captivated the nation...

Phantoms, Amputations, and Mournings of Black Dreadlocks: Or Reentering the Barbershop

Text & Performance Quarterly

The performer stands with his back to the audience, facing a series of images of himself with dreadlocks projected on a screen. The performer reenacts a twisting of phantom dreadlocks. After several frenetic acts of twisting phantom locks across the expanse of his head, the performer slowly turns to face the audience and begins speaking...

Fading, Twisting, and Weaving: An Interpretive Ethnography of the Black Barbershop as Cultural Space

Qualitative Inquiry

2003-02-01

Barbershops in the Black community are discursive spaces in which the confluence of Black hair care, for and by Black people, and small talk establish a context for cultural exchange. This interpretive ethnography describes the barbershop in a Black community as a cultural site for ethnographic exploration and description. The article defines a cultural site not only as the chosen geo-social locale of the ethnographic gaze but also as a centralized occasion within a cultural community that serves at the confluence of banal ritualized activity and the exchange of cultural currency. It is the social experience of being in the barbershop that the article focuses on, knowing that social experience meets at the intersection of culture and performance, and at the confluence of reflection and remembrance...

Skin Flint (or, The Garbage Man's Kid): A Generative Autobiographical Performance Based on Tami Spry's Tattoo Stories

Text & Performance Quarterly

This essay capitalizes on the hope that autobiographical performance's aesthetic of incarnation may become an aesthetic ofreincamation. Explicating the construction of “generative autobiographical performance,” the essay continues the retheorizing of the personal narrator in autobiographical performance as something other than a heroic autonomous subject. It documents the essentially interdependent and collaborative effort evidenced between two autobiographical performances. In the process, the essay also continues to explore autobiographical performance as a form of cultural critique...

Performing Culture in the Classroom: An Instructional (Auto) Ethnography

Text & Performance Quarterly

The notion of performing culture in the classroom is both a paradigmatic description of a phenomenon as well as a theoretical position. This research is poised at the productive intersection of critical pedagogy and the increasing focus on autobiography and autoethnography in Performance Studies. The essay seeks to contribute to the development of education as well as performance theory..