Ben Alexander

Ben Alexander holds an MA in American Literature from Columbia University and a PhD in American Literature from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Concurrent with his graduate study, Alexander work as Rare Books and Manuscripts Specialist for the New York Public Library.

Alexander's teaching career includes (in chronological order): UCLA School of Information (Post-Doc); Queens College School of Information (Assistant Professor, Director of Archival Studies & Director of Special Collections for Queens College Libraries); Stanford University (Visiting Scholar Department of English and Digital Lit. Lab); Sichuan University (Associate Professor and Associate American Studies); Harvard University (Visiting Scholar, Department of English); and, Columbia University (Visiting Scholar, Department of English) and now he teaches at Columbia in the Department of English and the Department of Film and Media Studies. He has taught seminars on Archival Studies and American Studies at universities across Europe and China.

Alexander has published articles in many national journals including: The American Archivist, Archival Science, English Studies Canada and The New England Quarterly. He has co-edited one volume Community Archives: Shaping Memory (Facet) and a special edition, Archiving Activism (Archival Science).

Currently Alexander is completing a monograph entitled, Yaddo: Shaping the American Century (Cornell University Press) and is advancing several editing projects; including: A volume for Facet entitled, Remembering and Re(re)membering Socail justice in the 21st Century. A volume for Brill (European perspectives on the United States series) entitled, When American Literature Became American Television.